Day 4

Wednesday night is squash night with Mike and the boys. Ok - I know, who plays squash these days right? I agree it is a dying sport in terms of popularity. Remember the days when every condo came with a squash court? Anyway, I still think it is a great way to get a good solid workout and let off some steam ... with my legs feeling a bit like jelly, I am not going to be too ambitious tonight, so I have pulled out a stack of 10 CDs which I will try to feed to the lil ripper.

The lucky 10 for the night are:

Eskobar - A Thousand Last Chances
Explosions In The Sky - How Strange, Innocence
The Futureheads - This Is Not The World
Another Late Night - Kid Loco
Justin Timberlake - Future Sex/Love Sounds
Coheed And Cambria - No World For Tomorrow
The Cribs - The New Fellas
Switchfoot - Nothing Is Sound
James - The Night Before
Scout - It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time

Hmm ... looking at the above - that's quite a mixed bag. You've got indie, arty, pop, post-rock, progressive and groovy. Eskobar are a Swedish indie/pop band. I think they are more pop than indie but there you go. I have quite a large collection of Swedish bands and I am a huge fan of anything on the Labrador label. If I could, I would order their entire back catalogue. Must be something in the water in Sweden, but the music some of the bands produce is just ... wow! I think part of the appeal is not actually understanding what they are singing about (like in the case of Kent and Ingenting). Eskobar sing in English (at least on this album they do). The album is a lil patchy but there are a few gems in there. My favourite track is "Love Strikes". You can watch the video here.

As for interesting artwork, The Futureheads decided to use a rather dark/creepy theme for their second album ("This Is Not The World") with the band taking photos of themselves with aluminium foil covering their faces.

Another album with pretty nice artwork is the Another Late Night series. This one features Kid Loco.

Finally, I have to mention the band Scout not because of the artwork but because I think they are one of the coolest indie bands around. They are from NYC and their singer/guitarist Ashen Keilyn has a voice to die for. They are about as indie as indie gets and I figure most folks would never have come across/heard of them before. In fact, I knew nothing about them until my magic helper picked up their CD from a bargain bin in HMV a few years back and we bought it simply because the CD looked indie. And boy am I glad we did because the album kicks some serious ass ... that was the second album by the way ("This Soft Life"). But after hearing that album, I went on a mission to track down everything they had put out - which led me to purchase "It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time" from some dude on Ebay and it was worth it. Apparently, it says on their website that they are putting the finishing touches to their new album entitled "All Those Relays" which should be out in June - Happy Days!

Ok, I think that wraps it up for tonight. At the end of this entry, the count is:

67 albums
767 songs

Time to hit the sack ... zzz