Record of the Month

I figured I'd do a monthly 'what I'm listening to' kind of thing. This could be viewed as a lame placeholder kind of post. And probably it is. But it's my blog! So there!

So this was my April pick - you're just getting it a few days late. My bad. Well, not really "my" bad.

Once again, I pick a more obscure band, the Lovemakers, as my highlight, with their album, Let's Be Friends. I'd be interested in knowing if others have heard of them and their thoughts - but I'm not holding my breath.

A little known (nationally, anyways) Bay area band, they've been putting out a number of EPs and one other full LP in their career, or since 2003. Fronted by a now-former couple, they kind of cross the lines of dance, pop and rock music. Some of their stuff on Let's Be Friends and their earlier stuff is very steeped in '80s sounds - with more than a nod to the Cure, albeit with more of a female vocalist.

On their website, the Lovemakers say their newest album is available on iTunes, but for the life of me, I can't find it. Some of their old stuff is, but not their new disk. They do, however have their own iPhone app. Go figure.

You can also not sample or buy music from Let's Be Friends on Amazon. The band, or the powers that be, do not make it easy. I'm thinking that there are bigger issues, as YouTube has deleted the video for the first "single" from this album.

I'm not advocating you to (or not to) hit a place like Limewire to sample their music, but if you do, you might get rewarded with one of the best songs in the last decade: "Love is Dead".

Sorry, but the song is so infectious and contains great melody and harmony lines, I have zero idea why it didn't become a great seller. I've played it to death over the last three months or so and it continues to engage me. I can honestly say it is one of the better songs I have heard in the last decade. It will make my top 10 songs for the end of the year (right now, it might be the only one on my list!), though technically it came out in '09.

The rest of the music is good, but nothing to me struck as much of a chord (at least on this disk) as "Love is Dead". Still it beats most anything on the radio, so there's that.

Yeah, some of their stuff harkens back to days when me and my friends would go out dancing and yeah, I'm a little too old for that shit now, but when it works, it works - musically, not my dancing.

If you come across them, I'd tell you to check them out, but you should definitely listen to "Love is Dead".

Oh, one other kind of cool thing on their website - you can download individual tracks (not songs, but like drum, guitar or separate vocal tracks) from each song to mix them together as your own. I'm not tech savvy enough to download a mixing platform to do it (though maybe GarageBand would work), but it would kind of be fun to experiment.