Surviving January

For a lover of new music, January is always the worst month of the year. After you catch up with the previous year's music, there usually isn't anything great in stores until early March. To make this year worse, almost all of my favorite musicians of the past ten years released albums last year, including Wilco, the White Stripes, Radiohead, Spoon, the Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem, etc. I don't see a lot of great albums coming out in at least the next six months, but hopefully I'm wrong.

With that said, here are five artists who I badly need to hear new records from. All of these artists have not released a new album since 2005:

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: I loved the Grinderman album, but it wasn't the Bad Seeds. After hearing the sprawling Abattoir Blues & The Lyre Of Orpheus, it's hard to think of all the directions this band could go with a follow-up, but nothing seems to be in the works. I'd like them to go back to a somber Boatman's Call-type sound, be we'll see.

Coldplay: Ouch, there goes my hipster indie-cred. I don't care, I love every album they've done. X&Y really didn't offer anything new that A Rush of Blood to the Head didn't do, it just gave us more well-written songs. With Brian Eno in the studio with them, I'm sure they have something new to offer.

Fiona Apple: I know, she only is supposed to release an album every 6 years. Given the unprecedented songwriting growth of When The Pawn and Extraordinary Machine, I hope I don't really have to wait until 2011 to see what happens next.

My Morning Jacket: Not only was Z a masterpiece critically, but I got the feeling this band was ready to breakthrough commercially. Are they going to be one of the rare indie word-of-mouth bands to be mainstream like the White Stripes did? We'll find out this June.

Sufjan Stevens: With Michigan, Seven Swans, and Illinois, he gave us three masterpieces in three years. Then he gave us two large leftover compilations in 2006. Then he surprisingly laid low in 2007. As for 2008, all I know are rumors about a Minnesota album and other rumors about giving up the state concept. If you are craving like I am, he did a wonderful cover of Bob Dylan's "Ring Them Bells" on the I'm Not There soundtrack. After that, to be continued...