New Albums (Q2 2009)

So, onto Q2's albums and their rankings:

01. The Ting Tings - We Started Nothing (5/5)
02. The Faint - Fasciination (2/5)
03. Black Kids - Partie Traumatic (5/5)
04. Max Tundra - Parallax Error Beheads You (1/5)
05. Junior Boys - So This Is Goodbye (1/5)
06. The Matches - Decomposer (4/5)
07. The Sounds - Living In America (1/5)
08. Passion Pit - Manners (3/5)
09. Say Anything - ...Is A Real Boy (1/5)
10. Peaches - Fatherfucker (2/5)

So, Q2's collection differs from that of its predecessor in the following ways:
a.) there are 2 more albums than before
b.) there are much more band names beginning with "The"
c.) the overall quality went down
d.) of the 10 albums, 7 were bought to prepare for an upcoming show (in Q1, this was true for only 2 albums)

Actually, I think the last two points are related: see, after having seen how many great shows were coming to Vancouver, I started looking more intently for upcoming shows in Atlanta, and I was surprised to find out a number of the bands whose albums I had on my WishList were coming to the city shortly. So, although I generally let myself buy a CD every week according to my own free will, this was sort of suspended by my feeling that I needed to have a band's album before seeing them live to get the most out of the show. In so doing though, I think it became more difficult to actually get into albums chosen in this manner, because I ended up subconsciously resenting being "forced" to listen to them. That said, of the 7 albums I bought this way, I ended up liking 3 of them better after seeing the show, 3 I liked worse, and 1 was kinda in the middle, so I suppose the whole show/album relation might not have been quite so negative...

Moving on. The quality of the albums did go down this quarter in pretty much every way it could have: there were significantly less above-average albums than Q1, and certainly more of the rest, and although Q2 had a couple of 5/5's, neither could really stand toe-to-toe with those from Q1. Regardless, I still really liked The Ting Tings and Black Kids albums, and The Matches' offering was just a little behind.

So, hopefully Q3 will prove better. I'm promising myself I'm going to try not to buy as many albums due to upcoming shows, but that shouldn't be so hard, as I haven't heard of any good shows coming to town in Q3. Unfortunately, my first album of Q3 (which I just started listening to), is looking like a 2/5, so that's not so promising, but whatever! Still looking forward to new music!

[Note: Due to having only recently (as of September 2010) finally written a post concerning the albums of Q4 2009, I've gone and reassigned scores to all of the albums of that year so as to have some sort of standardization across the board instead of a mix of new and old scores.]