Yesterday I mentioned Labrador - without a doubt one of my favorite record labels in the world. Today, I want to hype up another Labrador band, probably my favorite in fact: Club 8. I raved about "Whatever You Want," the opening single from their new record back in May.

It's funny that when summer comes and you suddenly have nothing but free time, that you find yourself with almost no free time at all. What with frisbee, planting a garden, watching Doctor Who, cooking, and celebrating two close friends getting engaged, there's just no time to post on the blog.

So, in honor of all the wonderful things about summer, here's a track that was my absolute favorite song in the world for several years when I was growing up. I would sit in my room on rainy Washington days watching the streaks run down the window and dreaming of a time when I could experience something this bittersweet. Sure, that's a little weird, but the song is so beautiful and heartbreaking, surely you can understand why.

A Summer Song - Chad and Jeremy

I'd like to continue a trend I started last month of posting on great songs that are so good that they overwhelm my ingrained concern about over-produced pop-punk. Today's band is called The Starting Line.

Island

This song is serious Warped Tour fare, but in the very best way. Infectious, a bit of bombast, and a guitar line that would make the toughest Jimmy Eat World fan (yeah, yeah, a contradiction in terms...) swoon.

It's the sort of song to make you wonder whether all those other stuff they did before might not have had a little more substance than you ever thought. I mean, if they can write a song like this, surely there must have been something more significant going on with their earlier emo-to-a-fault tracks, right?

I don't casually toss around the "album of the year" phrase, so when I say something is in the running for that title, even in May, there's a good chance it'll stand the test of time.

With that in mind, let me say that The Midnight Organ Fight, the sophomore effort from the Scottish Trio Frightened Rabbit, is my favorite record of the year so far.

Trying to write about this band is difficult because they're very hard to classify. No, strike that. The problem is really that they're all to easy to classify. You just point out the Scottish brogue, churning guitars, melancholic lyrics, and some dreamily orchestral folk. If you want to get specific you bring up The Twilight Sad, and maybe mention Snow Patrol if you're feeling impish.

Some exciting news about one of my favorite bands of the past few years: Antarctica Takes It!. Via Pitchfork, we hear that they have found a label and will be giving an official release to The Penguin League, which was my second favorite album of 2006 (and which contained my favorite song of 2006).

The theme this week is my favorite records of the year. My last review was of the follow-up to my favorite record of 2007, so I figured today was a good time to tackle the sophomore release from The Submarines, whose debut record was my favorite of 2006.

If Declare a New State was about redemption, Honeysuckle Weeks is about the time afterwards when the more mundane issues seep back into your life. There are plenty of moments of sheer wonder, but those are infused with a widespread sense of easy comfort.

I'm not even going to make an effort to avoid the cliches today. I'm sure someone with more time and energy could come up with a good way to recommend MGMT (pronounced "management") without mentioning synths, electronics, pop beats, and psychedelic inspiration, but I am not that guy.

If you like that sort of stuff, you'll like this song. And frankly, even if you normally aren't a fan, you'll still probably like this song. It's pretty good stuff.

Time to Pretend - MGMT

I was going to post a picture, but pretty much every one I could find was just them standing around with their shirts off, which is not really what I was looking for.

I've been looking forward to a sophomore release from Headlights for almost two years. From the first time I heard "TV" a couple summers ago, I've expected great things from them. And while nothing else on their debut effort quite lived up to that first song, it nevertheless ended up as my #10 album of 2006.

I rant and rave about how much I love all the fantastic indie-pop music coming out of Sweden, but set all that aside. Yes Sambassadeur are from Sweden, yes they're on Labrador, and yes they make pop songs so sweet you could get a mouth full of cavities just listening to them (remember Kate? God I love that song).

White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes

I love a song where you can tell exactly what it sounds like just from the title. This effort from Seattle's Fleet Foxes is just such a song. It's a gorgeous, warm, and bluesy tune that calls to mind My Morning Jacket at their most joyful. It's an ode to a white blanket of snow, as a pane against which all the merry colors of winter can vibrantly stand. It has that wonderful sense of a round - a wide open sound that still manages to stay enclosed in a gentle arc.

This song is off their upcoming debut album, set for release on June 2 from Sub Pop, but they've got an EP out right now to tide you over.

I've posted about The Sinister Turns a few times before, but it never hurts to mention one of my favorite under-appreciated bands a little bit more. I managed to catch them last month at a little show in Somerville that was a lot of fun - they have some new songs that maintain the feel of their other stuff but take things in some slightly odd, extremely interesting directions.

Fairytale of New York - The Pogues

I posted this song last Christmas, too. I contemplated posting something different this time, but what would be the point of that? This one is definitive - not just the best song about Christmas ever, but one of the best songs ever, period.

There aren't many songs that can still leave me totally defenseless, no matter how many times I hear them. This is one of the few.

A few quick hits:

- My razorbloodz post got noticed by New York Magazine, which is pretty neat.

- An important update on my other blog about DFU Hockey's recent shocking run of victories.

- Is there anything more stupid than the recent spat about Obama's "bitter" comments? Sometimes I fret for this country and the media that "informs" it.

- A full post is coming later, but the new Frightened Rabbit is my early pick for best album of 2008. Stunningly good.

- This is incredibly depressing. What is wrong with people?

One of my favorite (re)discoveries of last year was David Ford, who I had enjoyed as the lead man from Easyworld a few years back and who re-emerged from the woodwork with a very fine folk-driven record (including the absolutely fantastic "State of the Union" - which was my #3 song from last year).

