This One's Optimistic! (This One Went To Market, This One Just Came Out of the Swamp...)

Again, apologies for a lack of posting. I've just moved into a new place, and I won't even have the Internet until the 11th. I'm writing this in a coffee shop with my friend Amanda, who's updating her movie blog as we speak. Check it out.

Anyway, this is from Prefix Magazine:

Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest Hits the Top Ten

This week's number one album is no surprise; it's Eminem's Relapse for the second week in a row, as the set moved 211,000 copies, selling 819,000 copies in two weeks. But the Top Ten had a surprising inclusion: Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest hit number 8 with 33,000 copies sold. Granted, that's 1/7 of Em's sales, but it's pretty damn unlikely that a subtle album from a New York art-folk band would hit the Top Ten.

Under no circumstances do I want to fall into the cookie-cutter mold of the music blogger who falls all over himself praising Grizzly Bear; I'm trying to avoid that like I did with Fleet Foxes/TV on the Radio last year, and (a little bit less so) with the Animal Collective album in January. I think all of those records are very good, to be sure, and well worth your time, but gushing over them is a bit of time, as everyone who likes music these days seems to be doing it.

With that said, it's hard not to be really excited over this for a couple of reasons. In a time where music sales are plummeting, it's nice to see a so-called "indie" band making a serious dent in the sales chart. Take a look at the rest of the top 10:

1) Eminem, Relapse
2) Green Day, 21st Century Breakdown
3) Hannah Montana, Hannah Montana: The Movie
4) Marilyn Manson, The High Side of Low
5) Lady Gaga, The Fame
6) Kenny Chesney, Greatest Hits II
7) Wisin and Yandel, La Revolucion
8) Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest
9) Taylor Swift, Fearless I would like to add that this is inexplicably the highest-selling album in the United States this year, and one of only two to sell over a million copies. The other, even more inexplicably (less explicably?), is Hannah Montana.
10) Rascal Flatts, Unstoppable

I suppose disappointing follow-ups to former greatness are really "in" this year (see #1, #2, and #4, though I was never a huge fan of Manson to begin with).

Even more impressive about this Grizzly Bear top 10 debut is that Veckatimest leaked on the Internet something in the neighborhood of THREE MONTHS before its release last week (guilty, I think I got it in March). Hopefully, this kind of thing continues. Maybe we see the new Sunset Rubdown album at #1?

We won't see the new Sunset Rubdown album at #1.

I'm sorry for ever suggesting that the new Sunset Rubdown album would be #1.

Anyway, as Amanda just informed me that David Carradine (from Kung Fu, and more importantly, Bill from the Kill Bill movies) died today, enclosed in the playlist are a couple of favorites from the Kill Bill soundtrack. Rest in peace, Dave.

Love,
Jim