Late last month after the ol' paycheck came through I hurried on down to Sonic Boom and purchased a few new CDs.

The first one I picked out was "None Shall Pass" by rapper Aesop Rock. I decided to get it after hearing the fantastic first single (which the album is named after) on both KEXP and Relevant.TV and I've been a little disappointed in the album. There are some good songs and I definitely like Aesop's very flowing style, but there is a lot of swearing (it's my first hip hop CD with this much swearing since the Beastie Boys 10 years ago) and the songs are not as upbeat and positive as my last several hip-hop purchases. This has caused me to debate whether swearing is acceptable in some music (since I have generally put up with swearing in rock music) but not in others. But I think most swearing that appears in rock is much more subtle and often not as offensive as the swearing in rap. Rock also doesn't usually have the sheer volume of swear words that a lot of rap does. I'll definitely have to think some more about this.

My next choice was a sale item "The Shepherd's Dog" by Iron and Wince which has quickly become one of my favorite albums of the year. It is very mellow with a bunch of different sounding instruments. The song writing is genius and the words, though seemingly cryptic, always do a great job of conveying a very clear image. This album has been on heavy rotation on the iPod since day 1--good stuff. (Interestingly, there is some a couple swear words on this album and I just realized I hadn't hardly given it a thought!)

Finally, I decided to get the newly released DVD of the "Unplugged in New York" performance by Nirvana. This is a pretty "nostalgia heavy" purchase as this was one of my favorite CD's from about 7th grade through high school. The DVD is awesome and has great production. I especially enjoy some of the conversation between songs which was not included on the CD version. (There's definitely swearing on this DVD and it does bother me a little, but it's still nothing compared to the amount of swearing on "None Shall Pass")