Two albums released last week (both which have awesome album art) that have been in my rotation these past few days, Muse’s The Resistance and Kid Cudi’s Man on the Moon.

I was most excited for The Resistance because Muse is, at least according to my last.fm charts,  my #2 favorite band. They were at one point my most listened to band until the Decemberists took that spot because of their Hazards of Love album. But turns out, the album isn’t all that great. It has some great songs, my favorite being Uprising, but this isn’t the Muse I feel in love with. Not that it’s bad. I like it to an extent, but it just doesn’t have the lasting appeal as their previous albums.

Kid Cudi’s new album surprised me a bit since I wasn’t expecting to get it. But it was cheap on Amazon and since I had enough credit left over to get the album for about $.20, I figured why not? I like Day ‘n Night enough, and Make Her Say is a fun song. I love the song Dat New ‘New,’ but I was disappointed that it wasn’t on the album (and I can’t find it anywhere but YouTube). Anyways, the album is fastly growing on me. I can’t always stand his mono-tone style of rapping (big reason why I don’t like rap as much as rock), but the beats and the unique sound has me hooked. I haven’t been this impressed by a new hip-hop album since I first heard Lupe Fiasco. It’s surprisingly being listened to more than Muse’s album.

This year’s been pretty decent in music I must say. I wasn’t anticipating anything this year, but the addition of Muse’s decent-enough release and Kid Cudi’s Man On the Moon and the releases earlier this year, it’s been a nice surprise.