8/25/2010

Tangent - New Design!

Aw Hell yeah, Ash Tree Lane has a new look... cobbled together from various templates. Hopefully future Blogger updates will allow me to upload a personalized background photo but I think this is fitting for now.


Soon: actual substantial updates!

8/16/2010

Review - The Suburbs


Written and Performed by Arcade Fire
Produced by Arcade Fire and Markus Dravs
Recorded under Merge Records

Note to self: Thursday evening does not qualify as "early next week." Daniel, you lazy ass.

Ahem.

So, yes, over two weeks after its release I am finally reviewing Arcade Fire's The Suburbs. My reason for delaying this long is, in my opinion, far more valid than the one I have for this week's procrastination: I had to let this album become ingrained in my head. One usually has to listen to an album two or three times before the songs come into their own and stand apart from one another. This is no different for me and my two week delay allowed The Suburbs to ferment, so to speak.

8/12/2010

Review - Summer Music Roundup

My media purchasing habits tend to come in phases: in my first year of university I amassed a stack of new DVDs; during my second year it seemed I was purchasing every awesome comic collection I could get my hands on; with the following summer and this past school year I went on a book-buying spree. All three of these crazes have come and gone much to the chagrin of my bank account (as well as the mother who partly finances me). More recently--as in, from the beginning of May onward--I initiated the next iteration, that being music.

Though I adore music to the same degree as any other art medium (which is to say a lot), I tend to be behind the times--and yes, this is coming from a newspaper arts editor. I never listened to Arcade Fire's magnificent 2004 debut, Funeral, until last summer, nearly five years after its release. My intense Tool, Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails fandoms began a decade after each band's formation and, at most, a full year before their next release. And of course I'm still consuming David Bowie and Pink Floyd long after both artists were in their respective heydays. As such, my music spree has been somewhat of a catching up game--and, again, at the expense of my savings and my mother's love. Thus, I dedicate the rest of this post to briefly reviewing some of the albums I dropped cash on in the past three months, roughly in order of their purchase.