The Friday Refrain: A bit of what's new in music...

Friday Friday Friday... Sorry for the erratic posting. My work environment is not conducive to working essentially. My only promise is that somewhat weekly I will post about the new music out and about in the world. And you can bet I am still listening. I'm thinking about doing a year-end tally. Though I think that might scare me and cause me to curl up in a dark cave with wide wondrous eyes fearing the music bats flitting about me. While that may seem as odd as the brightly colored sheep opening from last week, that's only becuase I forgot to add the picture to last week's post. Of the brightly colored sheep and one pig. Maybe I'll get to that this week. Ha... As if.

It's a good week in the rap/hip-hop category as J. Cole, Ab Soul, and Post Malone all have albums out. Still waiting on that next Drake compilation just so you know. He's going to drop something this month. Sometime. Maybe he'll do it right now so that I am a dolt. Beyond all that, it's all small potatoes this week. But small potatoes are good potatoes, so I'm not saying there isn't anything good out there. Really, the small potatoes are more expensive. More desirable. Take that small potato albums this week. You're desireable and expensive.

Ding dong merrily on The List.

Christmas Albums 2016

So much later than I try to post this, but I tried to get all I could of the Christmas albums this year.

Children's Album: Caspar Babypants, Winter Party! - This is one of the dudes from Presidents Of The United States of America doing kid's music and it's got a bit of that "kid music" sound attached to it but better than most with that sound.

Crooner Jazz: Brett Eldredge, Glow - classic jazzy implications with some strings too.

New Age/Contemporary Adult category: David Arkenstone, Winter Fantasy

Female Jazzy Album: Elizabeth Chan, Five Golden Rings - I like her version of Deck the Halls, it's sassy and fun. Also Lauren Daigle, Behold is a good album for a simplified modern jazz feel.

Country Christmas: You could go more modern with Chris Young, It Must Be Christmas; John Berry, John Berry Christmas and Rascal Flatts, The Greatest Gift of All. Or go old school with Loretta Lynn, White Christmas Blue. And don't forget Kacey Musgraves, A Very Kacey Christmas. (the last two are definitely on my faves list)

More Jazzy: Jane Lynch got together with a couple people and created A Swingin' Little Christmas. It's got some great fun arrangements plus 5 original tracks. Definitely worth checking out. There is also Kurt Elling, The Beautiful Day.

Christmas Albums from Music Legends:  Sarah Maclachlan (Wonderland), Amy Grant (Tennessee Christmas), Neil Diamond (Acoustic Christmas) and Jimmy Buffett (Tis the SeaSon) released albums this holiday season.

R. Kelly made an album of original songs entitled 12 Nights of Christmas. I just thought it was important enough to point out. Also, I legitimately love the album. I've listened to it in its entirety more than once.

Featuring a singer and an acoustic guitar: Tommy Emmanuel, Christmas Memories

Latin Christmas: Laura Pausini, Laura Navidad

Let's Go Crazy: You want harp music? Erin Hill, Christmas Harp. You like Celtic music? Natalie MacMaster, A Celtic Family Christmas.

Strong singers Christmas: Jody McBrayer, Christmastime; Jennifer Nettles, To Celebrate Christmas; Jackie Evancho, Someday At Christmas; Jordan Smith, Tis The Season

Acapella Christmas: Straight No Chaser, I'll Have Another... Christmas Album; and Pentatonix, A Pentatonix Christmas

Acoustic Guitar: Kevin Williams, Acoustic Christmas

Playground of Rock Christmas: Gary Wilson, It's Christmas time With Gary Wilson; Marika Hackman, Wonderland (favorite); She & Him, Christmas Party; David Bazan, Dark Sacred Night and Christmas Bonus.

Also of note: Jospeh Washington Jr, Merry Christmas To You; Andra Day, Merry Christmas From Andra Day; and Christmas on the Lam by various artists.

There it is! The Christmas Roundup. I apologize for anyone I have missed. there were more albums than I originally thought and I really had to dig deep to get through. I did full listens on most of the albums this year. Phew. It was something. Anyway, there is something for everyone this year and it is a strong slate of releases I might add too. So go out there and Happy Holiday Listening!

ps. spotify playlist will be added this weekend. I'm tired. I met Santa tonight. It's just... a long day.

The Friday Refrain: Saturday Edition!

Do you ever feel like the red pig in the midst of the shockingly bright plastic sheep? Yeah, me too. And then on the flip of that - are you recovered from November yet? Yeah, barely me either. Thankfully it's December when you can just relax about all that planning stuff.

I've been making my Christmas Album list and checking it twice, but I'm afraid it will be next week before I can share it, with bonus Spotify playlist. (it's the playlist's fault really, and my laziness) But what came out on this first Friday of the last month of 2016? I'll tell ya! Rolling Stones are back with Blue & Lonesome. Smooth singing John Legend released Darkness and Light. Childish Gambino is back with Awaken My Love! Neil Young released Peace Trail. (and hey, his stuff is back on the streaming sites, so have it at it folks!) And that's the big ones I believe...

