#193 - mid-year hype.

is it really that time of year again? you bet your sweet ass it is...it's time for my mid-year top five list of albums, accompanied by some sort of snack-drink list! for the past two years (2009, 2010), i've paired my top five albums with five snack-drink pairings that i'd planned on writing about but never got around to. this year, since i'm feeling slightly nostalgic, i'm changing it up a bit & pairing the top albums with the top five posts of all time on eat!drink!snack! isn't change exciting?

has it been a good year for music so far? it's been aight i suppose. while the list of bands who've put out albums is impressive, the quality of those albums is much less so. over the last six months, we've had lackluster new efforts from a bunch of bands i expected more from--the decemberists, arctic monkeys, tv on the radio, the strokes, art brut, deerhoof, destroyer, okkervil river & the beastie boys.

even with all these letdowns, there have been a bunch of good albums released thus far. the dodos, pains of being pure at heart, yuck, man man, bon iver, the kills & radiohead have all put out albums that are worthy of being in my top five. in the end though, there were just too many albums to cram into a top five, so i sort of leaned toward my current faves.

as a predictor, last year only one of the songs from my mid-year albums list ended up on my end of year "top ten songs" list. in the previous year, four of my favorite mid-year albums had songs on the 2009 end-of-year list. how will this year's mid-year albums fare? more importantly, how drastically will my mood change by the end of december? you'll just have to stay tuned for another six months to find out!...or you can skip the next six months of amazing blog posts & check back here in january if you want to be a jerk about it. but for now, here are the top five...

	cities aviv, digital lows - a few months back, my oft-brooklyn flea companion jessica introduced me to a friend of hers who was visiting from memphis. i asked her what was cool about recent memphis music other than the late jay reatard. after quickly explaining to me how there were a lot of people who reacted to jay reatard's death in january of last year with "fuck. that dude owed me money," she told me that i should check out north memphis hip hop & some cat named yo gotti. oops! totally slacked on checking him out BUT i did come across cities aviv, a memphis rapper who put out his new album digital lows a few weeks back. i guess it's sort of "indie rap." i like it more for the beats than the lyrics, but they're just as soild. he's giving the album away for free, so you have no excuse for not checking it out, especially if you want something to BUMP BUMP BUMP to this summer.  song to check out: "black box feat. fille catatonique"
	cults, cults - my pal todd (of spotted dick fame) has a name for bands like nyc's cults--"that new beach boys crap i hate." it's closer to the sound of a 60's girl group than the beach boys, but it's definitely happy-sounding, female-fronted music that's catchy enough to be used in an ipod commercial. at one point in my life, this fact would have been enough to dissuade me from listening to cults. these days, if it makes me happy & isn't TOO cheesy, i go with it. what really sold me on them is the opening track to the album, "abducted," which starts softly with acoustic guitar & lyrics that sound like they're recorded in a bathroom or something. after about a half-minute, the volume & drums & shizz kick in along with singer madeline follin's dreamy voice. they manage to keep a dreamy & (i guess) "beachy" vibe up for most of the album. it'll probably get old by the end of the summer, but for now, it's cool with me. song to check out: "abducted"
	the antlers, burst apart - there are a lot of bands & albums that i respect but i just can't get into because they're too damn depressing. antony & the johnsons, i'm looking in your direction. the antlers 2009 album hospice, which was about a terminally-ill patient & a hospice worker, also falls into this category. while it was well done & i enjoyed a couple songs on it, there was no way i was consistently playing it from beginning to end. with their next album, burst apart, which came out this may, they've managed to keep the lofty aspects of their sound while maintaining a mostly-positive vibe throughout. it's fifty times more listenable than hospice. the first three songs on the album--"i don't want love," "french exit" & "parentheses" make up what's arguably one of the better moodbuilding beginnings to an album this year. on the other end of the album, "putting the dog to sleep" is one of the better closers. in between, the boring moments are kept to a minimum & there are good number of upbeat, rocking songs throughout, so it gets my seal of approval. song to check out: "every night my teeth are falling out"
	kurt vile, smoke ring for my halo - IMHO, since will smith went all hollywood & the roots got a gig on jimmy fallon, there aren't many memorable albums coming out of philly these days. the only one i know of from this year is smoke ring for my halo, the fourth studio album from kurt vile & his second on indie stalwart matador records. it's an album filled with beautifully-picked acoustic guitar & clever, dark lyrics that often make me think of nick cave & iggy pop. though a lot of the album has a subdued tone, there are very few dull moments throughout the album's ten songs. i've listened to "society is my friend," "runner ups," "peeping tomboy" & the album opener "baby's arms" (which has an absolutely precious video) over & over again since the album came out in march & i have a feeling i'll be doing the same for a while to come. song to check out: "runner ups"
	black lips, arabia mountain - is there anything mark ronson can't do? the british producer, who's probably best known for producing amy winehouse's back to black, stepped in as the producer for black lips' arabia mountain, the band's sixth studio album. on it, the band sounds cleaner than they ever have & for a band built on having a snotty, gritty appeal, it still works. personally, i didn't care much for them prior to this album, whose sixteen songs, most of which clock in at under three minutes, are still snotty but also catchy as hell. with an album full of quick, guitar-driven songs, the obvious comparison to make is to the ramones, a comparison that's ridiculously obvious on "raw meat," which features the catchiest whistling part in a song this year. the album is spazzy & rocking & the only time it stalls is with the final song, "you keep on running." by then, you've already heard fifteen solid songs though, so it's ok to just shut the album off & move on with your life...or head back to the first song for another listen. song to check out: "raw meat"

who gives a shit about music though, right? you came here to read about eat!drink!snack!'s top five most viewed posts based on the stats compiled by google analytics, right? just say "yes" so we can move on. thanks.

