I made some music comments this week. To summarize:
Daft Punk album: Joy-Destroying
Scout Niblett's cover of "No Scrubs": Opinion contaminated by Daft Punk
Yeezus: Palate-Cleansing
Scout Niblett's cover of "Uptown Top Ranking": Great.
Miley Cyrus single: awful, but I can get past it.
More thoughts:
Scout Niblett's got some greatness in her, and some stretches on her albums that absolutely get lost and have nowhere to go. (Oddly reminds me of Regina Spektor, who she sounds nothing like.) So far, I've mostly needed a hook to get into her songs, like if it's a cover (two listed above, plus a take on Palace [Will Oldham]'s "Trudy Dies"), or a Will Oldham duet ("Kiss")
Yeezus: I don't really think this entirely works, especially lyrically. (Not only is there little coherence within the album, but single tracks are all over the place, except for anger. Which makes it feel more genuine.) I'm glad there's someone with big pop success who's willing to take big artistic risks like these. I betcha Alec Empire (Atari Teenage Riot) and Kevin Martin ("The Bug", "Techno Animal") are kicking themselves for not getting involved with this album. The beat for "Black Skinhead" is pretty fantastic; it's got the swing from "Gold Digger", the drums from "Love Lockdown". And if Miss Cyrus is singing (autotuning) "We like to party / dancin' with Miley" in her single, then Mr. West could be singing (autotuning) "When we tried our first Miley / and came out of our body". I could listen to this album a lot.
You can download Aaron Dilloway's Siena for free. Or just listen. I believe this is what the kids are calling "Noise". It'll probably be on a best-of-the-year list for me in about six months.
Some random tracks I listened to that appeal a lot to me:
Mikal Cronin "Shout it out"
Disclosure "When a Fire Starts to Burn" (Hadn't looked at the video before, ignore it.)
And two old songs that are great, just because:
Mylo "Need You Tonite" (feat. a Judie Tzuke sample)
Camp Lo "Luchini AKA This Is It"