Sufjan Stevens: All Delighted People
Posted by Troy | Filed under Music
Last week Sufjan Stevens dropped this surprise new EP.
The first new music he’s released (besides the instrumental soundtrack to Sufjan’s art film The BQE) in five years.
Five years!
Tags: Music, sufjan stevens
Brandi Carlile Live at Interlochen
Posted by Troy | Filed under Music
Last night we took our 8-yr-old daughter to her first real concert… she is a totally right-brained kid who loves art and music so I knew she’d love it and I had been looking forward to this for a really long time.
Since I’d seen Brandi Carlile last summer I knew she’d be a great first-concert experience for my daughter… and of course I was right.
The evening opened up with a pretty decent performance from The Watson Twins. I’d have to say the highlight of their show was their two covers, “Ain’t No Sunshine,” and “Just Like Heaven.”
Of course those happen to be two of my all-time-top-ten favorite songs, ones of such magnificence that I’d get emotional even if Rosie O’Donnell was performing them.
The twins did much better than Rosie would though and their Neil-Young-Cripple-Creek-Fairy take on The Cure was pretty dang cool. (check out the not-quite-as-hippie version in my playlist)
But when Brandi took the stage it was like time stopped.
Tags: brandi carlile, concerts, Music, original illustration
Lost in the Trees: All Alone in an Empty House
Posted by Troy | Filed under Music
Anytime genres clash I get excited.
Mixing classical music with rock & roll isn’t anything new, but I’ve never heard it done quite like this.
Lost in the Trees new album
The songs are written from that diaphanous place between heartbreak and new life, consistently wavering from despair to hopefulness.
Sadness reigns through most the lyric, but it is the music that reminds us… the future just might be better, or o.k. at least, or even (if you’re lucky)… good.
Tags: Lost in the Trees, Music
Arcade Fire: The Suburbs
Posted by Troy | Filed under Music
I really like Coldplay.
Some might think I’m an indie rock snob, but the fact is that I still like Coldplay and U2 and Weezer and B.O.B. and Alicia Keys and Smashing Pumpkins and The Beatles and Pearl Jam and Stevie Wonder and a ton of other world-touring radio-friendly artists.
So I really like Coldplay a lot.
But I really don’t think everything needs to sound just like Coldplay.
Tags: arcade fire, Music
Best Coast: Crazy for You
Posted by Troy | Filed under Music
I’d be doing a disservice to this record by saying too much.
Its simplicity is its greatness.
60′s inspired jangly California rock about boyfriends and love notes and teenage jealousy and self-doubt and unrequited love.
Perfect for summer (which means I have to listen to this constantly right now because our leaves start changing next week)
I love it.
Tags: best coast, Music
Indigo Girls: Staring Down the Brilliant Dream
Posted by Troy | Filed under Music
Remember music in the pre-internet world?
A big folder of CDs in the car with a tape adapter and your Discman.
and for those of us outside of any kind of metropolis our musical exposure was limited to what was available on the radio (top 40, oldies, country, CCM) and what was on Mtv (they did actually play music back then).
Which was tough for a kid like me who had a hunger for something outside the mainstream. (Praise the Lord for Nirvana).
So when I left home for college, my entire music library was compiled of Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, Mazzy Star, Sugar, The Cranberries along with a little Elvis Presley and for some reason I liked Harry Connick Jr. (I can’t remember why)
I was lucky enough to have some fringe tunes in my library (if not physical, at least in my head) like Hum (I was obsessed with them) and Dinosaur Jr…. but that exposure was mostly limited to one friend’s handful of CDs that he’d commandeered from someone else.
So when I met my hippie-ish wife in 1996 she’d ask me regularly if I liked this or that artist and didn’t I just love “Box of Rain?”
Honestly, I didn’t even know much at all about the Dead or Bob Dylan or The Smiths or Joni Mitchell or Led Zeppelin or The Cure or just about anything else she was into.
When she asked me about her favorite band, The Indigo Girls, I had never even heard of them, but was quite certain that I didn’t like them.
Tags: brandi carlile, indigo girls, live, Music
John Mark McMillan: The Medicine
Posted by Troy | Filed under Faith, Music
I used to work as the Media Director for a Christian non-profit organization. I created a lot of promotional and event videos and one of my most passionate responsibilities was finding appropriate soundtrack music to use… easy enough you’d think.
The one caveat is that the director required me to use “Christian” music.
You can imagine how hard that is.
For one thing it begs the question “what makes a song ‘Christian?’”
That’s a tough question and probably one that shouldn’t even be asked…
I believe that when humans create they are acting in the form of the Creator God in whose image we are made.
I believe that all truth belongs to God.
So when human beings create and those creations speak truth to me the listener/watcher/taster, then I am compelled to worship on some level.
Tags: Faith, john mark mcmillan, Music
Nada Surf Still Exists
Posted by Troy | Filed under Music
That song “Popular” was popular right around the time I graduated high school.
It was obviously a one-hit-wonder from some random Brooklyn band that no one would ever hear from again.
Or so we would have guessed.
Tags: brooklyn, Music, nada surf
JAY-Zeezer: The Black & Blue Album
Posted by Troy | Filed under Music
Searching for some hip-hop today I stumbled across this…
You may be familiar with Danger Mouse’s infamous Gray Album… his mashup of Jay-Z with the Beatles and it’s subsequent wildfire movement across the internet was big news a few years back and catapulted Danger Mouse to the deserved iconic status he now holds.
This mix is definitely no Gray Album, but it’s kind of cool…
I’ve got a cousin who shares a lot of music tastes with me, but he has never been able to understand my love for Weezer… in the meantime I’ve tried desperately over the years to understand why Jay-Z is a big deal, but I just can’t get into it.
So maybe here we’ve found some common ground.
I’m not sure why I made everyone but Jay-Z “black and blue.” I think I just got distracted and forgot to go back… not implying that he kicked the butts of the weezer crew… although I’m sure his entourage would have no trouble if it came to that.
Tags: Music, original illustration, weezer
Aqualung: Magnetic North
Posted by Troy | Filed under Music
I’ve been listening to this steadily for a month now.
Everyday.
Matt Hales (aka Aqualung) kind of reminds me of when Don Knotts would cameo on Scooby Doo… he’d wear random disguises to change his appearance and the gang wouldn’t recognize him… even from one room of the house to the next.
