Come on feel the Illinoise

Before we came to NZ we bought a MP3 player to download all our albums. I reckon there was about 300 or so, so it took some time. (I keep wanting to write AN MP3 player as opposed to A MP3 player?)

We decided that would do us for the year and there would be no need to buy any albums when we were over here, but we forgot to factor in the absence of a TV and there is only so much music you can listen to over and over again.

We therefore bought CSS' album CSS Suxx a couple of months ago. That helped for a while and although it's a really great album, we became bored again quite quickly. We could also download the music instead of buying the CD's but we prefer to have the original in some sort of "real" format.

It was my birthday not so long ago and I got some funds sent over from Ireland, thank you! So I decided to buy some music. The only problem being that I cannot buy something unless I have read some sort of review or got some sort of feed back. We only get two radio stations at our house, crap one and crap two. So that didn't help.

Eventually I came across this website called metacritic.com which takes all the reviews from the various music magazines and gives a grand total. They also have the best of each year and an overall best and worst list. I looked through the best of the various years and took a leap of faith and purchased the following in Real Groovy on Cuba St. in Welly

Sufjan Stevens- Come on feel the Illinoise
Arcade Fire- Neon Bible
My Morning Jacket- Z
Beth Orton- Comfort of Strangers
Ali Farke Toure- Savane
TV on the Radio- Return to Cookie Mountain

They didn't have all the records as some seemed to be quite obscure or sold out so I ordered the last two on amazon.com.au. Which incidentally also sell second hand copies, which surprised me. I didn't think amazon sold second hand, but maybe it's only down under?

I don't buy second hand out of principle as I always think they were part of someones precious record collection before they were stolen! Or maybe that's just Dublin.

The metacritic site only seems to go back to 2000 but it also reviews books, DVDs, Games etc. and appears on the surface of things to be pretty handy to know about. We have listened to some of the albums and are really enjoying them especially Sufjan Stevens. The guy seems to be a genius. ( If you, like me, think you have never heard any of his music, you will be surprised to be singing along with a few of the tracks on the record first time of listening. It appears he's not as obscure as I thought).

Cathal