upcoming releases

I've had trouble getting my hands on a few a few releases I've been looking forward to for a while. Not surprisingly, two are clients of the same publicity firm. Oddly, they come out on the same day. The other two are major label artists, and although I consistently get emails from one of their publicity firms, they will not answer the ones I send back.

3/18 She & Him Volume 1
The Kills Midnight Boom
4/1 R.E.M. Accelerate
4/29 Portishead Third

In addition I'm getting more and more advances lately, and they arrive personally watermarked, but without any sort of album artwork. So I tend to buy them on vinyl, since I can just rip the CD-Rs they send and pop them on the Ipod. Here's that wishlist:

3/4 Cadence Weapon Afterparty Babies
3/25 The B-52s Funplex
Singer Unhistories
4/8 The Breeders Mountain Battles
Tapes N Tapes Walk It Off
Man Man Rabbit Habits
4/15 Does It Offend You, Yeah? You Have no Idea What You're Getting Into
Power Douglas Pentecostal Fangbread
5/20 Islands Arm's Way

When I most recently went to Amoeba in L.A., I returned a bunch of shit and somehow got $146 in credit. I was expecting maybe $50. Here was my haul:

Vinyl:
Radiohead's OK Computer
Q and Not U's No Kill No Beep Beep
The Locust's New Erections
The Shins' Chutes Too Narrow
Vampire Weekend's Vampire Weekend

New CDs:
Grayskul's Bloody Radio
Grayskul's Deadlivers
Bat For Lashes' Fur and Gold

Used CDs:
Pearl Jam's Vs. (used to own on cassette, had a burned copy)
Menomena's Friend and Foe

For Jen's parents:
Goo Goo Dolls greatest hits (Jen's dad)
Amoeba T-shirt (Jen's mom)

I'm currently listening to this album by Extra Life called Secular Works. Apparently the mastermind behind this band used to be in that freak free jazz outfit ZS. Instrumentally it's kind of gloomy post-rock, but the vocals are killing me because the dude sounds almost exactly like that dude I went to college with, Joe Mulhollen (who now does that awesome unsigned band Needle Up!), except this guy has difficulty staying on tune. It's still tripping me out though.