Album Sweep June 23, 2012 Part Two...

Hey folks, a couple days past I started a weekly Album Sweep of records hitting the Billboard magazine Top 200 chart. Since so many new albums debuted this week, I split them in two, to give you a taste of some of the new music in store, since it's really hard these days to know what's out since radio and MTV is so disjointed. And without being any sort of hipster critic snob, there's a happy medium between the production machine and some obscure yodel-rock group. So here's a sampling of stuff from all genres of music. I invite you to peruse it if you will, maybe you'll stumble on something you like that you'd never figure you would (that happens to me a lot). And yes, there's cheese, but what's good food without some cheese, no?

Coming in at #106 is veteran Texas rockers ZZ Top, who substitute an EP for what was supposed to be a spring-released full album. Texicali is four songs long, and the first single, "I Gotsta Get Paid" extrapolates an underground Texan rap song "25 Lighters" into a party jam that reminds me of their Afterburner days...

Click below for more under the fold...


Folk singer Shawn Colvin, best known for the song "Sunny Came Home" in the 90s, released for first album in six years, and All Fall Down arrives at #126..

and now for something totally different, German thrash-metal band Kreator come in at #130 with an album that's their first top-5 success in their home country, Phantom Antichrist...

The Vans Warped Tour is an combo concert festival and sports event that's been held since the last half of the 90s, and has been one of the most successful enduring tours going, and has been critical in giving exposure to a lot of punk bands starting out. Each year the promoters put out a compilation of artists appearing at the events, and with the advent of digital sales, more and more bands have been included in the sets. This year's edition contains 50 songs from groups like Rise Against, The Used, and more obscure groups, and not a bad deal at $6.99 at Amazonmp3. And now it shows up on the big chart at #134...

Texan Rhett Miller, lead singer of the alt-country-rock group the Old '97s, released his sixth solo album The Dreamer (I guess to follow up his releases The Instigator and The Believer), and it comes in at #139...

Coming on to the big chart at #146 is the 2011 release by gospel artist and pastor Andrae Crouch. His choir was heard by a mainstream audience most prominently on Michael Jackson's "Man In The Mirror" and "Earth Song" records, and his latest CD release, The Journey, sees an uptick in sales...

The biggest movie for the past two weekends has been the animated film Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted, and the soundtrack debuts at #185. It features parts of Hans Zimmer's score, as well as recycled hits like Yolanda Be Cool's "We No Speak Americano" and Katy Perry's "Firework". It also has cast members/characters performing songs like the Spice Girls' "Wannabe", Nelly's "Hot In Herrre", and where else are you gonna find Chris Rock's now-classic "Afro-Circus"? (ahem)...

Experimental rock group Liars released their sixth album, WIXIW (pronounced "wish you"), and the electronic affair lands at # 192. It sounds good in the Radiohead Kid A sort of way...

Sean Scolnick, who records under the moniker of Langhorne Slim, hails from Langhorne, PA, and went to school near the artist enclave of New Hope. He's released a bunch of alt-country albums, and his latest, The Way We Move, as Langhorne Slim & The Law, makes the US chart at #194...

and finally, at #200, is Mexican-American countrypunk singer Alejandro Escovedo, with his latest release, Big Station.

And there we go. Hope you enjoyed some of this, it's been as always cool making these posts. Ciao!