Summer. And My Favorite CDs.

It's inevitable. Around mid-July, I get bashed in the face and subsequenty terrified by all those disgustingly cheery "BACK TO SCHOOL SALE" ads. Usually I'm pretty good at shelving them in some moldy corner of my goldfish-like memory, but fuck, I go back to school on Wednesday.

Which of course means answering "How was your summer?" about fifty billion times to everyone once you get back to school. The answer is invariably a droll, reflexive 'good'. God, how infuriating is that? 'Good' is one of those pseudo-pleasant sounding, watered down words that reminds everyone concerned just how miserable it is to be back in school, answering these sort of hopelessly dumb questions that no one really wants the answers to.

Speaking of blowing things way out of proportion - here are my favorite albums of the first part of the year.

1. Destroyer - Destroyer's Rubies - This honestly, is a very very doomed record. At least commercially speaking. It was custom made for the impossibly small niche of people, who, like me, like but not like-like the Fiery Furnaces (too aloof) and Neutral Milk Hotel (too wandering). This CD is like their literary, adorably lost love child. At first, the only thing that sticks with you about these songs are a few seemingly misplaced instrumental what-the-fucks and bizarre lyrics. But after a few listens the melodies and harmonies sneak up behind you and choke you with their lovliness. Destroyer's Rubies is like a giant Where's Waldo drawing (remember those?) : a little off-putting and maybe even frustrating initially, but when you do finally find that smarmy son of a bitch Waldo, it's bliss.

2. The Knife - Silent Shout - Everyone is hopelessly in love with a few songs that they know are irreversably awful and tacky. I think the odds are that 30% of the time, one of those songs is an Abba song. Just me? Well, for me, it's Dancing Queen. The Knife take everything that was sort of sexy about that song and that whole Euro-disco aesthetic it embodies and blended it into a new, delicious, deep yet frothy collection of songs. It's glamorously goth and fashionably Eurotrash-tastic. And truly fucking strange, duh.

3. Hot Chip - The Warning - Hot Chip are my favorite gang of adroit English boys who crank out mildly-dork-flavored dance music like no one's business. There's lots of gorgeous, airy, laptop produced electronic bursts on this CD that lend it the same sort of dizzy atmosphere you'll find on some Air or Kid-A era Radiohead tracks. The best part is that none of the songs on the CD are deadly serious or anything like that, but not vapid either.