Deck the halls with last week's release list

As for picks for last week, I think it's best if you just tune into Half Pints once Josh gets it posted. The week slipped away from me and I had a hard time getting listens in. Only hit up like 20 albums thus far. Thank goodness it's December and the releases will start to taper off and I can catch up before trying to wrap my mind around the vast collection of amazing music that 2016 has given us. Yeah, things sucked in the world, but man we got some great music. At least there's that. So keep your ears and eyes at attention for that Christmas Album list and in the meantime, Happy Listening!

Simply Thanksgiving Friday Refrainish

Welcome back all! Apologies for the lateness - weather and just overall crazyness around here but here it is: So today, it's time to make your pastry crust (Martha Stewart is the best) and prep your veggies. Look at your recipes, write down how much you need of each/how to cut, and then get to it! Here's my basic breakdown, if you just want to keep it simple this year:

STUFFING: For every pound of bread, I do 2-4 carrots diced, 2-3 ribs of celery chopped, 1 large onion chopped, 3 cloves of garlic chopped. You could also do 1/2-1 whole sweet potato, a rutabaga or a turnip might be fun in there.

Green Bean Casserole: I make my cream of mushroom soup. If you didn't prep your mushrooms yesterday, do so today. For one 8oz container of mushrooms (you need two for a 9x13 pan of casserole though), 1-2 garlic cloves, and 1/2 a small onion. Trim up your green beans if you're using real and blanch tender crisp to get that out of the way. I like thin beans. I always buy french cut frozen. And once I used real and french cut them myself. (and then forgot the casseroles were in the oven and went out to meet some friends and had a terrible mess, but no fire, when I got home)

Sweet Potatoes can be prepped ahead of time. Potatoes get weird like apples, so unless you can submerge them in water, wait until tomorrow.

Crudites/Vegetable platter: I dislike dried up veggies, so I wait until tomorrow or Thanskgiving morning.

Turkey: Don't forget to prep what you put in your turkey. I do a whole garlic head, then quarter an onion and a lemon.

Pie Crust: Don't overwork your dough. I like to food processor the butter and dry ingredients, then pour into a bowl and slowly add the water. The first tablespoon I'll stir with a pastry cutter or such, but after that, I use my hand to gently gather the dough, and that way you can feel if it is coming together, or a bit dry. You'll also knowif it is still wet. If you get a dough ball that is too dry, wet your hands and gently work the dough to fix it. You might have to wet your hands a couple of times, depending on bad it is. Wrap in plastic and set in fridge.

While you're prepping, you can groove to my bizarro Thanksgiving Playlists I have linked up at the bottom. I searched keywords I associate with Thanksgiving and included bands or albums with that keyword in it. Now, I got a little flexible - if a name had "pie" in it, I might have included it. There are a couple of metal tracks, one in the middle and one in the end, just a heads up for those who find it too obtrusive. The Family list is with all albums or bands with Family somewhere the title - a warning, I found tracks that overall fit together, but if you blindly click to an artist, you might be surprised to find it's nothing like that track and I was very lucky to find so many tracks that could work. Anyway, there you go.

The Friday Refrain: A bit of what's new in music...

It's all Winnie the Pooh and Records around here right now. The wee one turned 2 yesterday, and we are having a family party on Sunday with the theme of Winnie the Pooh and Records. Now that you've rolled your eyes and just put me in that "Oh one of those moms pinteresting parties to feel in control and give a shine to life." Well it's not like that. When i was little, my family only did one big party with friends - when you turned 5 - but that didn't mean that I didn't dream and plan and flip through my mom's book of "Celebrations" looking for decor, food and game ideas. This is in my blood. I love party planning. Also - every year my mom made me an amazing cake, until I took over in 5th or 6th grade. Those were cakes of lore. Not always perfect, I woudl make them perfect. With as many toothpicks as that required. We couldn't even cut the cake one year due to all the toothpicks. And funny enough, I am listening to the perfect song for this diatribe, "Perfect" by gobbinjr. Throwing that on the playlist.

All right people, let's all pick ourselves up by the Pooh Ear Party Hats and shake this week off. This is a rough year - especially in music. I'm not a huge Leonard Cohen fan, but I do like his music and I would be completely oblivious if I didn't know the impact of him on the music I do obsess about. And that is a large vacuum left in the fabric of our modern music scene. Again. For the billionth time this year. Speaking of people it sucked to lose this year, A Tribe Called Quest released We Got It From Here... Thank You 4 Your Service. Electronic noisey fun Sleigh Bells released Jessica Rabbit. We have a set of old recordings being released today: Leon Redbone, Long Way From Home; Bob Dylan, The 1966 Live Recordings; and Pink Floyd, The Early Years 1965-1972. You have to look up the Pink Floyd one. It's crazy - 36 discs or something, there's Blu-ray and audio, it's all packaged in this boxset that looks like their tour bus. Seriously, that's crazy. And amazing. All right and to round out our releases today, we have a bunch of solo albums from people know for work in other things: Kim Gordon's Body/Head (yes, Sonic Youth is no more but still including it) released No Waves; Notwist frontman Markus Archer, A Beat of Silence; Tame Impala/Pond member Jay Watson's GUM, Flash in the Pan; Foo Fighter Taylor Hawkins, KOTA; Here Go Magic frontman Luke Temple, A Hand Through The Cellar Door; and Speedy Ortiz's Sadie Dupuis is Sad13, Slugger.

