The Hopp Stop

Check out the sweet Regal that I’ve seen a couple times near my apartment.

Exciting times: my BMW 135i arrived on Saturday. Here is a photo of it, still sporting the Euro plate. I’m going to keep that on until I get my California plates.

Check out the awesome license plate seen on Valencia Street here in SF. I need to go check out some LOL cats now. K thx bai.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine at AllMusic has reviewed the latest Buckcherry album. I’m only tangentially aware of Buckcherry–one of those bands that you don’t realize you’ve heard their songs, but they’re popular enough that you have run across them one place or another. AllMusic gives “Black Butterfly” perhaps the lowest score I’ve seen from them, a 1.5 stars out of 5. There are some excellent scathing comments from Erlewine, worthy of Michael Kors or Nina Garcia on Project Runway:

Rock & roll doesn’t need to be complicated — it’s often better if it isn’t — but if it’s going to be the soundtrack for a night of binge drinking at strip clubs, it damn well better make wallowing in filth sound irresistible, not drudgery.

Here, they piss on the Dead Kennedys, swipe power ballads from Mötley Crüe, and pluck Guns N’ Roses with absolutely no sense of glee; it’s dutiful cardboard cock rock.

Awesome. He even works in “stoopid rock.” Check out the full review here.

I noticed via Stereogum that a band named Elbow (new to me) has won England’s Mercury Prize for music for 2008 for their album “The Seldom Seen Kid.” Here’s a blurb on the Mercury Prize if you’re not familiar with it:

The Mercury Prize has been awarded annually since 1992. While it is worth 20,000 pounds ($35,210), the increase in sales can add up to more. Sales of the nominated acts’ titles have increased fivefold in the weeks since the shortlist was announced.

…

The award focuses on the music — it does not take into account album sales, media exposure or live performances, according to a Nationwide Mercury fact sheet.

I cruised over to eMusic to see if the album was up, but no luck. What about Amazon? Well, I couldn’t really believe it, but they are selling it for $1.99. Yep, $1.99 for the full, 11-track album. Not sure if this is a promotional deal due to the Mercury Prize win (didn’t see that information anywhere), but it’s less then my morning Americano at Peet’s, and thus pretty close to free in my mind. Get your own copy here and let me know what you think of the band/album.

Also, here’s the full list of Mercury Prize nominees:

• Burial “Untrue”
• Elbow “The Seldom Seen Kid”
• Radiohead “In Rainbows”
• Laura Marling “Alas I Cannot Swim”
• Rachel Unthank & the Winterset “The Bairns”
• British Sea Power “Do You Like Rock Music?”
• The Last Shadow Puppets “The Age of the Understatement”
• Robert Plant & Alison Krauss “Raising Sand”
• Neon Neon “Stainless Style”
• Estelle “Shine”
• Adele “19”
• Portico Quartet “Knee-Deep in the North Sea”

Tough to see how Radiohead loses. “In Rainbows” is just an amazing album. And I really like the Burial LP. Seems like I need to dig around a bit to figure out the criteria for this prize a little better.

A couple music articles to check out:

• There’s a new Metallica album out tomorrow, Death Magnetic. I had written it off out-of-hand based on the suckitude of all albums since, arguably, …And Justice For All, although I enjoyed the Black Album quite a bit when it came out–I just don’t think the songs stand up compared to the prior albums. Howeva!! this AllMusic story has me fired up for Death Magnetic. At the very least, worth a couple listens if it’s on Rhapsody; if not, I may drop the $9 on it and take a flier.
• Related note: whatever happened to the Tuesday CD release date? Obviously if a band pulls a Radiohead and does electronic-only distro, doesn’t really matter what day they release the album, but I’m surprised to see rock dinosaurs like Metallica breaking from tradition.
• Via Stereogum, I found this analysis of the latest Girl Talk album. It’s crazy how much sampling takes place: “There are 14 tracks on Feed the Animals, with a total of 264 sampled songs. “What It’s All About” and “Like This” have 26 sampled songs each, tying for the most, while “Don’t Stop” has the fewest at 11 songs. Overall, the album averages 19.8 songs sampled per track.” GT is playing at the Fillmore this fall, FYI. Tickets on sale now.