Music Reviews- Kings of Leon, Plain White T's,

I have a 60GB iPod photo.  It's like a big white brick.  When I stood on line for an iPhone, people actually laughed because it's so big and old.  But it's nowhere near full.  I've only got 23GB of music on it.  Now I also have a 16GB iPhone 3G.  Why is this important?  Well, 16 is less than 23.

Basically, what happens when I get a new CD is I'll listen to it a few times.  I'll decide what tracks I like, and I'll rip them into iTunes for the iPod.  But only my absolute favorites make it onto the iPhone.  So that's how I'm going to rate music.  I'm going to score it as such: # of iPod tracks out of the total # of tracks.  Some CDs may have a 2nd score in parenthesis.  That's b/c if I like most of the stuff on a disc, I may rip a track or two that I don't love right away with the expectation that they'll grow on me.  So a 2nd score in parenthesis is the number of tracks that made it without the "grow on me" factor.  After scoring an overall disc, I'll also list the tracks that I liked enough to add to the iPhone.

So away we go:

Plain White T's- "Big Bad World" 

iPod: 5/10

iPhone: Big Bad World

Natural Disaster

I haven't listened to a lot of Plain White T's before.  Honestly, I hate "Hey There Delilah."  But I liked some of their other songs like "Hate" and "Our Time Now."  And I really like the first song from this CD, "Natural Disaster," so I decided to try the album.  Some of it is catchy, but I don't think they're very strong songwriters overall.  There are a couple tracks that feel forced, like they were trying to duplicate their "Delilah" success.  Even worse, "Someday" sounds like a crappy emo re-write of John Lennon's "Imagine."  They're just not good enough to make it work.

Kings of Leon- "Only By the Night"

iPod: 11/11 (10/11)

iPhone: Crawl

Sex on Fire

Use Somebody

Manhattan

Notion

I Want You

I've been hearing the hype on Kings of Leon for years, and while every album has had one or two good tracks, I've never thought all the praise was justified.  So when I started listening to "Only By the Night," my jaw hit the floor.  This is a really solid album start to finish.  They've built on the best elements of their older songs, and have finally released a full set that justifies the hype they've gotten.

A couple other things:

I wanted to include Low Vs Diamond here too, but I forgot it at work.  So that will be included the next time I do a music review, but don't wait.  Just go get it.  I'll probably also write up the new Oasis, Buckcherry, and Rise Against next time, too.

Is it just me, or does the new Killers song "Human" really suck? Sam's Town was nowhere near as good as Hot Fuss, and I had no interest in their B-sides.  If "Human" is any indication, I may be just about done with the Killers.