I have to start by saying that I’m not a huge Cold­play fan. Short of some of their more well-​known songs (Green Eyes, Yellow, Clocks) I’ve never been much of a fan; a fact my girl­friend has never quite under­stood why. Cold­play as a rule, have never really done it for me; their music tends to border on the hyper-​sensitive, and though I like sen­si­tive music, theirs was a brand I just couldn’t stand behind.

Then they came out with Viva la Vida.

I picked up Flow­ers for Alger­non almost on a whim. My friend told me about it when I picked it up in a book store. Curios­ity got the better of me, and 10 dol­lars later I had what I con­sider a great piece of lit­er­a­ture added to my col­lec­tion. I con­sumed the book with a hunger I haven’t had from many books. It almost hurt me to put it down for any amount of time, and I found that when I did sit down to read it, I’d end up get­ting through about a 3rd of it in one sit­ting. These are the signs of a great story.

I read Gods Behav­ing Badly in three days.

The only reason it wasn’t read in one is because I have to work during the day. Truly a fun book to read, Marie Phillips does a fan­tas­tic job of detail­ing the lives of the Greek Pan­theon. Granted it’s a humor­ous view and takes light of the fact that the Gods are losing their powers are slowly slip­ping away, but it’s a hell of a humor­ous view.

I love Butch Walker, but I’ll try and be objec­tive with this review. I could review many of his albums that I happen to have in my pos­ses­sion, but as this is the newest one out and avail­able for free (or 6 bucks if you want to) I fig­ured I’d try and be cur­rent and edgy and what have you.

Now there are cer­tain artists that sound good on albums but come up short in live shows. There are other artists that rock live per­for­mances like they were born to it, but fail to trans­late this to their record­ings (Live ones aside, obvi­ously). Then there are artists that do both excep­tion­ally well. This is where Butch Walker falls.

The debut album by A Fine Frenzy, this CD fea­tures 14 tracks that I could play on repeat for god only knows how long. A Fine Frenzy is the result of the hard work of Alison Sudol, and this album is proof that great music still exists in the increas­ingly com­mer­cial music indus­try. It reminds me faintly of Chan­tal Kre­vi­azuk, though Alison has a softer voice and sim­pler sheet music.