Saturday, May 5, 2007

Speaking of Albert Hammond, Jr.

When I saw Little D (trying it out) mention the strokes guitarist in his Mason post (by the way, very artsy picture of the ticket stub), and I had to throw out a plug for his side project Yours To Keep. It is basically a toned down Strokes album, but I enjoy a good toned down Strokes album. Most tracks contain the catchy licks that you would expect from Hammond, but they also contain some pretty solid vocals that you may not expect. Hammond got a hand on the album from Strokes front man Julian Casablancas, Ben Kweller, and Sean Lennon. On the album there are only two misses in my opinion (I didn't care for "Well Alright" and "Postal Blowfish," which are bonus tracks on the album that I think could have been left off), with a few very notable tracks ("Everyone Gets a Star," "Blue Skies," "Hard to Live in the City, and"101."). The amazing thing about this stellar album is that Hammond only has one writing credit to his name on a Strokes song. Coincidentally, it is on "Automatic Stop," my second favorite Strokes jam. And it appears that while the band is on hiatus, Hammond is continuing to write new tunes. Anyway, I listened to this cd on repeat for the 2 weeks after I bought it, and I still pull out tracks from it for an On the Go playlist with some consistency. I'd recommend you pick this one up until the next installation from Albert's band.

p.s. Please note how cool Hammond, Jr. (far right) is in the photo. Here's my favorite track.

03EveryoneGetsaStar.m4p

4 comments:

Jack the Rabbit said...

about that picture of the ticket stub -- did little D not think that we'd believe that he actually went to the concert?

Little Dynamite said...

i actually had to take like 5 pictures of it to get the text to show up...

i'm a huge nerd...

Little Dynamite said...

i also wanted you all to notice that the show was 16+...

The Midnight Lumberjack said...

"Hard to Live (in the City)" is the best track, especially with the lazy horn outro. But great album overall, one of my best of 07 so far.