THIS WEEK'S NEW RECORDS

I kick it "old school," as you may have figured out by now. I go to the record store (yes, there is still one near me) on Tuesdays (new release day). Then, when I come home, I check out the iTunes store.

So, today I didn't buy any full length CDs, but I tried a bunch of things out on iTunes: I bought two tracks from Patti Scialfa's new album, Play It As It Lays, "Play Around" and "Run, Run, Run." Her voice is polarizing: her obvious influence is the great Ronnie Spector and some people love her voice, and some don't. I think that, at least on these songs, she reigned in her her tendency to sometimes oversing, which is good. That's what I'd do with her if I was her producer. Of course, it's understandable that she would oversing, given her dayjob (which I'll be writing about soon enough).

If you have a taste for something different, and don't mind lyrics that aren't in English, you should check out Manu Chao. I checked out his song "Rainin' in Paradize" which actually is in English. I may pick up the album instead of buying more individual tracks.

I don't think that anyone benefits from the term "neo-soul." It translates to "soul music for Starbucks" or something. But that seems to be what Jill Scott has been lumped in with. I don't care what you call it, she can sing - check out her new single, "Hate On Me."

I'm not a big fan of Ronnie James Dio - his dungeons and dragons thing doesn't really appeal to me. And to me, Black Sabbath is four guys - Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward. That said, I was glad to see Tony and Geezer get back together with Dio this year - and I was glad to see that they called themselves Heaven & Hell. I think it's cool that they can do their own thing while Ozzy doing his solo thing. They released a live album. While Dio's era in Sabbath pales compared to Ozzy's "The Mob Rules" is a great song, so I "grabbed" that.

The Dropkick Murphys combine punk rock with Irish music - they've been around for a few years, and got a big break last year when Martin Scorsese used thier song "I'm Shipping Up To Boston" in The Departed. Their new song, "The State Of Massachusetts" is rockin'.

Right now I'm really looking foward to Robert Plant's upcoming album with Alison Krauss. I'll write more about that later.