What music have you heard recently?

[mvd]

None today, but yesterday I listened to the Essex Green's Cannibal Sea again, and these:

Gin Blossoms - Major Lodge Victory (at the AOL full album listening party) - this is a breezy CD. Perhaps too much so. Ok for casual listening, but seems a little contrived in the way it harkens back to a time in the 90s when simple rock was big. Grade: C+

Four songs from Meg & Dia at their Myspace. I didn't care for their voices, and the music was a bit Evanescence light (I love the new Evanescence single BTW.) Grade for those songs: C

The Concretes - samples from their latest one, In Colour. It's ornate pop that I think I'd love.

For a bonus, here's my current best of 2006 list. I haven't determined yet what will be A+ and A. But I'll try to keep the A+s around an undisclosed percentage of the total number of albums I hear:

Dixie Chicks - Taking The Long Way
The Wreckers - Stand Still, Look Pretty
Belle And Sebastian - The Life Pursuit
Pearl Jam - self-titled
Margot & Nuclear So & So's - Dust of Retreat
Josh Ritter - Animal Years
Neil Young - Living With War
Cat Power - The Greatest
Damone - Out Here All Night
Pink - I'm Not Dead
Gomez - How We Operate
Rosanne Cash - Black Cadillac
Julie Roberts - Men & Mascara
The Corrs - Home
Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out Of This Country
Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings The Flood
Susan Cagle - The Subway Recordings
Ingrid Michaelson - Girls & Boys
Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins - Rabbit Fur Coat
Guster - Ganging Up on the Sun
Regina Spektor - Begin To Hope
Holly Brook - Like Blood Like Honey
Nina Gordon - Bleeding Heart Graffiti
Paul Simon - Surprise
Rainer Maria - Catastrophe Brings Us Together
The Essex Green - Cannibal Sea
Some Girls - Crushing Love
The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers
Tom Petty - Highway Companion
Mojave 3 - Puzzles Like You