i hate the sound of guitars

I low-listening week, as a trio of day-long meetings kept me almost musicless.

1. I Was Totally Destroying It
   Have I not mentioned yet that I Was Totally Destroying It have a released a free downloadable EP? So I’m still playing the debut full-length quite a bit, but very much digging the new “Done Waiting” EP and eager for next year’s promised LP.
2. The Bicycles
   This indie-pop outfit often teeters on the edge of being a little too cutesy poo (some songs even have flute, which usually kills a record for me). But it never falls off, because the tunes are wicked catchy, and mostly very short. I think Apples in Stereo fans would eat this up.
3. Ed Ackerson
   Wondering where you heard that name before? He’s the Polera dude.
4. Laura Barrett
   I want to say more about this, but it deserves more time to sink in. In the mean time, I will note that the untitled bonus track seems to be all the other songs played together at the same time which is easier to sit through than you might think. If you’re going to try this, it probably helps to start with spare arrangements.
4. Andy Clockwise
   Clockwise tackles an impressively broad range of genres on the US version of Classic FM, edited from the presumably even more sprawling and eclectic Australian release. I admire his ambition and confidence, but the fuzzy garage punk of “Death to the Moths” was what persuaded me to give this a go, and nothing else — certainly not the overtly Dylan-y, harmonica-laden folk tunes — really connected with me.
4. The Ergs!
5. Cold War Kids
   Got the reissue of the debut album, and was distracted throughout by questions of “is this an encoding problem or is it supposed to sound like that” and eventually came down on the side of “supposed to sound like that.” I think I like the new one a little better, which isn’t to say I don’t like this one.
6. Love is All
7. The Paper Cranes
   Like The Bicycles, Laura Barrett, and other things which will show up in next week’s top-10, I got this from Zunior a Canadian digital download store. 192K MP3s, some releases available in FLAC, and much of their catalog comes with high-resolution PDF files with full cover and booklet art. I am a fan. (I can’t actually remember anything about The Paper Cranes except that it was pleasant.)
10. The Chap
    Nothing in The Chap’s burgeoning catalogue has quite hit me like “Proper Rock,” but I keep looking.

53 artists, 204 tracks.