He doesn’t have a great voice, but he can write some amazing songs. Bright Eyes, more formally known as Conor Oberst, knows how to get his emotion out through his music and that’s hard not to dig. If the brakeman turns my way is a great example of Oberst songwriting so click the link and check it out!
If the brakeman turns my way is on Cassadaga. Don’t miss it!
Really impressive album that I discovered through NPR Music Tiny Desk Concerts, click the link to listen The Decemberists live performance, you can also download the concert as a mp3-file here and buy the album The King Is Dead
This is quoted straight from Wikipedia if you want to know more about The Decemberists.
The Decemberists are an indie folk rock band from Portland, Oregon, United States, fronted by singer/songwriter Colin Meloy. The other members of the band are Chris Funk (guitar, multi-instrumentalist), Jenny Conlee (hammond organ, accordion, melodica, piano, keyboards, harmonica), Nate Query (bass guitar,string bass), and John Moen (drums, backing vocals, melodica, guitar).
People who follow this humble blog know I’m a fan of Ryan Adams and his band The Cardinals. Adams is a very prolific songwriter so it’s remarkable his output can be of such high quality. This year he released an album consisting of “leftover songs” called III/IV and it’s absolutely amazing.
III/IV is a rockier album but has so many hooks and great choruses your head’s spinning. It might actually be his best album so far, up there with Demolition. It’s definitely appearing frequently in my iPhone playlist anyway (great music for the gym). Breakdown Into The Resolve will give you a good taste of the album!
Buy Ryan Adams and the Cardinals III/IV here
Jun 2
I found a great post on literary love letters to New York. Especially like this excerpt from one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, Let the Great World Spin
“The city lived in a sort of everyday present. It had no need to believe in itself as a London, or an Athens, or even a signifier of the New World, like a Sydney, or a Los Angeles. No, the city couldn’t care less about where it stood. He had seen a T-shirt once that said: NEW YORK FUCKIN’ CITY. As if it were the only place that ever existed and the only one that ever would. New York kept going forward precisely because it didn’t give a good goddamn about what it had left behind.”
I also enjoyed Underworld
“Longing on a large scale is what makes history. This is just a kid with a local yearning but he is part of an assembling crowd, anonymous thousands off the buses and trains, people in narrow columns tramping over the swing bridge above the river, and even if they are not a migration or a revolution, some vast shaking of the soul, they bring with them the body heat of a great city and their own small reveries and desperations, the unseen something that haunts the day — men in fedoras and sailors on shore leave, the stray tumble of their thoughts, going to a game.”
And there’s of course countless songs about New York, my favorite ones being Empire State of Mind
May 19
Beautiful album cover on Bon Iver‘s new album which by the way is great. You can buy it here
Yes, this is what I firmly believe and I’m reminded of that after seeing this beautiful clip of Paul Simon making Rayna Ford’s dream come true. This is what they wrote on the NPR blog:
“Paul Simon has brought joy to so many for so long, but on this night he made Rayna Ford’s dream come true. During a show in Toronto on May 7, Rayna Ford, a fan from Newfoundland, called out for Simon to play “Duncan,” and said something to the effect that she learned to play guitar on the song. In a moment of astonishment and disbelief, Paul Simon invited her on stage, handed her a guitar and asked her to play it for the crowd. When she strapped on the guitar, the audience went crazy. In a few strums, the band played along, tears ran down Rayna Ford’s cheeks and Simon stood by her side in smiles.
It was an absolute moment of sobbing joy for Ford and for the crowd. It was a moment so beautiful, so human, it could almost be a story in a Paul Simon song. Excuse me while I wipe my own tears. Go Rayna and all the Raynas out there with dreams. As the song says:
Oh, oh, what a night
Oh, what a garden of delight
Even now that sweet memory lingers
I was playing my guitar
Lying underneath the stars
Just thanking the Lord
For my fingers,
For my fingers”
We watched the Eurovision Song Contest yesterday (well, I had one eye on the amazing Murray vs Djokovic match of course) and it wasn’t as bad as I usually think it is. I guess the question on everybody’s minds right now is how to spell Azerbaijan and how this rather poor country should be able to afford hosting this massive earache event.
