the National - Mr. November

I like this. His voice is deep. Really cuts through the traffic noises as I walk to work. The guitar is fun too. Good rock n' roll. It makes me really want to listen to a whole album but unfortunately I cannot. Tice only gave me a few songs from an assortment of albums. I believe one of the first chores of my return Stateside is to buy this album or any other actually.

I've heard a lot about the National. It seems that the critics love them. Of course they love all types of music. Gogol Bordello seems to be appearing in most of my music mags, and "OMG! Did you know that Elijah Wood is TOTALLY dating the girl!!!!=]" I really sat down with this one because of my newest obsession: Current.tv. Man, I think I try to mention it in everything I do. It's such a great idea. Anyway, the channel I watch, InfoMania, does a segment called We Got You Covered, where they do a brief on the magazines I should be reading. One of which is Paste. They then pointed out that two members of the National (on the cover) have uni-brows. I love uni-brows! I should check out this band. So I did. I put in on the iPod and hit the play. I like it. I even put it on some playlists which I should advertise here at a later date.

Battles - Atlas

I can imagine myself playing this to a crowded room of Zambian hipsters. Why? I have no idea. I think this song would be fun to play, and just as much fun to see. For a song that has no lyrics I really enjoy it. I guess it has some lyrics they are just whimsical vocoder toots. I've read a little about this band on Pitchfork, so I searched on my iPod for this band, surely Tice put it on there. He did but only this one song. I like it. It's gone on most of the On-the-Go playlists I've created recently. I like walking to work with it. As I pass by the Presidential Palace I have a nice hipster nod going on. Good stuff. I need to find more Battles.

Interesting name for the band. Reminds me of that horrible grocery store from Gatlinburg. The one that charged god-awful prices and then when a bigger chain store moved in the entire populace was so angry and fed up that Battle's Grocery went under in moments. No "Save Our Local Business." They treated the public horribly, so we had no problems going to the competitor. Yep, Battles. Not just a cool band.