The Books and Oil Pastels

Last week, my beautiful girlfriend Emma felt compelled to purchase some oil pastels and two textured oil pastel pads, one white and one black. Over the weekend, we'd been listening to some music by The Books and we each became inspired to use these adult-friendly crayons together and see what we'd come up with. Let me first say that, if you are not familiar with The Books, please familiarize yourself with them and their music. I'd love to describe the music in great detail, but I simply cannot. They are within a genre of their own, using an eclectic collage of audio samples from tons of unlikely sources and mixing them with cello, guitar, bass, banjo, etc. If you decide to check them out, listen to the albums Lost and Safe and The Way Out. I'm confident that if you've made it this far into this entry, you won't regret listening. You might even thank me and risk your life for me someday simply for the fact that I introduced you to fulfillment. This is what Emma and I came up with. Thanks to The Books, we were able to listen to albums that were pleasant from start to finish, therefore providing ample inspiration to actually finish something I started.

Top 10 Albums of 2010

This will be a quick read for many of you, partly because I'm too excited to put a lot of thought into a description of each of my ten favorite albums and partly because I've realized that each description would be, at best, an articulation of how each of these albums has made me feel, which really seems pointless to me because I know that our feelings differ. If you value my opinion and have an interest in listening to any of these albums, all you really need are the names of the albums. Telling you how each one made me feel seems like unadulterated manipulation. Here they are.

10. LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening



9. Jónsi - Go


8. Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz


7. MGMT - Congratulations


6. Vampire Weekend - Contra


5. Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest


4. Ratatat - LP4


3. Caribou - Swim


2. Avey Tare - Down There


1. The Books - The Way Out