Anyone who has been reading here for any length of time knows about my adoration for Mat Brooke and Carissa's Wierd. I posted back in great detail on the subject back in September, while also lauding the emergence of Brooke's new band Grand Archives. And now that they've released their self-titled debut, I wanted to return to the subject.

Palomar are not interested in genre-bending. Indeed, their focus is exactly the opposite – an attempt to dig deeply into basic themes and reveal them in all their glory. It's surprisingly refreshing, actually.

I Could Be There For You - Eisley

A demonstration that even on a record with high production levels and a bit of a pop sheen there’s still plenty of room for a talented band to surprise you. It's shadowy, vaguely ominous - a reminder that light may shimmer on the surface of a lake, but underneath the water is a long, deep darkness.

But for all that, the chorus is absolutely gorgeous, and they hit their perfect pitch with a bridge that bursts and swirls like fireworks in a still night sky. Now, I’m not trying to say Eisley is quite at their level, but this song, at least, would feel right at home on your Delgados record of choice.

The Rat - The Walkmen

Digging back through the vaults a little bit for this one. I never mustered all that much enthusiasm for anything else from The Walkmen, but this song is absolutely stunning. It opens with a blistering guitar that's joined by some drumming that would make Animal from the Muppets swell with jealousy. This is drumming that could singlehandedly violate the CTBT.

Well, I just declared the new Frightened Rabbit album my favorite of the year so far. So now it's time to talk about some records that I was highly anticipating but which (for one reason or another) didn't quite make the cut. First on the list is the follow-up to my #1 from last year. And that right there might tell you a little something about what went wrong on this one.

The Meaning of 8 from Cloud Cult was stunning, expansive, emotional. It dragged me through the coals and showed me things I had never seen before. To try and turn around from something like that and put out a new record in less than 12 months is tough work unless your name is Lennon or McCartney.

The Shout Out Louds are yet another band from the land of lutefisk, the welfare state, and Abba. But while most of the Swedish bands I talk about are focused primarily on bright and sunny pop music, these folks clearly are a lot more interested in Robert Smith than anything else. It's all here: the rat-a-tat drums, the sulky yet inspired vocals, and a whole host of guitar lines straight out of Disintegration.

Hi everyone, I've been gone a couple weeks at the end of the year tournaments. I'm happy to say that Dartmouth managed the semifinals at the CEDA National tournament and the finals of the National Debate Tournament. That means that I'm now free to spend the next month doing nothing except reading for fun, playing frisbee and soccer, cooking vegan food, and writing about music. So the pace will pick up again here.

I'm not entirely sure why, but the new record from the unheralded king of folk-rock Josh Ritter is vaguely disappointing. The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter is by no means a bad album - it's probably one of the 15 or 20 best records of the whole year - it's just that for the most part it inspires respect more than love. I appreciate the artistry, the tone, and the lyrical allusions but they rarely burrow deep.

I've got no time for the next few days to post, so I thought it would be a good idea to kick in the way-back machine and (re)mention an old favorite that most of you have probably never heard. The band is Super Deluxe, they were briefly big in the Northwest in the mid-90s, and for the brief period they were around they were possibly my favorite band on the planet.

I keep a running playlist that (roughly) consists of all the songs I've heard in the past 4 or 5 months interesting enough to make me want to give them a few more listens but which fail to immediately grab me. I often listen to it on random, leading to some weird experiences. Sometimes a song will come on and I'll think what in the world was I thinking? This is terrible. Other times it'll be the sixth or seventh listen before I realize it's fantastic. For instance, I probably listened to "I Am John" by Loney, Dear 15 or 20 times over the course of a few months last year before it occurred to me in a flash that I absolutely adored it.

The Age of Understatement - The Last Shadow Puppets

And then there's times like today. This song came on and my thought process was the following:
1. Hey, this isn't bad

Why 40 songs? Because I couldn't bear to leave out some of the ones in the 30s and didn't think the ones in the low 40s really deserved a spot. You don't like it? Make your own list.

Ground rules - only one song per artist (with one caveat), and I didn't include songs like "War on Sound" by Moonbabies since it's been out for years, even if the actual album is new this year.

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The single best campaign video I've ever seen in my life. Perhaps one of the best anything I've seen. Seriously, it's worth watching no matter who you support, simply as a reminder of what an astonishing world we live in, and how much we have to be thankful for.

I know a few words don't make a campaign, and I know it's not enough to just believe that things can be better...but sometimes I wonder if we give our smarter, more realistic, more jaded selves too much power. Sometimes I wonder if we pay too much attention to to the nitpicky details and don't leave ourselves vulnerable to being moved. Bright, shining eyes and bold smiling faces alone do not make a movement - it takes a lot of nitty-gritty, down and dirty work. But a movement is not a movement without a dream, an ideal that binds it together, and lifts us up.

I’ve been thinking about how to review Distortion, the newest offering from The Magnetic Fields, for several months now. I still don’t have a good hook, but all that thinking has helped to clarify my answer to a related question: I think I’ve finally figured out why 69 Love Songs remains far and away my favorite Stephin Merritt record.

I’ve run through a number of ideas (its audacious premise, the wide variety of styles, etc.) but I think the real answer is far more prosaic. Put simply, there are so many songs that I can very easily overlook the ones that just don’t work. So 20 of the tracks don’t do anything for me? So what, there are still a good 50 that do. And sure, only one song in 10 blows me away, but that translates to 7 or 8 spread out of the whole thing.

This Vision have - out of nowhere, apparenlty - produced some of the finest synthpop I've heard in a very, very long time. I downloaded a couple tracks last month thanks to a tip from Hits In The Car but never got around to listening until tonight. And oh my, what I have been missing!