New/Old/ New Buffalo: Somewhere, Anywhere

One of my favourite parts about visiting the big smoke, aside from visiting friends, is always the trip to Sonic Boom especially to sift through the used records (read CDs) to see what people have cast aside. Usually, for whatever reason, there is a lot of good stuff there and often I find something that I've missed, or that I used to really love but never bought.

So, as you might have guessed, on Saturday I came across New Buffalo's 2nd album, which I didn't know existed, called Somewhere, Anywhere. Apparently this album was released sometime in September 2007, but it seems like to me it just flew under the radar. This along with 'discovering' Ra Ra Riot's s/t EP, and actually listening to Lupe Fiasco's The Cool, has made me think that I probably should have waited until at least now to do my best of 2007. Not that I can think of anything that I'd bump, but all of the aforementioned albums definitely deserved strong consideration.

Kyle introduced me to the first album, after seeing her (NB = Sally Seltmann) open for labelmate, Broken Social Scene, in Australia a couple of years ago. He said she was great, I picked up the album The Last Beautiful Day [2004] and thought it was great, kind of like a nice lullaby from some type of super-cool Australian Marry Poppins. Unfortunately, because of her Australianess (or Australianosity if you prefer) we are unlikely to see NB in London, On anytime soon, so enjoy. My two favourites from the new (or newest) one:

[mp3] City And Sea (Lady Nameless).mp3
[mp3] I'm The Drunk And You're The Star.mp3

Also, Jen has done an interview with Stars and has some audio from the last Okkervil River show in Paris, hopefully we'll be able to figure out how to get those up.