2010 Music Preview from KCRW’s Music Librarian Eric J Lawrence

KCRW Music Librarian and DJ Eric J Lawrence(Sun, mid-3am) sees it all. His “office” is filled with postal bins of hundreds of CDs from all around the world – hand-sharpied demos, releases for labels big and small – just about everything. He listens to them ALL. Every CD gets a chance because you never know when you might hear the next Jesca Hoop. Speaking of, we’re already spinning tracks from some hotly anticipated albums of 2010, Jesca’s included, and here’s Eric take on what to look out for:

“In past decades, there has always seemed to be a slow start to the year’s music releases but 2010 looks to prove the exception, as a flood of highly-anticipated albums come rushing out in the first few weeks of the new year!

We’ve already been spinning tracks from some of these new CDs, including songs from Hot Chip (the single “One Life Stand” shows off impressive songwriting skills, as well as the danceable grooves they’re known for), Spoon (they haven’t put out a bad album yet and we don’t expect them to start now), Vampire Weekend (the frenetic “Cousins” is a favorite and they’ll be one of our first live guests on MBE next year!), Broken Bells (a genius collaboration between Danger Mouse and The Shin’s James Mercer. You can hear a preview here), Massive Attack and Charlotte Gainsbourg (produced by Beck!), to name but a few. Stereogumhas a great list of additional records to keep an eye on. (a new Avalanches record?!? We hope it’s true, even though it takes an extraordinarily long time to clear their sample-based tracks.)

I’ll be filling in for Jason Bentley on “Morning Becomes Eclectic” next Wednesday, 12/30, while he takes a much-deserved holiday break and I’ll be featuring a bunch of tracks from many of these forthcoming albums, including a few you just might not have heard on-air yet, including sneak-peaks at the new releases from Midlake (first album from these Texans in over 3½ years!) and Badly Drawn Boy (again making spectacular music inspired by film)

ERIC J. LAWRENCE