LISTENING BOOTH

Pictured: Hood, a quartet of London boys made good.

Spent this past weekend getting caught up on all sorts of things: odd jobs around the house, freelance work, planning our trip to Germany, and listening to all the free music I've compiled over the last several months. Out of about 100 CDs, I weened things down to a really good stack of about 25. As always, I'm inundated with hip-hop releases, most of which are not worth a listen. Not because the records are terrible, but because they are boring and formulaic.

Lately though, I've been getting some really good experimental and electronic releases from the likes of Warp, Mush, Schematic, Kranky, Ghostly, and so on. The list for this batch of work goes on and on. Though, my most recent (though not exactly a new band or album) favorite are The Books. This duo is so fresh, and their latest album Lost and Safe is truly the cat's meow.

However, the most refreshing album I stumbled across this weekend was from the band Hood. Now, I had heard of this band before, but in the context of my towering stack of free music, the album design looked more like that of a bad hip-hop artist than an atmospheric rock band with a penchant for writing catchy hooks and well-crafted melodies.

Hood's latest release, Outside Closer is really nice. It easily lends itself to the post-rock moniker, but has a great deal more energy than the likes of Tortoise or Sigur Ros. This latest album is on Domino. I suggest taking a listen if you're looking for something new to rock in the iPod or even your old-fashioned CD player.