The List previously of The List.

I think these go together, theme: reluctance?

Cameron AG, Homeward Bound - this is the most optimistic of the group I think, but still some relunctancy to the groove, namely on "In Repeat"

Covenant, The Blinding Dark - This is the moodiest of them all with a low male vocal and all

The Darcys, Centerfold  - so this has more pop to it and upbeat, but I  picked the song for the playlist that best represents my thought processs

Fwar, Sanctuary - Keeping that upbeat feel but with that twinge of something's not right to it.

Junk Son, Beginning, Ending, Pretending

Lambchop, FLOTUS - You know I'm dedicated to the topic when I listen to an autotuney track. "Howe" best fits the groove of the list

Slow Hollows, Romantic - this gets a little more 90s alt rock scene than all the others, but still has that forlorn or reluctant feel to it. Somehow optimistically sad at the same time to my ears.

So there's the list, I'll pile a bunch of other songs that caught my ear this last week on the Spotify playlist, but it's headed up by my picks for the Reluctancy List above. And now, party planning time. It's party heaven here. Winnie the Pooh and Records on Sunday, next Saturday is PreThanksgiving, and then it's actually Thanksgiving, and then it's another birthday party, and then.... Well you get the idea. PARTY. It's more the gathering of it all that I love. Community. It's a good thing. Anyway, we're also not too long from the Christmas Album List for this year. I'll put that up first week of December and update it as needed. There are some goodies this year... Until next week, Happy Listening!

The Friday Refrain: A bit of what's new in music...

CANDYYYYYYY! It's National Candy Day. So I'm going to eat some candy while I drink my coffee and write this here Refrain. It is beautiful out and I'm starting to regret that I made plans for a 4:00 movie today. I mean, who thought it would be 70 in Minnesota in November? Not me. (well sometimes, not really surprised, I mean, we haven't hit freezing yet) Hopefully a Half Pints will appear magically this week, but my co-host is under the weather so we couldn't record last night. But I did live tweet albums I liked on our twitter account, @halfpints, but I'll probably also mention those bands later, so it might be redundant but... whatever anyway. That was just going to become circular.

RELEASES OF TODAY. Bon Jovi is back with This House Is Not For Sale. English singer-songwriter Shirley Collins returns after 30 years with her album, Lodestar. Staying across the pond for a moment, Susan Boyle releases A Wonderful World today. A couple rap/hip-hop releases: A$AP Mob with Cozy Tapes, Vol. 1: Friends and Talib Kweli with Awful People Are Great At Parties. Former lead singer of Mazzy Star Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions release Until the Hunter. Alicia Keys is Here. Billboard charters The Chainsmokers return this year with Collage EP. Lead singer of My Morning Jacket (and household favorite) Jim James released Eternally Even. And Netflix original series The Beat Bugs release their Best of Season 1 & 2 which I am going to check out as soon as I'm done with Sarah & Duck, the best cartoon ever.

Sarah & The List. Quack. (you'd get it if you watched the intro of the show.)

So... someone woke up early. Which means I'm just going to list my Liked pile:

Twin Limb, Haplo - Cat Power vibe to her voice for sure

The Wind And The Wave, Happiness is not a Place - poppier fun and sweet

The Olympians, The Olympians - amazing instrumental soul

Nina Diaz, The Beat is Dead - It's got some teeth this album.

Miniature Tigers, I Dreamt I Was A Cowboy - Another one I tweeted, this is just fun rock

Mannequin Pussy, Romantic - rock.

Madness, Can't Touch Us Now - another rock one.

The Legal Matters, Conrad - okay this is getting hard to do. Describing, while handling the wee one on my lap eating toast as he tells me "Yeah" or "No. No. Done." to albums I am sampling.

Muuy Biien, Age Of Uncertainty

Pyur, Epoch Sinus

Noiserv, 00:00:00:00

GFOTY, Call Him A Doctor

Future States, Casual Listener

Car Bomb, Meta

Lara Downes, America Again

Slothrust, Everyone Else

Honeyblood, Babes Never Die

Casper Skulls, Lips & Skull

Brandt Brauer Frick, Joy

Sorry about that at the end there. Just want to get this posted today. I'll post a spotify list later this weekend, so follow bunkamade on Spotify or check back here for the update. Until then, Happy Listening!