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I’m pretty excited with U2’s new album, No Line On the Horizon, coming out next week.  It’s been over 4 years since “Atomic Bomb” so us U2 fans are starved.  Being a U2.com subscriber, I’ve been able to listen to the entire album this week.  I’ve already listened to it twice and streaming it a third time as I type this.  It’s characteristic U2 stuff but with new and different sounds. My current favorite song on the album is called “Magnificent”.  The pulsing bassline reminds me of Joshua Tree tracks.  The title track is also quite good. Another awesome track is Breathe, which the band premiered live in Paris last night. The song is a real rock track that opens with Edge’s charged guitar and a piano and leads into Bono’s frantic lyrics.  Very cool sound!!  11 tracks and 53 minutes of awesome!

I was thrilled to find out that Coldplay was coming back this summer after they skipped us during their last US tour.  In fact, when I first heard a local DJ mention they were coming to the Gorge several weeks back, I thought I was crazy as there was no news on their site or the venue’s for a couple weeks.  While I have been to a Coldplay show, I’ve never seen a show at the Gorge, so this will be pretty cool.  I saw them back in ‘05 at the new White River Ampitheater.  They were touring on their X & Y album which I pretty much played non-stop for months.  It was an excellent show.  While Viva la Vida is probably their biggest commercial hit, it’s not my favorite album but I’m still hyped to see them again.  The Gorge is supposed to be pretty nice.  It’ll be cool to see them with my dad and some friends, though we’re not all sitting together.

Perhaps one of the coolest happenings this year is the upcoming release of a groundbreaking concert film called, very simply, “U23D”. Releasing on Feb 22nd, the film uses new 3-d filming technology which has been used in filming sporting events, such as the Super Bowl. U2, having been one of my favorite bands since my dad bought me the Joshua Tree album all those years ago, is the perfect choice to pioneer this new technology in a concert film. Shamefully, I have never seen U2 in concert so this movie will be the next best thing. I tried to get tickets for my dad and I to their Vertigo tour in 2005 but they were impossible to get, especially due to a major scalping problem. Apparently much of the movie’s footage was taken durin the Latin America leg of the tour. Maybe I can get my dad to come up and we see this together instead. Heck, depending on the theater, the acoustics could be even better than a live concert anyhow.

Check out this cool widget from the official site to view the trailer.

Ok, enough whining about the Seahawks and on to a worthwhile post.

I’ve been listening to the new Incubus album, “Light Grenades” and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. Their last disc, “A Crow Left of The Murder” was a disappointment to me, aside from the politically-charged, “Megalomaniac” and “Talk Show On Mute” tracks. As a result, I’ve been eagerly anticipating their next release, since their acclaimed Morning View album, which happens to be my personal favorite. Without a doubt one of my favorite things about Incubus is that they have resisted conforming to any one musical genre and they have a great ability create very diverse peices of music…good music. This ability is ever-present in their latest release. In fact, Incubus’ guitarist Mike Einziger told MTV “It sounds like 13 different bands playing 13 different songs…”
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I picked up the new album by Audioslave, titled “Revelations”, last week. This album came out on Sept. 5th so I didn’t exactly race out and get it as I did with the previous two. The first couple of times I heard the first release, “Original Fire” on the radio, I wasn’t terribly impressed. Gradually, the song grew on me and now I like it a lot. While this album has the characteristic heavy guitar chords and wailing solos of Morello and driving basslines, the album has a different, more of a funk vibe to it.

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Well, I must say I was shocked to find out that the Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, died earlier today, due to being stung in the heart by a stingray. Though he took some major risks (some rather dumb), I didn’t think he was going to die by any other means than old age. And certainly not in this way. Apparently, he was filming an underwater documentary at the time. While I wasn’t an avid watcher of his show on Animal Planet, I liked his attitude and found him rather entertaining.

I ended up watching much of the Emmy’s broadcast last night. Usually they come and go and I hear about them the next day, but this time Jenn was watching them so I was sucked in. I have to say Conan O’Brien did a great job of hosting them. The NBC-bashing dance number he did at the beginning was hilarious as was the whole thing with Bob Newhart in a airtight box until the broadcast was over. The idea here was he would suffocate if the show ran too long, as it usually does. There were several other entertaining moments and the icing on the cake was that Kiefer Sutherland won for Best Actor in Dramatic Role (or soemthing similar). 24 also won for Best Dramatic Show (again something similar). As groundbreaking as the show was (rejuvenating the 1-hour drama format) the acting and writing really are on par with a lot of the blockbuster movies these days. This really is the case with a lot of shows these days. The TV drama really has matured.