September & October are hosts to the most potentially good music of the year. I want to lay out the next couple months in case there's some music here you may have overlooked otherwise. There's a ton getting released this week, so I'm going to do a three-parter instead of a two-parter. Last week saw releases from one of my guilty pleasure artists, Beyonce, a mellow and beautiful group called Grizzly Bear and another Rage Against the Machine meets Soundgarden and pops then fizzles outing from Audioslave. This week features not three, but sixteen noteable releases.

Out this week (Sept. 12)

Black Keys - Magic Potion - The Black Keys are one of my favorite bands. Their game is blues of the dirty and raw calibur. On Magic Potion, they take a quieter approach and somehow manage to sound more fierce and ready to wail than ever. Magic Potion doesn't have the fluency of an album like their other efforts, and its missing the transcendent moments that highlights each of their four other efforts but it will make your head bob and your waist wiggle.

Basement Jaxx - Crazy Itch Radio - I keep waiting for Basement Jaxx to finish the trifecta of Remedy and Rooty, but I think it's time to give up and enjoy their albums on their own terms. Crazy Itch Radio is mostly derivative of their other work, and I don't think it works on the casual level as well as those two albums. If nothing else, it's much better than Kish Kash, and it features vintage Basement Jaxx sure to please fans.

DJ Shadow - The Outsider - Two albums ago, DJ Shadow created one of the most important and influential albums of the 90s, and an album I'd squarely put in my top five of all time. As his follow up was also excellent, I've been anticipating this album for years. With inflated expectations comes the chance for an album to fall flat on its proverbial face and The Outsider is an incoherent mess. Josh Davis is doing his own thing now, making the music he likes instead of trying to live up to others expectations. In all seriousness, good for him. The first half is pretty much just good versions of hyphy and krunk music. I hate hyphy and krunk music. There are bright spots - he brings the funk for a couple tracks and the completely inappropriate "Backstage Girl" has a seriously dope beat. The rest kind of sounds like DJ Shadow made an album and let a bunch of crappy producers remix it. Some of the second half is interesting - he channels Radiohead and Coldplay and other sounds, but it's all over the place and mostly forgettable. Just skip it, there's far too much else out there worth hearing this year.

Magnolia Electric Company - Fading Trails - I don't know much about Magnolia Electric Company or its founder Jason Molina, but the tracks I've heard so far have hints of blues and Sunday afternoon pleasantries to spare.

Mars Volta - Amputechture - This is getting the typical love it or hate it reviews common for Mars Volta. Since Mars Volta features members of At the Drive-In, a band who opened my eyes to how boring music was becoming because of how fresh they were, I will always give them a chance. The only track I've heard was, on the surface, stale and generic. If I get the chance I'll go further, but only if its free and easy to hear. So MySpace here I come...

John Mayer - Continuum - As in "Your Body is a Wonderland" John Mayer. This is John getting his blues on, and it's really good. If you loved 'Try' and didn't like 'Inside Wants Out', or if you loved 'Inside Wants Out' and didn't like 'Try', or if you like good music, give it a chance. The man who now looks like Edward Scissorhands has made one of the year's strongest mainstream releases. Beautiful, melodic, surprising music that sounds like he's doing covers. He's not. There's a reason everyone from ?uestlove to Timbaland wants to work with him.

The Rapture - Pieces of the People We Love - The Rapture never really amounted to much for me. Some catchy hooks, some energetic anthems, but not a lot of staying power, but that may all change. This album features the same ear for hooks and the same energy, but it adds all around better song writing. If you like one song, you'll like them all. I recommend "Whoo! Alright! Yeah Uh Huh" as a starting point. I'll be featuring it on my October playlist.

Justin Timberlake - FutureSex / LoveSounds - I loved the first Timberlake album but I was bored after a few tracks on this one. "My Love" should be a huge hit and I won't get tired of hearing it ad naseum. Everything else is tired. And I've decided that if you use the word 'sex' in the first three tracks and feature it in your title, it's actual becoming something besides sexy Whatever that is. Trying too hard to begin with.

(On a brighter note, the first single, the one in which Justin brings the sexy back, has provided serious comedic fodder in the office this week. We've been discussing what we will be bringing back, with the stipulation that you can only bring something back that never left. So you can bring Rick Moranis back, but not John F. Kennedy. Today I'm bringing cursive back.)

TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain - I'll be waxing poetic about this album at the end of the year, since it will surely be in my top 10, if not top 5. It's the same unique brand of music only TV on the Radio and their vocalist Tunde Adebimpe can make, but its' tighter, fuller and more melodic than the first. I can't properly describe it, and 30 second samples won't do it justice. If you have ten bucks to spare, it's worth every penny. It's a band that not everyone will click with immediately, but give it some serious listening. You won't be disappointed.

Yo La Tengo - I Am Not Afraid of You And I Will Beat Your... - Okay, the title may offend some of the readers of this blog, although if you saw the band, you would get how tongue-in-cheek this was. Anyway, I haven't been able to hear this yet, but it's getting across-the-board raving reviews and I've heard three tracks off of it, all of which were completely different and all of which I loved. So this is high on my list to hear. Download a couple tracks here.

Also released this week: Mainstream candy by Barenaked Ladies, Everclear attempting a comeback, Mouse on Mars & The Album Leaf doing what they do, and albums from Xiu Xiu & Junior Boys that are getting good reviews. I'm not into any of those bands, but in case you are, there's new music for you to fall in love with.

Next: Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Beck, Decemberists, The Who and more

Labels: music