if you can drink tap water and breathe the air

Because of my job, I've been listening to my iPod at least eight hours a day, five days a week, and my need for a constant flow of new music is growing exponentially. Unfortunately, even with a ton of new stuff to listen to I still find myself with musical ADD, skipping around and eventually giving up and choosing to shuffle my whole library. I've been trying to make myself focus more and actually process the stuff in my New Music playlist; we'll see how it goes. Anyway, here's one album so far that's kept me from breaking a window to escape my corporate desk job.

Atmosphere, When Life Gives You Lemons, You Pain That Shit Gold

I had a great time at his show when Atmosphere recently came through SLC, and it's taken me a while to get to this album (after his show I got distracted by the Glow In The Dark tour, and the only hip-hop I listened to was Kanye, Lupe and N.E.R.D. for weeks), but I'm really enjoying it. What I'd heard of him before this had mostly been too serious and dry for my tastes, but on Lemons he finds a lightness and bounce without losing the smart grit in his words. A few of the slower tracks don't have beats interesting enough to carry the dourness, but one of my favorites on the CD is 'Guarantees,' a depressing snapshot of a song that's carried solely by meandering acoustic guitar and Slug's voice. Throughout the album he's at the top of his game lyrically, drawing you in to stories of normal-yet-heroic working-class America, and it's like drinking a tall glass of lemonade: sour but refreshing.