79 posts tagged “music”
The Love Language are from North Carolina, and these days that's almost enough for me. Seems like I love all the music coming out of North Carolina.
Somehow I missed these guys when they came to town, can't remember why. Too bad, because this song Lalita (from their debut album "The Love Language") must be great live. I can imagine the singer really hitting the "LA-li-ta" to start the chorus.
Unfortunately, this is one of many horribly lo-fi indie recordings this year (definitely a bad side effect of the ease of creating and releasing music these days -- badly engineered & mixed recordings). Still a great rocker...
Guess what? It's that time of year again, when all the lists of Bests come out. It's already December and I've gotten a lot of great new music recently, so I have to get going with my Songs of the Year. After all, this being 2009, of course there have to be year-end lists and decade-end lists.
And now, my first pick for 2009's best songs, and this might be the best of them all.
Don't ask me how to pronounce their name, but the band is Vetiver. I have no idea if anything else they've done is any good. (OK - I just checked out Tight Knit, the album this is on. Pretty good, but most of the songs are a bit too mellow.) I got this song in a free sampler from Amazon (a Sub Pop sampler - see image below). They played the Treasure Island festival this year, but Noah and I were too cold and didn't want to lose our seats on the bleachers, so we didn't walk over to the other stage to hear them.
Nonetheless, this is a great song. It's light & bouncy and if it doesn't make you happy, I don't know what song would. Enjoy...
Just saw a trailer for a documentary on Bill Withers called "Still Bill". Looks interesting. Unfortunately, doesn't seem like it has distribution to be in movie theaters any time soon. Check out possible screenings at the Still Bill Web site. Maybe it'll come to cable at some point...
Yet another reminder to complete my list of Top 100 Singers (on which Bill Withers is #43).
Here's some great singing and the best song ever to use the phrase Dad Gum-It:
I've just been reliving the Bon Iver concert I saw this week, through the magic of YouTube. (These videos are from the show on Tuesday.)
It was an incredible concert. Bon Iver have only made one album plus an EP, so I think they pretty much played everything in a short hourlong set, plus a really nice Graham Nash cover ("Simple Man"). I think they basically played everything as it is on the recordings, but the concert still felt live and loose, probably because the album is so tightly produced (one guy doing everything, after all).
The real reason the concert was better than I expected was the singing. Justin Vernon does all his singing in a high falsetto. It's really amazing when you see this very big
guy singing with that voice, and it's a little weird. Why doesn't he sing in his normal register? After all, he sounds really good when he does. Maybe it's because he's so good at the falsetto. Even live, he was hitting all those notes, and what's more, his backing band all sang harmony, sometimes in falsetto, sometimes not, and the blending was terrific.
The band seemed very appreciative of a great crowd (I got there late and was stuck near the very back, there were so many people). Vernon didn't talk much (he made clear why when he said talking between songs "is not my touche, er, forte") but made it feel like an intimate show with crowd participation on a couple songs.
The finale was a bluegrass/folk song, done with the openers Megafaun (which made me wish I'd heard their set):
For everyone with kids, or who just want to hear Disney music done well, Los Lobos just released a new CD of Disney songs. Includes a couple hits from movies (sounds like The Bare Necessities is the best song on the CD) and obscure songs from movies, and even more obscure songs from the theme parks (I think that's the song they play in the Haunted Mansion?)
Sounds good, but maybe a little too mellow -- seemed like The Bare Necessities is the only fast song on the whole album. They even slowed down I Wanna Be Like You, which they had done before, faster, on a Disney tribute album.
Just went through my calendar and found that, after a very slow summer, this is looking like a huge fall for concerts. Can't say I'll be attending all of these concerts, but here is my interest list as of now:
Looks like I'm going to be doing a lot of volunteering at the symphony store this fall/winter. That means I'm going to be hearing some great music, too.
Highlights include:
- 10/17: Itzhak Perlman plays Bach
- 2 Yo-Yo Ma concerts in January
- A couple of Mahler symphonies (1 and 5)
- Preservation Hall Jazz Band
- a pipe organ Xmas concert
...and more.
SF residents, you can still get tickets (except not for Yo-Yo Ma. He's sold out. Na Na.)
Last year, I heard somewhere the song "The Little Patton" by The Seedy Seeds and liked it a lot (enough to post it here -- amusingly, under the title 'I like this song' and I didn't remember that when I titled this post).
Last week, I was listening to a mix I had made of the best songs of 2008 and heard the song again and wondered to myself what The Seedy Seeds were up to now. I hadn't heard from them since that song, so I assume they haven't toured out to the west coast.
Anyway, coincidentally (a "plate of shrimp" moment), I got back from vacation and checked out the music blogs I hadn't looked at for a couple weeks and what should I find, but a new video/song from The Seedy Seeds. Good stuff.
They have a good Web site -- check it out here -- or you can follow them on Twitter (@theseedyseeds). Here's the video:
Coldplay just released a video for one of my favorite songs from the last album, Strawberry Swing.
It appears to have been created with just a giant blackboard, colored chalk, and Chris Martin lying on the blackboard in various positions. Must have taken forever to do, but so worth it...
I just read some exciting news on the music front about a couple bands I love.
First, the new Kings of Convenience record is finally coming, set for release at the end of September. They also plan to tour, and if you're in the mood for a classic folk music concert, where the artists make clever chit-chat between songs and answer to called-out song requests from the enraptured audience, I encourage your attendance. (They also make good music live.) For those who don't know, Kings of Convenience are a mellow mostly-acoustic duo from Norway who specialize in delicate harmonies and warm love songs (but not in a boring way, really).
Here's a taste of new music:
The 2nd piece of news I got today was word that Field Music are back together (who even knew they'd broken up?) and planning a new album. Seems a little further from existence than KoC, but hopefully will arrive before too long. I really loved their last album, Tones of Town, which featured this song:
