I'm sure that somewhere in the 200 existing items there's
 at least one item devoted to mini album reviews but I
 couldn't find it, so..   ..new item.

 Heard anything fresh lately?  Rediscovered any long-lost
 treasures?  Stumble across a whole new type of music that's
 really got you excited?  Say a little about it here, please.

12 responses total.

I recently discovered a piece that I really like by a composer I
was only minimally aware of before: the Panae Lingua Mass by Josquin
de Prez. This came about from my music appreciation class (the one
for potential music majors, requiring some music-reading ability).
I've only heard the Kyrie so far, but the notes in the text said
that he based the whole Mass on this one folk tune. Excellent (in
my opinion) Renaissance music. I was previously only familiar with
his "El Grillo," "The Cricket," from singing it twice in high school choir.

 One of the side-effects of slowly unpacking into my new house is
 that I've been going through boxes of records that I haven't seen
 in a while.  At the same time, until I get to the boxes that hold
 them, some of my listening staples are still hidden away, waiting
 to be discovered in a few more days, or a week, or whenever I dig
 down to that box..

 Consequently, (a) I've been doing a lot of music listening as I
 putter around the house unpacking and taking care of other chores,
 and (b) I've been listening to some albums that I bought a while
 ago but had put away before I really got to know them.

 One such album that I purchased last year and somehow overlooked,
 that I've been really enjoying since unearthing it, is Gene Clark's
 "No Other."

 Released in 1974 (I think) and derided at the time for being
 over-produced and self-indulgent, time has been much kinder to "No
 Other" than to many of its contemporaries.  The critical reaction
 at the time is not without some basis.  Unquestionably "No Other"
 indulges in quite a bit of studio excess and Clark engaged a pretty
 large stable of session musicians, supplementing them occasionally
 with backup singers and string arrangements.  But he hangs all the
 trappings on a framework of some truly lovely songs, works that
 are capable of supporting the weight he layers upon them.

 Like many albums from the sixties and seventies the lyrics are
 occasionally a little dippy by modern standards but never cloyingly
 so.  In fact, the best moments on the album may come in the
 obscure-to-the-point-of-incoherence yet undeniably lovely "From a
 Silver Phial", a gentle number which relaxes a bit after the two
 epic-track candidates at the heart of the album, the title track
 "No Other" and the glorious "Strength of Strings" (which takes its
 title from a fragment of Dylan lyrics that Clark and his bandmates
 sang when he was with the Byrds.)

 The other standout track is the closer, the lovely "Lady of the North",
 which is the album's closest concession to the country-tinged folk
 sound (or was that a folk-tinged country sound?) that marked Clark's
 earlier post-Byrds work (solo, and with various musical partners.)

 This one triggers several McNally taste buds -- Byrds, country-rock,
 long-lost formerly-out-of-print classic with a cult following, and
 others besides, but I think I could recommend it without qualification
 to fans of the Sweetheart-era Byrds and also to fans of Neil Young's
 early seventies solo work, which is about the closest match I can
 think to compare against.

 re #1:  what time period and musical style would Josquin de Prez
 (or is the "s" a typo?  Joaquin?) be associated with?

I said; Renaissance. Pre-Reformation, I think. And no, I don't think it was a
typo.

Josquin des Prez, circa 1500.  I might have been gotten introduced to 
him via a recording of the Missa Pange Lingua by the Tallis Scholars
from the late 1980s or thereabouts; or maybe Leslie introduced 
me to him?  He's one of the early music composers who I gravitate
to when I find used CDs or library CDs; there is one other, and right
now his name is escaping me...
 
BBC Radio 3's overnight show, and the Composer of the Week feature,
tend to favor early music pieces, so two composers from similar 
periods I've gotten interested in are the Gabrielli brothers, and 
Tomas Luis de Victoria.

 A mini-mini review..  A disc I've been trying to give a fair shake
 that just hasn't been catching on with me is Scottish band Franz
 Ferdinand's second full-length LP, "You Could Have it So Much Better."
 I'd like to have it better, and I'd even settle for more of the same,
 but this new album is lacking in the super-catchy pop hooks that made
 their eponymous first album good fun, even if somewhat lightweight.
 The dreaded "sophomore slump" strikes again, I fear..

Having my book in front of me, the "Josquin" was not a typo (nor a mismemory),
but "Panae" rather than "Pange" was a mismemory. #5 spelled both correctly.

(I cheated and looked up the name of the Mass on Google.)

That's probably what I ought to have done, too.

It finally came to me: the other early music composer who I always 
gravitate towards is Heinrich Schutz.

... who is featured on BBC Radio 3's "Composer of the Week," this week.

Everybody's probably heard it already, but Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is a
recent favorite I keep playing. It seems to be influenced a lot by Talking
Heads, with some synths and toy piano thrown in to make some cool timbres.
The highlight is "Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth". The whole album was DIY,
apparently, produced, promoted, and distributed by the band itself. Hooray
for the internets.  :)

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