The Great Miscellany
This is a new feature that will pop up on the weekends. It’s a combination of (a) follow-ups on prior posts, (b) links to cool stuff I’ve recently found on other music blogs, (c) quick write-ups on submissions that have been sent my way lately, and (d) whatever-the-hell else I feel like rambling about. This week’s edition is being typed while listening to Lambchop’s Live At Merge XX, which – holy shit! – is awesome.
- Just a couple days after I wrote about Final Fantasy’s Owen Pallett covering John Cale’s “1919″, Chromewaves wrote about the same thing. Great minds think alike, no? Anyway, while my post included an mp3 of the original version, their post included an mp3 of Owen Pallett performing the song at a radio session. It’s not as good as the version featured in the YouTube clip, but it’s still worth checking out. Grab it here.
- Chromewaves also had a post this week about The Balconies, who were responsible for my second-biggest guilty pleasure of last year, a song called “Serious Bedtime”. When I first listened to the song (after finding it amidst a ton of mp3’s in this post from The Daily Growl), my preliminary thought was an overwhelming “meh”. But then an instantly-catchy chorus began at the 1:38 mark and I was hooked; it’s probably the song I’ve listened to the most over the past three months.
The Balconies – Serious Bedtime
For those who might be curious, my biggest guilty pleasure of last year can be found here.
- I’ve heard a lot about Rural Alberta Advantage over the past year but never really bothered to listen to any of their music. I finally gave them a shot through this post on mp3hugger. Since the fine fella at mp3hugger tends to take down his featured mp3’s after a week (how noble), I’ll go ahead and post it here. Have a listen, then let’s talk:
The Rural Alberta Advantage – Sleep All Day
Do you detect an “Autumn Sweater” vibe? Because I detect a total “Autumn Sweater” vibe – particularly in the keys and percussion – so much so that it distracts me from listening to the rest of the song. In the end, I like the song, but not because of the quality of the music; I like it because it reminds me of “Autumn Sweater” (which reminds me of a lovely summer spent working at a record store in Orlando).
- The free, 2-CD compilation of Sigur Rós performances that I plugged last month – then updated after a 3rd CD was added – has now expanded further to include a fourth CD. Go back to Victory Rose Music and do some more downloading. I’m really digging this 4th CD, mainly because it includes “Olsen Olsen”, which is probably my favorite song of theirs. FUN FACT: Olsen Olsen is also the name of a restaurant in the Icelandic town of Keflavik (“Bestu hamborgarar í heimi!”). I tried to go there one day but they were closed. Lacking any other culinary option, I walked to a nearby frozen yogurt shop and bought a cup of frozen yogurt even though it was really cold and windy as fuck outside. And then a drunk guy started following me around until he fell flat on his face in the middle of the street. That was a great vacation.
- After having my flesh burnt by the eyes of David Thomas Broughton, I went to his Myspace page and discovered that the new album that I had asked him for has already been completed. It should be out in the coming months, which makes me very happy, even after the whole flesh-burning thing. A song from the new album is already posted at his Myspace – go there now (before he comes for you!) and give it a listen.
- The fine folks in Collider – who I said belatedly-kind things about back in November – have released a new EP, the 8-song BBM. You can give it a listen – and download it for free – at their Bandcamp page. Or you can hang around and listen to it here:
ANOTHER FUN FACT: Their new EP would have warranted a post of its very own if they hadn’t sent me an email telling me about it FOUR FUCKING TIMES!! Get your mailing list in order, kiddos.
- A couple months ago, Ben – our missing-in-action contributor who we last heard from after gracing us with a Magnetic Fields cover – had a song pop up on the Monitor Mix blog on NPR’s website. In the comments to that post, he was kind enough to mention The Opening Acts, which led to us receiving a nice amount of new visitors. One of those visitors – a gentleman by the name of Steven Wesley Guiles – went a step further and submitted a tune to us. It’s quite good, which makes me feel really bad for waiting almost two months before posting it. Listen to it multiple times (it’ll make me feel better), then listen to more songs at his Myspace page, then buy his album (it’ll make him feel better).
Steven Wesley Guiles – Eddie Vedder Told Me There’d Be Days Like This
- Finally, here’s a song from Flotilla. They are the band that inspired this post. Since then, I’ve tried twice to write a deserving blurb about them, but have come up with nothing worthwhile each time. Thankfully, several other fine blogs were able to do what I couldn’t. Good for them. This tune comes from Flotilla’s album, One Hundred Words For Water, which can either be purchased in a physical manner or through the digital realm.
Flotilla – Prélude and Epilogue
- And that is all for now. I promise that the next time I do this, there will be more pictures and YouTubes and Blingees involved to make it look more appealing. And their won’t be so many goddamn links (35!). And it will be well-written. And it won’t feature any sentences that begin in conjunctions.
Happy Sunday – enjoy the new week.
Related posts:
Two days ago I came across Royal Alberta Advantage and gave ‘em a listen. Not sure what songs I heard, but I was eh, “meh.”
After consulting a few Vonnegut books and this link
http://www.gpuss.co.uk/english_usage/start_sentence_conjunction.htm
I found it’s acceptable to begin sentences with conjunctions, much more so than it is to end a sentence with a conjunction. I’ve always wondered about this rule and even used “and” to start a sentence in my last post. Using an Em dash would be better but I was too lazy to cut and paste, because I haven’t found the correct function key for the Em dash… at least not yet.
I did a small amount of research while writing the post and found that the conjunction thing has become okay nowadays, though it wasn’t the case before. I mainly wrote that particular sentence because I ended up using that technique a lot throughout the post.
Right or wrong, though, nothing will stop me from my consistent overuse of “so” to begin sentences.