Here's some more music that I like!

Oh look, I'm writing about MUSIC again.  I will try to make this more intelligent-sounding and less bursting with exclamation marks than my last music review (I'm probably going to cringe when I look back on that in later years, when I am a famous children's book author [not really, but wouldn't that be an excellent retirement plan?] who eats Pulitzers for breakfast.  But for now, exclamation points at the end of every sentence are okay, especially when talking about Mika's new album.  It's just so fun and catchy!)  Anyways, there's this guy named Jamie T who makes some music that I like (you're convinced, right?  You're so convinced!).  He's from gritty North London, and a lot of his songs are about living in gritty North London.  He sounds very British.  It's hard to understand what he's saying sometimes because of how I have American ears.  But most importantly, he makes some great music and his new album is very good!

I would have raved about his first album, Panic Prevention, when I listened to it about a year ago, but I didn't have a blog in those days (can you believe it!).  It's really great, though.  I've probably listened to it at least dozens of times (so many times! [except the Lily Allen song.  It's too sad :( ]).  Here, let me show you some videos of songs from that album!  Here's one that I can embed!  It's called Salvador.

Aw, that kid has got some killer moves, no?  And there are TWO VIDEOS for his most popular song (it was so good it could not be contained in merely one video!), Sheila: one has monkeys, the other has Bob Hoskins and no monkeys.  Did you watch one of those?  Okay, good.  That was a very depressing song if you listened to any of the words, right?  North London is so gritty.  Pretty fun, though, apart from that.

The rest of the album is also very listenable; some of it is funny, some of it is sad, some is highly danceable/aerobicizable (I've listened to this song just about every single time I've treadmilled since October '08), etc.  It's not something that gets old quickly (for me, at least.  Maybe you hate Jamie T's music, I dunno!), partly because it sounds fairly different from most other things I could compare it to.  Probably the closest thing is The Streets, what with all the speed-talking/singing quasi-rap, obscure British slang, references to gritty North London, and clever use of samples.  But there's so much more!  There are bits of reggae, ska, punk, dub, spoken word ramblings, whatever.  And it's fun to try and figure out what the hell he's talking about (seriously, such a tough accent)!

Okay, you get it.  Good stuff!  Jamie T's new album, Kings and Queens, is just as good as the first one, but with one hundred percent more solemn acoustic ballads (no, that's not a bad thing!).  I like it a lot!  Listen to it, or whatever.