The Swell Season - Strict Joy

The Swell Season's Oscar winning song "Falling Slowly" is one of the more beautiful love songs I've had the pleasure of listening to while staring dreamily out a rain sluiced car window. It's been a while since I've listened to this song, but that is at it should be. I've overplayed too many songs I find beautiful and emotionally compelling, and they lose their impact for when they might be more needed. "Falling Slowly" is not currently loaded onto my I-tunes and I think I shall leave it that way until the song becomes a situational necessity. If you are not familiar with this song, download it at once.

I was aware this album had come out and meant to purchase it during my next music supplementing visit to Easy Street Records. Before that happened, I chanced to hear an interview on NPR that increased my interest in this album, not just because they played excerpts from some lovely songs, but because the interview included some painfully intimate moments from Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. The brief story of their relationship is that they both starred in the poignant musical "Once". They had a relationship, it died, they continued on to make their second album.

The part I remember most from this interview was a moment where the interviewer asked Glen who these songs were about - clearly expecting him to name Marketa, which he did. Marketa exclaimed that she didn't know that. I believe that we are all voyeurs, and generally I think we feel secretly ashamed of this and often, unable to control it. However, during this interview, I felt priveledged to be a rubbernecker to someone's emotional hurt. Both Glen and Marketa opened themselves up frankly and without rancour during the interview, and I felt that it was their choice to let us in so that their art was better understood. I recommend going to the NPR website, where you can listen to this revealing interview (not salaciously revealing, but one of those wonderful moments that make you feel that you are allowed into a talented person's emotional landscape and it opens the music and it's meaning to you...sort of like a drop of water opening up a scotch in a way that enhances the flavor of the scotch to a better understanding of its complexities. Heh. Whatever. Maybe that's a dumb analogy.)

Either way, this is a beautiful, low key album. I recommend it, back story or no.

The Cave Singers - Welcome Joy

My current favorite album. I heard one of these songs on the radio, and knew immediately that I wanted the entire album. I was perfectly correct in that assumption, as, once bought, I found that every song on the album was wanted. On The Cave Singer's label's (Matador) website, they describe the Welcome Joy as "deliciously atumnal" which is apt. It's one of those albums that makes me feel like everything is going to be all right, and a crisp fall day infuses me with that same full feeling of gratitude and wholeness. There's something warm, optimistic and hopeful about the album. There are standout songs and some are more rollicking than others, but every song has a quality that blends it cohesively to the whole of the album. Welcome Joy's only fault might be that the songs blend too well at times. Stand outs for me are: Leap and Hen of the Woods (Hen of the Woods is, I think, my favorite - it is achingly beautiful) but every song is outstanding and having a favorite is like being given the delightful choice of which type of pie you would like best for dessert.

The Fleet Foxes 2008 album, Fleet Foxes, has a clear influence, as the folk inflected songs here are also strong on harmonies and melody. However, while the Fleet Foxes album was studied and intricate, Welcome Joy has a spontaneity to it's warmth that allows it to be merely influenced by Fleet Foxes, taking a similar asthetic then following forks and bumps along different branches.

Like Hematite

Something is wrong today. My limbs and my central nervous system - while admitting a past acquaintance with each other - are not currently speaking. I don't care how rigorously my heart is pumping vital life force to my arms and legs, they are deaf to the encouragement and apparently incapable of peeling themselves back up from the couch after I got home from November's CD spree and plopped myself down upon it. I believe it to be the particular plight of a relatively new government worker unaccustomed to random holidays in the middle of the week, such as Veteran's Day, and the narcotic effects of such. Still, something feels wrong today because each of my limbs have taken upon the density of hematite.

Today I bought my first Beatles album. Ever. I am a mildly music obsessed thirty-one year old and I did not own a Beatles album. I bought The White Album because of the bitching album artwork. I WILL play it. I will play BOTH CDs. MORE THAN ONCE. But not today. It seems too much to ask a girl to buy AND listen to my first ever Beatle's album on the same day. It would seem like I CARED or that I was RELENTING in my avowed indifference to them. I thought about picking up Bob Dylan's Christmas album today too, but I will wait to buy that, and Tori's Christmas album, after Thanksgiving. Since I get wildly angry every time I hear Christmas music in stores before Thanksgiving, purchasing two Christmas albums on November 11 would have been tantamount to gathering together everything that is pure and holy and pouring pig's blood over it at the prom. But the two albums are on my to-buy list, since my next CD shopping spree is necessarily a couple paychecks away, which places it firmly post-Thanksgiving. I must be getting old. I'm putting Christmas albums on my list.

Twenty-five Kick-ass Exercise Songs
1. Cobrastyle - Robyn
2. Stronger - Kanye West
3. That's Not My Name - The Ting Tings
4. Wishing Well - The Airborne Toxic Event
5. Help, I'm Alive - Metric
6. Atlas - Battles
7. Mausam & Escape - A.R. Rahman (even with wierd folksy beginning)
8. Firestarter - Prodigy
9. Just Can't Get Enough - Depeche Mode
10. Game Set and Match - The Herbaliser
11. California Uber Alles - Dead Kennedys
12. Letter From An Occupant - The New Pornographers
13. I'm So Excited - Le Tigre
14. Boyz - M.I.A.
15. Heartbeats - The Knife
16. Diablo Rojo - Rodrigo Y Gabriela
17. Blind - Hercules and Love Affair
18. Dancing With Myself -Billy Idol
19. Dr. Yang - Ben Folds
20. Touches You - Mika
21. Shut the Club Down - Girl Talk
22. Womanizer - Britney Spears
23. Big Pimpin' - Jay-Z and UGK
24. Don't Ask Me - Public Image Ltd.
25. Finally - Ce Ce Penington