The benefit of magazine and website end of year best album lists is that you discover albums that you missed because you were preoccupied with other albums. At the moment the record I’m obsessed with thanks to those lists is Against Me! and their album New Wave. It peaked my interest originally because Tegan (from Tegan and Sara) duets on the album and after flogging that song to death I branched out in to the other stuff. It was also interesting that Ben Lee decided to cover the whole album and share it as mp3s on his website. When listening to it at work I had comments asking me why I had Jimmy Barnes on my ipod and yeah, his voice has that rasp of Barnsey but it’s more of a punk record but with melody like Green Day. The songs are political and provide social commentary. This song is about drugs:
And this song is the Tegan duet which I’ve played like 30 times in two weeks. It’s been described as the modern version of “Summer Lovin'” from Grease. I absolutely adore the crack in her voice when she says the line “How long before the distance becomes a chore”: