Hello September

Usher covers Foster The People...The Raveonettes coming out with new record...St. Vincent and David Byrne share album details...Bon Iver doing an iTunes Session...CRICKETS...

So...Usher...whenever I hear that name, I immediately revert to third or fourth grade, and hearing his voice to a slow jam, saying "It's seven o'clock on the dot, I'm in my drop-top cruising the streets..." But, wasn't he around 14 or 15 when that came out? I don't know. Either way, Usher has been around for quite some time, and he just recently came out with a new album, titled Looking 4 Myself, which I still haven't listened to, but then again, I don't even know if I plan on listening to it, though I did like the first single. Aside from that, Usher recently played a BBC Radio 1 Live set, and he covered Foster The People's "Pumped Up Kicks." You can hear that below:



Moving along...The Raveonettes have announced that they're coming out with a new record, titled Observator. The album is set to be released on September 10th, so be on the lookout for that. You can hear their track, "Dead Sound" below:



I wrote about this a while back, but David Byrne and St. Vincent have been working on a collaborative album for a while (something around 2 years?), and they've released a few details about the project. The album is titled Love This Giant, and it's scheduled to be released on September 11th. In an interview with Pitchfork, St. Vincent stressed that it's truly a collaborative effort in that "he wrote music, I wrote music; he wrote words, I wrote words. He sings half the songs, I wrote half the songs." So, keep your calendars marked for that one.

Lastly, Bon Iver, who won Best New Artist at the Grammy Awards this past year, is doing an iTunes Session. I don't even know whether to be excited about this, considering that most of the songs he will do are from his second album, and I'm still a little in the dark on that one. I loved his first record, For Emma, Forever Ago which I wrote about last year, but still haven't heard the second one, minus a few songs in passing. You can hear the first album below. He's set to do the session on June 19th, so make sure you have your iTunes accounts up to date.



LISTENING: Today has been a pretty slow one for me only because I spent the majority of my morning reading a book about a forensic psychiatrist's real-life studies on serial killers he had to interview one-on-one. It's pretty intense. BUT...what little listening I was able to squeeze in was pretty peppy, as I listened to the first album by Buddy Holly & The Crickets, titled The "Chirping" Crickets. It came out in 1957, and contains such hits as "That'll Be The Day," "Not Fade Away," and "Oh Boy!" My personal favorite track is "It's Too Late," which I had never heard before I bought this album, via iTunes in 2009. Definitely a great buy, and I found out today that on iPhones, you can re-download albums you had purchased. WTF! You learn something new every day. You can listen to "It's Too Late" below:



That's all. PEACE.