Music Reviews: My iPod in iRaq

My Sansa MP3 player died a month or two before I deployed. As a gift I was given a new ipod which has become a little electronic friend over the last year. I've ordered a lot of new music from Amazon and often I make my own album covers to paste into the ipod as the album art. So this is my second post with short and sweet "reviews" of what I'm listening to and the covers I made.

This is the remix release of Thom Yorke's solo album Eraser (Radiohead). The original isn't easy to listen to with its cold industrial feel, and the remix version goes even further and deeper into the robo-lament territory. That said there is something purely organic emotional and appealing underneath that draws me back to the original. Not sure if this newer version will service in the same way over time.

I ordered two War Child CDs recently as well. I combined select tracks from both the Peace Songs and Heroes benefit CDs into one album on my player. The Heroes release is the newest and really good with newer artists covering classics. To be honest, Peace Songs, on 2 CDs, only has a few tracks I can wrap my head around, but I enjoy Heroes and look forward to future projects from War Child which benefits children in war torn regions of the world. Bowie's "Heroes" remade by TV on the Radio is the highlight. That's the HQ Kids from a previous blog on my album cover.

Dark Was The Night is also a benefit album. Various newer musicians and bands such as The National and My Morning Jacket have excellent song contributions to this project in support of finding a cure for AIDS. I just used one of my pics, inverted the colors, and added the title in a funky font.

I'm a big fan of The Magnetic Fields. A lot of their '90s music I consider classic, but over time I've become weary of the MF formula. This album might sound fresh to someone who isn't familiar with this band though. Steven Merritt's lyrics are so sad-silly-clever I almost feel bad to give anything other than a pure positive review. The original picture used on this cover is a blown up bunker in Kuwait.

This is a classic from my oldest favorite band, The Church. The guitars became more atmospheric over the years and Steve Kilbey came into his own vocal style so this album, released in '81 with it's combination post-punk songs, tight guitar structures, and Bowiesque singing that later became new wave cliche, is something they only really did on this first release, but works in nostalgic perfection.