Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

Animal Collective is fucking wild.

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This Town Needs Guns - Animals

Awesome math-rock.

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Clipse - Road To Till The Casket Drops

It's worth the download just to hear "S.L.U."

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The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - S/T

Feel good music for when the dead of winter is too much.

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The Builders and The Butchers - S/T

Saw these guys open for Brand New, very interesting. Best way to describe it? Well, I think it can be summed up in a quote by frontman Ryan Sollee: "One of my big weaknesses is going in a thrift shop and, any musical instrument that’s under $5, I just buy it."

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Moving Mountains - Foreword

I've been waiting for this for so long.

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Bon Iver - Blood Bank

New Bon Iver EP...amazing.

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Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

Probably a top 5 release this year for anyone who has heard it.

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Kanye West - 808s & Heartbreak

I was extremely disappointed at first, but after a few listens, it's really starting to grow on me.

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Rachael Yamagata - Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart

Such a great fall CD.

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David Bowie - iSelect

David Bowie is the God of all gods.

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The Watson Twins - Fire Songs

Listen to the cover of "Just Like Heaven" and you can die happily.

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The Cure - 4:13 Dream

Probably one of my top five favorite bands ever.

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The Tallest Man On Earth - Shallow Graves

The next Dylan? Probably not, but this is the closest I'm convinced since heard Bright Eyes. Seriously, this might be a top 5 release of 2008.

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Secret Lives! of the Freemasons - Weekend Warriors

Weekend Warriors by Secret Lives! is my new drinking CD. With lines like "Where were you last Friday night?/We were drinking and staying up all night" and "Well sure, it's Sunday night/And my beer is open wide", the CD just puts you in a great mood to party.

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Father Time - Married to the Sea

Married to the Sea by Ann Arbor's Father Time is a solid effort towards their post-rock dreams. Engineered and Mastered by band member Alex Hug, the production really makes the album fantastic. The guitars are full and spacey and the saxophone really brings the songs together very well. Father Time is going to record their next album at Sentient Studios in Chicago next month, and I'm very excited to hear it.

1. Steel Creaks and Scares Us All
2. Caravel
3. An Ocean For You
4. Proxima Centauri
5. Fairweather
6. My Mother, the Atlantic
7. A Thousand Secrets of Nature

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Hot Water Music - Till The Wheels Fall Off

After being a band for fourteen or so years, Hot Water Music have produced some of the most progressive punk music to date. Till The Wheels Fall Off is their most recent release; a retrospective of rarities, covers, B-sides, tracks off of comps, outtakes, and split releases, the 23 track album spans their career extremely well while providing listeners with interesting gems such as their cover of The Clash's "Clampdown" and their covers of Alkaline Trio's "Radio" and "Bleeder". A must listen for any No Idea fan, Gainesville scene fan, beard punk fan, or just any music lover.

1. Kill the Night
2. Last Goodbyes
3. Seein' Diamonds
4. Home
5. So Many Days
6. God Deciding
7. Russian Roulette
8. Radio
9. Bleeder
10. Caught Up
11.Wrong and Righteous
12. Take It As It Comes
13. Wayfarer
14. Jaded Eyes
15. Dreamworld
16. Prince of the Rodeo
17. Moments Pass
18. Another Way
19. Moonpies for Misfits
20. Wild in the Streets
21. The Clampdown
22. No Surrender
23. Springtime

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Moving Mountains - Pneuma

There's something very interesting about the bands that come from the NY/NJ area: they all are very different in their own ways, but they still all manage to sound the same somehow. This is a good thing. It seems to have started out with the Lifetime and Saves the Day comparisons, then evolved to the comparison between Brand New and Taking Back Sunday's debut releases. But if you take the time to listen to those bands (especially Brand New, old Taking Back Sunday, new Crime in Stereo, and the Movielife), they all sound very similar. Such is true with Moving Mountains. They do a damn good job of breaking out of the punk/emo mold and pull through with a record that sounds as much like Caspian as it does Brand New (or at least, almost). Pneuma does not disappoint and is engaging for the entire forty-seven minutes.

1. Aphelion
2. Cover The Roots: Lower The Stems
3. Alastika
4. Fourth
5. 8105
6. Bottom Feeder
7. Sol Solis
8. Grow on, Grow up, Grow out
9. The Earth and the Sun
10. Ode We Will Bury Ourselves

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