these posts are all ones that i'm proud of for one reason or another, but i'd be lying if i said that they're the most popular posts strictly because of the quality of their content. as far as why they're the most-viewed posts, it says a lot about how the internet works. you'll see why below. regardless of how people have found them, at least people are coming across them, so i can't complain. let's check em out...the top five posts of ALL TIME!

	post: #154 - lowdown dirty jokes. snack: cheetos ragin cajun & tangy ranch mighty zingers drink: he'brew bittersweet lenny's r.i.p.a. here's the best thing about having a blog: no matter how much you write & no matter how much people stop by your site, you have to eventually resign yourself to the fact that a lot of people will come across your site because of something random they were searching for on the google. in the case of eat!drink!snack!, i did a post back in april of last year where i wrote about funny or die tv, cheetos & a beer made in memory of lenny bruce. it was a gem of a post but what brought people to it was their quest for "lowdown dirty jokes." people aren't even trying to make up their own lowdown dirty jokes any more. they're just googling them. i hope at least a few of those folks learned a little something about cheetos in the process.
	post: snack away #5: deez nutz. snack: hampton farms cajun creole hot nuts drink: woodstock inn pig's ear brown ale in the spring/summer of 2009, i had a bunch of friends & family write guest posts about a snack, a drink & the city they lived in. one of my favorite was by my oft-hilarious childhood friend jay wilkinson, who will at one time (hopefully on his gravestone) be known as the original owner of clownbaby.com, a site where he wrote funny things for a couple of months. that's right. he was making clown babies popular WAY before it's always sunny in philadelphia turned it into a thing. too bad he stopped writing & let the domain name lapse. since then, he's managed to be funny only once, but luckily that time was for a post on eat!drink!snack! entitled "deez nutz." he spoke about our childhood home of NH, minor league baseball, HOT NUTS & a NH-made beer. why is it popular? although it did get a lot of early views, it's mostly because people like to search for "deez nutz" or "hot nuts" or the equivalent on the google.
	post: #190 - overthinking snacks. snack: pepperidge farm mint milano cookies drink: sierra mist natural if you're one of those people who thinks that the "trickle down" theory of things is a bunch of baloney, i've got an argument for you. look no further than my late-april post about the overthinking it podcast. in it, i wrote of mint milanos (a snack oft mentioned on the podcast), sierra mist & my devotion to the podcast. they retweeted my mention of the post & in the process, it showed up as a link on the front page of their site for a while. this drove a bunch of their thousands of fans to eat!drink!snack! & for like a week, i was seeing a baby bump in traffic. out of the perecentage of their fans that stopped by, maybe one of their fans continues to do so. trickledownlicious! if reagan was alive right now, he'd TOTALLY be flashing one of those outdated, american "V" symbols. for those of you under eighteen, the "V" symbol has nothing to do with the not-really-very-popular ABC remake of the 1983 miniseries.
	post: snack away #11: my life as a rice cracker. snack: arare japanese rice crackers drink: nama sake for the second most popular post of all time on eat!drink!snack!, i could waste your time by telling you how because of it, eat!drink!snack! now yields a top image search for "rice cracker" on the google. the image actually came from cansimage france & we credited them in the post but, for some reason, if you do a stupid google search eat!drink!snack! comes up with the image. this is NOT the important thing about this post though. the important thing is that in june of 2009, my TOTALLY COMMUNIST comrade james call of the missing teens introduced me to his friend damian, who eventually wrote this post. what damian & i have in common is that we've both managed james and/or the missing teens at some point in our life. nowadays, the missing teens are about to perform the power of the crystals, an amazing rock opera in the NYC fringe festival. they're in the final 72 hours of their quest to raise $3500 on kickstarter, allowing them to both give those working on it cold hard cash for their cold hard work AND put out their second album, a companion soundtrack to the rock opera. i believe in the genius of james call so much that that i'm willing to turn this portion of the post into a SHAMELESS PLUG. it's 2011. DEAL WITH IT. donate $10, support the arts & get a free copy of the album in the process, punk. don't make me break your kneecaps.
	post: #142 - tracks & snacks. end-of-year top ten snack list it makes perfect sense that this post would be the most viewed ever on eat!drink!snack! year-end lists are inherently popular & this one has had both the benefit of being the first ever year-end list and one of the posts that has occupied space on the right-hand side of my site ever since i added recent/fave links to the layout. when was that? a year-and-a-half ago? i think so. what also helps is that some people probably stumbled across the site because they were searching for one of the album covers from the ten bands featured. whatever the case, i'm glad that people have given this post a looksie. if they happen to stick around & read enough of it that they find a new, enjoyable snack, i've contributed to the overall happiness of society.