currently listening

It's been way too long since I've posted anything here but it's been an incredibly busy last 6 months. Luckily, that means there are some exciting things that will be coming down the pipeline and the stable of bloggable nonsense will be cleared in fairly short order.

Some incredible albums have come across my path since I last posted here. I don't know if you guys have all gotten hooked up with Spotify yet but, if not, it is definitely worth checking out. It's a bit easier for me to get all down with it since most of my music consumption happens while either working at my desk or out hoofing it at various speeds in the city of Austin.

Do you guys all know the Bedroom Community label out of Reykjavik? I first heard about it when a friend hipped me to Nico Muhly's album, Mothertongue, but they've got an entire roster of really incredible artists as well (Sam Amidon is one of my other favorites). In any case, they just released their first collaboration with a new artist named Puzzle Muteson. He's a singer/songwriter from the Isle of Wight and his first album, En Garde, has some of the most intimate music I think I've ever heard (this side of Doveman). Listen to "Glover" when he sings, "I swear...I'll find a gun," and you know he's probably not talking about using it on somebody else (or at least that's what I'm reading in to it). It's weird to hear that notion spoken out loud but it just goes to show that he's willing to let you all the way into his psyche. Nico provides orchestrations which work to lift the sometimes-bleak lyrics into a hopeful optimism and the album as a whole is really good.

Also worth checking out is the gorgeous video for the title track. It starts out very close-in and then swells into a beautiful, passionate release of emotion. Love love love this album.

The Fleet Foxes finally came out with a new album, you guys! But...damn...it was worth the wait, right? The title track for Helplessness Blues contains maybe some of my favorite lyrics ever:

I was raised up believin' I was somehow unique

Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes

Unique in each way you can see

And now after some thinkin' I'd say I'd rather be

A functioning cog in some great machinery

Serving something beyond me

Listen for yourself.

I've often said that my musical tastes don't run a gamut. They are either what people would call "sophisticated" (via lyrical content or maybe, you know, the fact that I'm a composer) or "trashy" (I have seen Ke$ha twice...and am unrepentant about it). Well, Beyonce's new album be some classy trash up in here...or maybe some trashy classiness. I don't care. You figure it out...because when "Start Over" drops off the map around 2'45" and subsequently erupts I am unable to pay attention to anything else. Then when the producer fills in the high end with some bitchin' piano licks I start to think it's just classy.

I've mentioned Twin Cities singer/songwriter Adam Svec here more than a lot of other musicians and I was really excited to see that his new album, Weaks In The Waves, came out this year. It's definitely a next step for him. This isn't to say that his previous two albums weren't good...because they definitely were ("Breaking Strings" will always be a favorite of mine)...it's just that there's a real "finished product" sheen coming off this one.

I have so many favorite songs on this album but "Chariot Swinging Low and Mean" has this running guitar part that I love which eventually spills over into a duet between Adam and singer Karen Salter. Then there's "Choir Robes." Whenever I feel homesick for the Midwest I pop this track on: "Cause when I'm lost, I will haunt them all/Cause what I found in these things is beautiful". It's a simple observation, to be sure...but it's also something that people rarely have the presence of mind to say; and I'm grateful there's somebody like Adam to remind us of these things every now and then.

I know this next album is two years old now...but I had never heard it until just recently. Damn. By the time "Cosmic Love" becomes the hurricane it eventually does I'm glad there's the album they just released I can listen to when I get sick of Lungs.

I'm a Death Cab for Cutie completist. To date they're the only band I've seen three times (in progressively smaller venues). The first single off of Codes and Keys was pretty good ("You Are a Tourist") but I think I love the simplicity of "St. Peter's Cathedral" and where it eventually goes even more.

And now a huge mea culpa: I had no idea how amazing Björk was until her most recent album, Biophilia, came out. I think I used to dismiss her music because some of those lyrics don't always make sense and I thought it was more fun to be sarcastic about that than actually listen. What seems to have turned me around on this album is her use of a bunch of obscure and interesting instruments. During "Thunderbolt" she actually plays a Tesla coil. I know that's been done before...but not like this (to my knowledge). "Crystalline" features something called a "gameleste" which Wikipedia tells me is a celesta modified with elements from a gamelan. Then there's the creepy organ part in "Hollow" that I will be looking for a way to steal.

As I mentioned with the Florence + The Machine album, I'm glad there's a deep well waiting for me to wade through once I get sick of Biophilia (not that that is going to happen any time soon).

Mahalo.