You ever watch football games on TV with the sound off? I’ve done that for decades, a habit picked up when I was a sportswriter long ago – the announcers really add very little to the game. And this is a great opportunity for multi-tasking: instead of listening to Al Michaels drone on, I listen to new albums. So here you go, some new ones for 2010 and a handful left over from late last year. And they’re all pretty good:
Vampire Weekend is just about the whitest band around, but they sure don’t sound that way. On Contra, this New York quartet picks up the sprightly rhythms of African music (and on a song like “Diplomat’s Son,” reggae … is this an homage to the Clash?) and swirls them into an intoxicating blend of wordplay and jumpy dance hooks. If you liked their first record, the boys (led by singer/guitarist/songwriter Ezra Koenig) haven’t strayed far from their roots, and that’s a good thing.
MP3: “White Sky” by Vampire Weekend
Jerry Jeff Walker is one of the legendary songwriters from Texas (although like Vampire Weekend, he’s a New York native) and Moon Child is his latest release. It’s available only online, at Jerry Jeff’s website and from iTunes and Amazon.com. Jerry Jeff wrote about six of the 11 tunes here, the rest are by Jimmie Dale Gilmore and others including a version of John Denver’s “Back Home Again.” Jerry Jeff’s trademark is the bowed-but-not-broken survivor, looking forward with a peppy outlook: “The Poet Is Not In Today” fills that prescription. Moon Child is a decent dose of sunshine from a Texas treasure.
30 Days Out 
