_choice chewns changes  - week #3

‘What I’m listening to: Sidebar Update: This week we have a bumper crop of recently released or recently remixed tracks. Born Ruffians ( pic above) album Red, Yellow & Blue is a pop album that stands head and shoulders above its peers. Gordon Gano-esque vocals over blue grass drumming. Check out the featured track ‘Barnacle Goose’. Other highlights include Vampire Weekends’ ‘Oxford Comma’, a Phu’queue to plummy pommes (Nice) or the Jazzsteppa remix of The Kills opener ‘URA fever’.

Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever ago

Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever ago is featured in the ‘what I’m listening to now’ sidebar of triplejaysus. The idea was that I would feature albums that i wasn’t going to review. And already that plan has fallen over. After almost three weeks of constant rotation I’ve realised that a _mood_indicator and a sidebar link is doing Bon Iver a disservice.

For those who haven’t heard the back story, this guy hides away in a cabin in wisconsin following a breakup, and spends three months writing an album about it. I can understand that you wouldn’t rush out and buy the album based on that sentence. And while I love meloncholic music, this is so much more.

While only 9 songs long (unless you preordered in iTunes), ‘For Emma’ is a beautiful and haunting contemporary folk album. Vocals are laid layer upon layer until every corner is filled with a choir, but the restraint shown using this choir is simply beautiful. ‘Lump Song’ opens with such a passage, but you know immediately that Enya is no where to be seen. And, without putting too fine a point on it, thanks be to christ above and his legions of saints that she’s miles away.

‘For Emma’ is a beautiful album, remarkably accomplished for a self produced, self released debut. Detractors will point to jangly guitars, falsetto and hymn-like passages, and they’re right. All of the above are present, but used with such confidence that they cease to be negaitve discriptions. I highly recommend you seek this album out, if only to remind yourself that music can be an emotional discourse. 

THINK: In beauty lies hope.
READ: An indepth interview with Justin Vernon
WATCH: ‘Flume’ performance
BUY: ‘For Emma…’ here

_choice chewns changed

Some of you crazy kids might remember that I recently launched a new side bar with what I’m currently listening to. It’s a selection of tunes from ten albums that probably won’t be _weviewed but you should check out.

Each Friday I’ll update the selection, bringing you the Stand out tracks from ten recently released albums. Highlights from this crop include Steed Lord’s ‘Bucket of Blood’ ( pictured above) and The Ting Ting’s channelling ‘Hey Mickey’ on ‘That’s not my name’.

Just hover your mouse over the image for artist name, album and rating, and click the image for the mp3.

I hope you enjoy them, and check back next friday for the next crop.

Enjoy,

G

A quick recap: Trent tells sydney fans to steal ‘Year Zero‘, Radiohead self release InRainbows, NIN give away 1/4 of Ghosts for free, The Charlatans give away an entire album for a week, Coldplay give away their first new single for free, followed by NIN, who then give away ‘The Slip’ as a thank you (nothing to do with the $1.6M they made on the other 3/4’s of Ghosts). There. You’re up to speed.

Well, you were.

The Knife have lifted the game. Not content to give their music away for free to humans, they’ve decided to give away “Music for Alien Civilisations” to …eh…..alien civilisations - for free! Lets see how the blood-sucking-record-label-bastards take that!

The 12 tracks, compiled and some featuring Hakan Lidbo of The Knife, will be beamed into the great black yonder with the help of the Swedish Space Corporation on June 4th ( Missing out on all those May the 4th be withyou gags by one lousy month!).

And here’s the rub -  If us regular gravity pinned terrestrials want to hear it we have to shell out some of our earth money to buy one of those archaic compact discs things - technology developed twenty six years ago - the same year they invented the milk carton!

The truth is out there over here *

( * - not my joke)

Turns out that if you burn the candle at both ends two nights in a row, and two school nights at that, you end up with the mother of all hangovers, with little baby hangovers snapping at your heels.

And if said candle was burned at ‘the Establishment’, or to give it it’s more accurate name ‘the slut-rush’, you’ll wake with not only a headache, but a rather unpleasant taste in your mouth. Like you lost a little bit of yourself sometime after 3am. Sounds a little like this: