I had an interesting week in music this last week.

I started the week taking advantage of Amazon’s $5.00 MP3 albums and picked up two celebrated releases from Minneapolis bands:

• Gayngs – Relayted: This new Minneapolis 23 member  supergroup, featuring members of Bon Iver, Solid Gold and rapper P.O.S, creates a unique sound that is guaranteed to mellow you out.  Perfect msuic to play in the background while cooking or reading, Gayngs will relax and soothe you.
• Trampled by Turtles – Palomino: I’ve said it a few times before, but especially after Mumford and Sons exploded on the scene, is that indie rock needs more banjos and fiddles.  Trampled by Turtles (along with Carolina Chocolate Drop) definitely filled that quota in 2010.  Filled with catchy alt-country hooks, Palomino will get your foot tapping and, with songs averaging right around 3 minutes, you’ll be pressing play to listen to it again before you know it.

I hit up Discland on Saturday.  It’s been close to 6 months since I’ve been there and their used vinyl selection keeps on growing.  My main goal was to pick up some used Van Halen (which is a story for another time) and the trip was successful.

I was able to pick up Van Halen II, Women and Children First and Diver Down, completing my collection of David Lee Roth era Van Halen.  They also had a surprising amount of pop – usually all I find is 70s and 80s rock when visiting used record stores and, while I’m not a huge Madonna fan, I found myself buying Madonna’s True Blue and Like a Prayer albums.  Both albums take me back to my childhood and I gave them a spin on Sunday and they’re both great pop albums.  Lastly, I went back to my hair band roots, and picked up White Lion’s Pride as the last used album.  Discland also had a rare copy of Alejandro Escovedo’s 2001 re-issue, A Man Under the Influence.  One of 1000 vinyl copies pressed, I snatched that up.  His 2008 album, Real Animals, was one of my favorite albums of the year, and 2010’s Street Songs of Love was a solid release, though it didn’t crack my top 10.

• Polyvinyl emailed me that my Deerhoof vs. Evil pre-order shipped on Friday and the MP3s were available for download.  I’ve given that a couple listens and I’ll put a review up once the vinyl comes.
• Social Distortion’s Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes comes out next Tuesday, January 18th, and I pre-ordered one of 1000 yellow vinyl copies.  They have yellow or red available.  I would have preferred the red, but yellow was limited to 1000 and red was limited to 2500.  I’m a sucker for “rare” and limited editions.  The long time punk rockers are also running a contest on their website – the more people who stream their new album, the lower the price will be in the Amazon MP3 store.  I’ll definitely be giving that a listen tomorrow.  I also plan to review the album once it arrives.

I closed out the week today with another Minneapolis band, Tapes ‘N Tapes, new release, Outside.  My friend and former co-worker Steve reviews the album here, and I would agree with him.  It’s a solid B.  Outside is available for only $3.99 at Amazon for a few more hours.