another couple months have passed by, so it’s time to once again bring you two in review. i’ve talked before about how music tends to come in waves. 2012 has begun with a wave that hasn’t crested. the last couple months have produced an incredible amount of great music. the bad news is that has forced me to leave a lot of great music off this list. the potential good news (i say potential because i might not have time to do it) is that i’m considering creating a b-sides styles mix of the stuff that didn’t make this mix. so, i hope you enjoy.

here’s the lineup for the march/april edition of two in review:

several weeks ago, brandi carlile announced she’d be releasing her 4th (studio) album, bear creek, on june 5. last summer, while seeing her in kansas city, i grabbed a live recording of raise hell, a track that will be included on the new release. while that was a bit of a tease of her new work, we now have something much better.

over the course of this week, i’ll be posting my annual best of lists. as a complete list nerd, this is my favorite time of the year here on the ol’ blog. here’s the lists i’ll be posting:

yesterday (tuesday): best new music discoveries
today: cover songs
tomorrow (thursday): songs
friday: albums

i assume that if you don’t love a good cover, then you must hate america. they’re great. while there’s a whole lot of bad covers, there’s always a good list (my initial list before narrowing them down was about 48 songs) of great cover songs each year. from youtube sensations to old country singers trying something new, here’s my list of 2011′s best cover songs:

last night at the starlight theater in kansas city, christen and i had the pleasure of seeing a concert we’ve wanted to see for a very long time: brandi carlile (opening) and ray lamontagne. as expected, it was amazing. we saw brandi last year in new orleans (as the headliner) and it was, without a doubt, one of the top 1 or 2 concerts we’ve ever been to. we can now add last night’s concert to that select list.

for the first time. in almost 8 years. christen and i are going on a proper(ish) vacation.

without children.

yes friends, we’re escaping. we’ve somehow brainwashed my parents into believing that they’d have a good time if our children stayed with them for 3 days (yeah, it’s a relatively brief vacation, but we take what we can get…). they bit and we’ll be dropping them off and heading to kansas city for a few days. (we’re very thankful for them and our kids are super excited…and i think my parents are also.)

as many of you know (and i’ve been meaning to blog about it for those who do not…), we moved into a new house a few weeks ago and we’re loving it. we have double the space, a big backyard and the house is just beautiful.

one of the not-so-great things is that the girls have had a hard time adjusting to bedtime in their new bedroom upstairs. it’s not really that they’re scared, but actually, that they love their room (and playroom) so much that they just don’t want to go to sleep every night. since being here, we’ve had a couple nights that we literally spent 2 hours from the time they got in bed until they were actually sleeping. it’s been incredibly frustrating.