What did Jimmy Eat?

There’s something admirable about bands that are committed to creating new material (only holds true for bands that write their own music, and doesn’t apply to pop acts who buy material from others to keep gas in their Escalades). Far too often acts like Maroon 5 and Gavin DeGraw live for years off of one piece of good work but come up short on their second album, thrown together between European and Asian tours (btw Gavin’s is due out this "winter"). One exception to the "too little too late club" is Matt Nathanson, whose August release, "Some Mad Hope" came 4 years after "Beneath These Fireworks". The new album is a great collection of songs ripened in his charismatic live performances.

Three great bands have also announced new albums for 2007, conveniently timed around my birthday.

Jimmy Eat World’s "Chase the Light", an attempt to top "Futures", is scheduled for release at the end of October, but to help generate buzz ahead of the Indie band’s fourth full length album they’ve offered the single Big Casino to radio stations and loyal fans who preorder the CD. I highly recommend the new single, which is an indication that the AZ based band will continue combining entertaining lyrics with a mature blend of sounds

Stereophonics also has a release scheduled in October, "Pull the Pin", but with a larger fan base (mostly UK based) they’ve chosen to hold the studio version of the first single, It Means Nothing until one week before CDs hit the shelves… plenty of live versions exist online for those interested in hearing the new stuff. Appears they are sticking with the harder sound that produced "Language.Sex.Violence.Other" as opposed to the acoustically driven earlier releases (tracks like Maybe Tomorrow, Have a Nice Day, Just Looking, and Traffic).

Matchbox Twenty has suited up one more time with the release of a pseudo greatest hits + 6 new songs album, "Exile on Mainstream", whispering "we couldn’t find 10 songs we liked out of our latest trip into the studio – but here’s what we came up with"… so long as iTunes will let me buy the 6 new tracks apart from the ones I already own, I prefer this concept as opposed to releasing a full 12 track CD that flops. And if Travis' "The Boy With No Name" is any indication – a Greatest Hits album no longer represents the creative death of a band, just a sort of hibernation.

I've had little success creating the next natural 5 song shuffle, so I scrapped the concept and reverted back to a classic "my favorite songs" format - that way my recommendations aren't limited to iPod's terrible shuffling program (something about 5 songs that guaranteed atleast one spoiler song - although it has helped me thin out my playlist). To capture expat tv tendencies I've also added a "my favorite shows" list, which now includes a hilarious british comedy called "IT Crowd" - big surprise NBC is stealing the concept for a 2008 premiere... you can catch some of the Season 1 brit episodes at http://www.channel4.com/4od/index.html

"Team. Team, team, team, team, team. I even love saying the word, 'Team'. You probably think that's a picture of my family. Uh uh. It's the A-Team: Bodie, Doyle, Tiger, The Jewellery Man." (Dedicated to B.A. Baracus - thanks for reading).