This recording of a special performance by the ever-wonderful Peter Broderick is the perfect thing to accompany you as you drift off. It's kind of like he's using his loop pedal on different emotions, rather than sounds. It's also about an hour long, so there's no rush to it whatsoever, and it is meant to be played to your sleeping self too. See here for more details. And if you're the kind who falls asleep in minutes, here's my favourite song of his. Peter Broderick - Games Again
Arcade Fire - A Change is Gonna Come {Sam Cooke, live} This song, in all its incarnations, is beautiful and peaceful and angry all at once. It comes over you like a hot summer's night, lit only by a crescent moon, warm and close and insistent. I know this is an old cover, but I rediscovered the original recently, and it feels good to listen to, like a different understanding of the same experience.
This is a tribute to Arcade Fire by some students from the University of Guelph, and I really can't stress how fun it is. I particularly love the 'underneath the covers' bit. { via }
Ava Luna - Black Diamond I We employ several workers here at the Torture Garden. Mostly they do heavy labour, the kind of stuff I can't do myself: changing the titles of the latest post, handing letters to one another, suddenly child-sized in scale. They're the ones who painted the banner from my design, and hoisted it up with ropes and ladders, fitting it to the top there. They sort out the electricity and the heating (it gets cold here sometimes, especially lately), and they deliver the t-shirts and hoodies. They even look after me [...]
Inlets - Bright Orange Air So, I've moved house, and I know live even closer to the sea than before. I only mention this because this song has that kind of air to it - an odd mix of the beauty nature has to offer and the mundane practicalities of human invention. A little like looking at the the open empty sea by night, and noticing a helicopter in the distance, a single skipping white light, like a pebble thrown over the waves. Inlets ' debut album is finally here, and it's called [...]
Last week, Owen Pallett played a concert in London's Union Chapel, with the following super special guest: Sam Amidon, Nico Muhly, and Beth Orton. It was super special. They played a new song by Beth Orton, which sounds as fine and affecting as wind in your hair - this song is the one above. They also played one of my favourite folk songs ever, ' Sugar Baby ' - preceded by an odd rendition of a German folk song. This stuff is all as good as it sounds, and clearly, it sounds very good.
There are two Haiti benefit concerts in Dublin over the next few days. The first is a concert/cake sale in The Twisted Pepper this Thursday, featuring the very solid line-up of Bats, Groom, and Hunter-Gatherer. All the proceeds go to GOAL, who are working to provide aid in the aftermath of the quake. The whole thing starts at 7pm. Hunter-Gatherer - Nerve-Ending Love One week later, in Vicar Street, is another benefit - this time aiming to draw attention to the absurdity of Haiti's debt to other countries, and the [...]
I think I'd almost forgotten what an amazing song it is. The National will release their new album in May, accompanied by dates in London, Paris and Berlin. You can read more here .
The Cloud Room - Hey Now Now I read somewhere that this song was written over one horrible week, while the singer waited on the results of an HIV test, and his doctor flew abroad on holiday. I'm not sure if it's true, but it sounds about right: this whole song is about worrying things better, wishing for the good things in your honest little life not to be outweighed by anything else, and wishing it so bad that you'll do anything. As Internet-era songs go, this is an oldie but a goodie. [...]
Mount Eerie with Julie Doiron and Fred Squire - Grave Robbers This is a guest post by Jamie of the previously-mentioned great band The Last Dinosaur , in which he talks a little bit about his favourite album of his recent years. In this digital age I've found myself longing for the days where, on the long bus journey to college, I would deliberately sit alone, pushing the mini-disc player headphones into my ears, [...]
The Luyas The Luyas - Spherical Mattress This is because I have heard their new record, and it is fantastic. Their debut, Faker Death , I have already praised as one of my favourite albums of the decade , and they haven't disappointed with the follow-up. They've grown more comfortable with their unique sound (horn, drums, mumbly singing and moodswinger) and figured out the best kind of songs to [...]
I may be obsessing over Heartland a little, but it's all I'm listening to at the moment - when I'm not working on this mammoth songs-of-the-decade list. That'll be here soon, and then we'll get back to normal, non-list-based writing.
{This review was recently published on State } Final Fantasy - The Great Elsewhere (FM4) There are a couple of good reasons why Owen Pallett isn't one of the most popular artists in the world. His former moniker, Final Fantasy, rendered him a little un-Googleable, and marked him as overly nerdy from the outset. He titled his last record He Poos Clouds . And up until now, his [...]
So here we are, my favourite songs of the year. What be they? How sound them? All is revealed. I think what strikes me about the music of the last twelve months is the blizzard of originality. An awful lot of new sounds were made. It's a little like the melting-pot at the centre of western music worked very well this year, because a lot of these songs have influences that are wide and disparate. Is this list, taken as a whole, better than that of 2008? I think it just might be. But only just. The artwork is what [...]
Final Fantasy - E is for Estranged (live, FM4 Session) As of yesterday, Heartland is now available to buy online. There's a lot to this album, apart from it having just set the standard for 2010 exceptionally high. While I'll be going on and on about the music at a later date, the album has a storyline that's worth a closer look. "Spectrum! Is anything more beautiful than failure?" Essentially, Heartland is about a fictional world, by the [...]
Richard Reed Parry - Music Boxie #6 Multi-instrumentalist, noisemaker, and all-round nice guy Richard Reed Parry {of Bell Orchestre and Arcade Fire} is the man responsible for some of my favourite moments in song over the last decade, and will probably continue that trend into the next. He was also nice enough to talk a little bit about some of the music he enjoyed in 2009. Here it is. Clues - Clues [...]
Now that this harsh Irish winter has caught up with my end of the country, I figure it's time to come up with a soundtrack that properly matches the blue and white blanket of colour that seems to be covering everything. Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal Spokane - Proud Graduates Peter Broderick - Games Again Uzi & Ari - Don't Black Out Taxi! Taxi! - Belle Winter Aid - The Painting Golden Holy - Sons [...]
Yes, this is a little late, but it doesn't really matter anymore. I've made some very slight changes to the list - some songs I lost interest in after a while, some I moved around, but the top thirty have remained the same. 2009 has been a good year for music, perhaps better than its predecessor, but these songs take some beating. I think the best thing to do is to stream the tracks while reading. Or just download them all, whatever's good for you. All the rather lovely artwork for this list is by Anika , who also [...]
{Guest post by Gemma } The strings take a deep breath, the piano tiptoes in, and after a moment the singer begins. Or really, continues; Funeral starts mid-sentence, the hushed conversation with another is already well underway by the time we've wandered into earshot. They're making plans to run away, these two, and plans for the plan just in case. It's a lover's conspiracy we're overhearing, and though we're welcome to listen in - co-conspirators for now - they mean to see it through with [...]
Following our tradition on this blog, I've waited till after the whole wonderful Christmas experience is over to start finishing artwork and writing up lists. Following from this, it's entirely possible you've had enough of lists and countdowns, but I doubt it. I don't present this list as an absolute and exact account of the best music of the decade; that would be silly. But these are the albums that meant most to me, and in the decade where I moved from listening to albums to favouring songs, they meant a lot. There are three more lists coming [...]
Yeasayer – Odd Blood (Review)
TOUR: The Tallest Man On Earth Announces U.S. Dates
New Releases V2.9
[mp3] Joanna Newsom - "Kingfisher"
Hot Chip: One Life Stand
