Red Bull Supernatural

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Bands with Ampersands

I found Angus & Julia Stone over at Untitled Records. The Stones are a brother sister duo hailing from Australia. Their song "Silver Coin" exhibits all the features I love in a song, namely strings, melancholy vocals and fabulous violin tuning sounds right at the beginning. If you're looking to listen to a great folksy song, check it out here.

There's also "Bye Bye Bye" by Plants & Animals. They're a Canadian band and the song was featured on Chuck recently, but I only just got around to finding out what it was. It's a pretty amazing song. "Bye Bye Bye" gives you that same sort of awesome feeling that you get when you listen to the Arcade Fire's "Wake Up", which just puts a huge goofy smile on my face anyway. If you too, want to look goofy, you can do so here. In the meantime, I'll embed the video here too, because I wouldn't want your being too lazy to follow the link to keep you from checking it out.



"Silver Coin" by Angus & Julia Stone
A Book Like This, 2009

"Bye Bye Bye" by Plants & Animals
Parc Avenue, 2008

I can always do that reading later...

I decided to take some time and look for new music after all. I certainly have enough reading on Financial Accounting and tax law to do, but it's just not as rewarding as listening to music, as I'm sure pretty much anyone on the face of this planet can agree. As per usual I stopped by betterPropaganda to see what's new and it turns out that I found two songs that are rather great straight away. The first one is called "Symphonies" and it's by Dan Black featuring Kid Cudi. It's Pop with a healthy dose of Hip-Hop and some Electronics beats thrown in for good measure. It's sort of mellow, but also kind of sweeping and generally awesome. I reckon it's a good track to play when the party's winding down. Have a listen and/or download it here.

Next up we have a song by Local Natives. I wrote about them once before. I think they used one of their songs on the TV show Chuck some time last season maybe, but I can't quite remember now. Anyway, the band plays rock, but makes excellent use of orchestral melodies and harmonies. The combination of these elements makes for a really reach listening experience. It's probably best if you have a listen yourselves. Check out "Sun Hands" over here.

"Symphonies" by Dan Black featuring Kid Cudi
Un, 2010

"Sun Hands" by Local Natives
Gorilla Manor, 2010

Yellow Drum Machine

I think this isn't that new, but no matter, it's very entertaining (and cute).



The lack of posts of late is a bit shocking, but it turns out having to do regular reading for classes again sort of limits my time spent checking for new music online.

If you want to know more about the Yellow Drum Machine, go here.

YouTube Disco

Looks like YouTube now has an answer to Pandora and Last.fm. It's called Disco and it essentially does the same thing as Pandora: pick a band and it creates a play list including your selected band and other similar offerings. You can modify it once it starts playing too. It's pretty good and what's especially great about this is that you can use it even if you're outside the US, which can't be said of the other two services. Have at it:

YouTube: Disco

Bird

Found this maybe two days ago. I'm a huge fan of Andrew Bird and this little gem from pitchfork, is pretty awesome.



The original is here.

Post Christmas Pre New Year Goodies

I meant to post this on Christmas day, but turns out that having family over ensures that you are to busy to remember about your blog. There are worse things though and I've got three songs to share with you now. So let's get to it:

I heard the first two songs on a TV show and in a movie. I've been watching Joss Whedon's Dollhouse since it started and it's been pretty underwhelming, to be honest, but as of late it has been much improved. In fact the last few episodes have been pretty exciting, it's too bad it's been cancelled already. In any case, I think two weeks ago they had a really great montage at the end of the episode using Greg Laswell's cover of the song "Your Ghost", originally by Kristin Hersh. I found it here, but I have a feeling it'll be gone soon. I hope you're lucky enough to get it in time. The song and other by Laswell are a little bit more pop, than I normally listen to, that's not a bad thing in this case though. I have a couple more Laswell songs on my computer, but have no clue where they're from. I just saw there's one called "Amazed" over at betterPropaganda. I've never heard it before, so I can't tell you whether it's any good.

The second song is Nick Drake's "'Cello Song". For anyone who's seen the wonderful The Blind Side, you've heard this song in the title sequence. "'Cello Song" is on Drake's 1969 album Five Leaves Left. I actually first heard Nick Drake quite a few years ago on Gilmore Girls. The show used the superb "Pink Moon" (off the eponymous album released in 1972) and I've been listening to that track on and off ever since then. "'Cello Song" and "Pink Moon" both feature simple arrangements allowing Drake's voice to take center stage. I'll post links to the songs on youtube here, since I can't find any place where they are freely available.





Ok the last song is "Your Rocky Spine" by the Great Lake Swimmers. My good friend Pixie told me about this Canadian band over a year ago, but I never really got around to checking them out until a while ago. I have absolutely no idea where I got the song from, but you're in luck because Google led me to this page, where you can get it too. The song's got a banjo and beautiful harmonies, it's a bit melancholy, but in the best way. Have a listen.

"Your Ghost" by Greg Laswell
Covers EP, 2009

"Amazed" by Greg Laswell
Through Toledo, 2006

"Your Rocky Spine" by Great Lake Swimmers
Ongiara, 2007