When I compiled my original Best Of 2008 list last December, it was a snow day. The sky dropped about a foot, maybe a foot and a half of fluffy white stuff and we lowly sub-compact drivers could go nowhere. Between ranking albums and locating album art, I took a stroll around town with my camera. The above image comes from that trek. Overall, I was pretty happy with last year’s list but, in revisiting all the albums from 2008, I now see quite a few that I left out. (more…)

It’s about 50 in the office and I had the brilliant idea of wearing flip-flops and a short-sleeve dress shirt today. Damn appendages are freezing off. I can think of a few cures to remove the chill. Sometimes all you need is a little folk-pop; today, I turned to Haakon Ellingsen. (more…)

Written by Fense

Like Sweden, Norway churns out some pretty great pop bands and one of those is Haakon Ellingsen. Ellingsen’s music is a mixture of pop and folk that is occasionally reminiscent of The Beatles, but not in an distracting or negatively impacting, overtly-influenced manner; maybe a hint of The Polyphonic Spree’s epic nature, as well. (more…)