The Lonely Island – Incredibad
When they’re at their best, The Lonely Island makes mundane everyday occurrences into hilarious epic events. For instance, my favorite two lines from “Jizz in My Pants” have to be “I need a few things from the grocery, do things alone now mostly” and “last week, I saw a film, as I recall it was a horror film.” That’s retardedly awesome. I love most of Incredibad for similar reasons, although I skip a few tracks. I pass over “Sax Man” almost every time. It’s so out of place on the album, featuring none of The Lonely Island’s crew on vocals, instead giving Jack Black a chance to do his schtick and a bit of scatting. It has a very different tone from everything else and feels like it got lost on the way to a new Tenacious D album. I tend to skip “Dick in a Box” and “Punch You in the Jeans” as well, just because they’re not terribly funny. But tracks like “I’m a Boss” and “I’m on a Boat” and the various older SNL Digital Shorts ones are golden. The couple sketches included work fairly well too, breaking up the songs without dropping the tone and humor much.
Röyksopp – Junior
There isn’t a chance in hell that this album doesn’t end up in my top ten for the year. Röyksopp’s first album Melody A.M. was sort of on the lighter and bouncier side of electronic music while The Understanding had a more epic and dark flavor. Junior manages to split the difference in a way, creating what I’d consider to be the electronic equivalent of a summer rock album. It’ll take you for a ride that’s occasionally straight up goofy but it’s always moving and often snappy. This isn’t the sort of electronic album that lulls you into a trance or spends – some would argue – too much time on any one sound. Guest vocals come from the likes of Robyn, Karin Dreijer Andersson (who released the beautiful self-titled Fever Ray debut early this year), Lykke Li and Anneli Drecker. That’s a great group of female vocalists right there.
The Venture Bros: The Music of JG Thirlwell
Alongside the home video release of The Venture Bros: Season 3, Adult Swim arranged for a twenty track release of JG Thirlwell’s score. It came with the Blu-ray edition of the series and in separate editions. Suffice to say, if you love the show you should really appreciate these full arrangements of the crazy and badass themes he’s created. It’s delicious to get the fully fleshed out cues that were cut short for editing purposes. The album includes music from all three seasons and will most assuredly bring to mind the countless ways Brock Samson has killed people, including but not limited to, that time that he clamped his ass down on that fake pirate. Yes, there’s a track called “Assclamp!”
What’s coming up? Green Day has 21st Century Breakdown in a couple days, which may or may not be interesting. Michael Giacchino’s score to the fourth season of Lost also arrives this week, and hopefully his Up score will follow at the end of the month. IAMX is releasing his third album, Kingdom of Welcome Addiction in two weeks. Dave Matthews Band’s Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King arrives on June 2nd.
Buy from Amazon:
- The Lonely Island – Incredibad ( CD/DVD, MP3 )
- Röyksopp – Junior ( CD, MP3 )
- The Venture Bros: The Music of JG Thirlwell ( CD, MP3 )
