Christina Martin’s album has flavors of folk mixed in with just enough soft rock and country to deserve being on loop while kicking it back at home, or going for a lazy drive. While it isn’t exactly my typical daily listening genre, her album falls into that rare overlap of adult alternative and singer-songwriter that is honest in its poppishness, earnest in its lyrics, unpretentious in its country leanings.

Highlights: I like the first track, Two Hearts, and the last, China Box. You Come Home is pretty cool but its lead-out about a gift that had “better be nice and big” is vulnerable to gutter minds like myself and its unintentional genital humor. Besides that, it’s recommended listening, and way better than the bigger names in the adult alternative genre.

Christina Martin will be playing at Tealove Teavolve in Baltimore, MD on Monday, April 20th. She is also on Facebook. I received a free review copy of this album.

I listened to the whole album this morning and while there isn’t as much “catch” as Commit This To Memory, it holds its own as an album. The same lyrical artistry that had me hooked since their first album is ever-present in songs such as Calling All Cops and I Fell In Love Without You.

Classified as “pop punk” by most, it avoids the pitfalls of some bands that have been categorized as such, including being overly angstsy,  or frivolous. No, MCS lays on the pop quite unapologetically and pulls in the punk as an ever-present glow.

(Gosh, does that paragraph make this sound like a “music review” now?)

All together, a great album to get, and listen to from end to end.

A truck going the wrong way on a highway in Florida. Yeah, right.

I need to write about this because I want to know if I what I have been going through is typical or not. For some reason, my listening repertoire has been stuck on Yellowcard’s Lights and Sounds for the past three months.

It’s on my mp3 player. It’s on my computer. I tend to carry a burned disc of the album with me wherever I go. No matter what I do, even with a couple thousand songs in my collection, I can not seem to veer away from this particular album.

I don’t intend to review every song the album carries, all I can say is that it contains a song for every particular mood that I experience, and somehow, there is a song from that album that is playing in my head. For almost any event that I go through in my daily routine there is a song that seems appropriate for the moment at hand.

To be honest, it creeps me out just a little bit. While I have a tendency to listen to a certain song on repeat for hours on end, this whole album has got me hooked. I can’t explain it beyond saying that “it’s my current favorite, and among the many favorites that I have had in the past, this one actually has lasted more than a week.”

Is there anyone else out there who experiences this?

I read on a blog somewhere about how back-asswards the Philippines (and most of third-world Asia) is because the long-disbanded Swedish pop band, Abba, remains popular fare in the region. I won’t deny, I won’t tell a lie: I grew up inundated with their songs on the radio and on tape.

I won’t be shy about it either: I like their stuff. It’s not the kind of thing I’d play all day at work, but a little bit of Knowing Me, Knowing You never killed anyone. So, when I stumbled upon this video care of a friend, I couldn’t help but laugh my socks off and enjoy the moment.

It’s a corny self-parody, but it’s good to know that one of the biggest names in Euro-pop can make fun of themselves.

I’m not the man they think I am at home
Oh no no no I’m a rocket man
Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone

By the way this past weekend I got introduced to Family Guy and Stewie Griffin’s performance of the song is, well… Awesome.

It’s pop music, the way pop used to be rock, and the way rock used to be before the elitists got to it. Guster, Maroon 5 (yes, that band that rocks despite having four or five tracks on regular rotation on lite rock stations) and Yellowcard, these bands are kickass rock. I don’t care if they’re popular. The stuff is more honest than cookiecutter singing groups and is more earnest than pretentious, elitist “indie” types that populate the indie circuit.

That’s one other thing I dont’ understand about indie freaks. The greatest merit a band has for them to admire is that the band they like isn’t liked by other people. Just how freaking selfish can these folks get? “I like this band because not too many people like it.” I’ve complained about this elitist attitude before. They abandon bands that get popular even if all the band did was to release the same indie compilation under the major label. That’s what being a poseur is all about. Nothing punk rock or indie about that kind of thinking at all.

I’ll leave it to this demotivator to say it best: “Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.”

Why oh why this association exists, I do not know.