I just bought an album by Terra Naomi, a chick with an acoustic guitar. All you metalheads would hate it. :P
I like chicks with acoustic guitars. Heck, I like chicks! :) (But I'm a respectable married man these days, so I'm really only allowed to like one chick ;)).
Much though I love the glories of metal, I'll go on record as saying that the live performance of Norah Jones (OK, she's got a piano, but it's still acoustic) of "Nightingale" at Bonnaroo 2002 is really good, and in any case far better than her studio stuff. There, I've said it; y'all can shout "death to false metal" at me now. ;)
So,
anyway .... Best record I've bought this year? Um, this only reminds me of how few records I've bought! But, probably, it was
Denial of Death by The Brain Surgeons NYC (with Al Bouchard, ex-BOC, and Ross the Boss, ex-Manowar & ex-Dictators). Fab heavy rock/metal with intelligent and tuneful playing. If you're around NYC, look out for gigs from them -- well worth it.
If I can count albums from the last 12 months (inc. autumn 2005), then I can add the Iommi/Hughes
Fused album and Bruce Dickinson's
Tyranny of Souls (though I still like Bruce's
Chemical Wedding better. I just got the Phish
Live in Brooklyn DVD, and it's quite good, but I haven't finished listening to it yet, and my comparative memories are still coloured by too many awesome small-venue shows from the early '90s to be too objective. And I expect the new Gov't Mule album out 22 August to be very good -- but who knows? :)
Ah -- and in an effort to keep destroying my metal credentials, I'll give a nod to Shakira's
Oral Fixation Vol. 2, which isn't as cohesive as older albums like
¿Dónde Están los Ladrones? or
Pies Descalzos, but for pop music ain't bad and is, also, stylistically fairly mental, which the pop world needs more of :)
The best band I've seen this year (except Motorhead, who are too so legendary and excellent that I need to handicap them out of the running) was these folks
http://www.myspace.com/heidisband in a bitsy little pub gig. They put on a seriously good show! (Though their guitarists need to buy some BKPs. :))