Anyway, while you google Azerbaijan I’ll let you listen to this fantastic song by British singer Adele. I don’t normally “do” ballads, that’s more Lenah‘s thing, but this is special. Just compare it to all the screaming ballads in the Eurovision Song Contest, and tell me if this isn’t better by miles.
By the way, Adele does a fantastic acoustic set in the Tiny Desk Concert series I wrote about in a previous post.
Today it’s Sunday. Tomorrow it’s Monday. So make the most of today and enjoy it with your loved ones. (And remember Mondays don’t always have to be so bad, if they are, maybe it’s time for some kind of change?)
Josh Ritter performs a great Dylanesque song on NPR Music Tiny Desk Concerts. Love the narrative feel to it and the bittersweet love theme. Ritter found himself in the spotlight in 2006 after the hit song “Kathleen” but I haven’t heard much from him since then. This is a great performance though.
The Temptation of Adam
If this was the Cold War we could keep each other warm
I said on the first occasion that I met Marie
We were crawling through the hatch that was the missile silo door
And I don’t think that she really thought that much of me
I never had to learn to love her like I learned to love the Bomb
She just came along and started to ignore me
As we waited for the Big One
I started singing her my songs
And I think she started feeling something for me
We passed the time with crosswords that she thought to bring inside
What five letters spell “apocalypse” she asked me
I won her over saying “W.W.I.I.I.”
We smiled and we both knew that she’d misjudged me
Oh Marie it was so easy to fall in love with you
It felt almost like a home of sorts or something
And you would keep the warhead missile silo good as new
And I watched you with my thumb above the button
Then one night you found me in my army issue cot
And you told me of your flash of inspiration
You said fusion was the broken heart that’s lonely’s only thought
And all night long you drove me wild with your equations
Oh Marie do you remember all the time we used to take
Makin’ love and then ransack the rations
I think about you leaving now and the avalanche cascades
And my eyes get washed away in chain reactions
Oh Marie if you would stay then we could stick pins in the map
Of all the places where you thought that love would be found
But I would only need one pin to show where my love’s at
In a top secret location three hundred feet under the ground
We could hold each other close and stay up every night
Looking up into the dark like it’s the night sky
And pretend this giant missile is an old oak tree instead
And carve our name in hearts into the warhead
Oh Marie there’s something tells me things just won’t work out above
That our love would live a half-life on the surface
So at night while you are sleeping
I hold you closer just because
As our time grows short I get a little nervous
So I think about the Big One, W.W.I.I.I.
Would we ever really care the world had ended
You could hold me here forever like you’re holding me tonight
I think about that great big button and I’m tempted
May 13
Interesting soundscapes from this London duo called Mount Kimbie. Weird cover on their latest album (Crooks and Lovers) though :)
When I lived in Washington, D.C. and worked as a radio reporter for Talk Radio News Service, I didn’t have neither TV nor Internet in my Arlington apartment. Internet wasn’t the necessity then that it is now of course, but it was my decision to stay away from it because I wanted minimum distractions to be able to focus on writing and reading.
I don’t know how many books I read during that time, but for sure it was the most intense reading period of my life and it enriched me far more than I thought possible. I tried to focus on American politics and history, because after all that was what I was working with, but I also read plenty of fiction, everything from Stephen King (his book On Writing, is still one of the best books on writing) to the flowing Portugese of José Saramago and since I was working in the news world I also spent a lot of time reading newspapers, New York Times, Washington Post, and of course others.
Besides reading I also listened, and here comes the point of this post, to radio. I was never a big radio fan before, but at that time I started to understand the power and the beauty of the medium. Because with radio, especially talk radio, you focus more than with TV and you’re not stuck zapping between channels trying to find something worth your while (you rarely do).
It was during that time I came across NPR Music and the fantastic show: “All Songs Considered”. In the show two music enthusiasts, Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton play their favorite tunes and live recordings from around the country and if you’re passionate about music and different kinds of music, then this is an amazing show to listen to.
A lot has changed since I started listening to All Songs Considered, but Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton is still there, playing great tunes and showcasing the great richness of music to everyone with open ears. Now you can also watch their Tiny Desk Concerts where they invite famous and up-and-coming artists to showcase their work. It’s fantastic so check it out here.
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