I found out about the debut album from half of The Fiery Furnaces, Eleanor Friedberger, when I was browsing the web site of one of my favorite record labels, Merge Records. I was thrilled when I found that Spotify features not only the Merge Records label catalog but a great playlist with new and featured albums from their catalog — I am greatly appreciative to David Boles for introducing me to the fantastic service.
I signed up for Spotify on Friday, and after only a few days of use, I’m ready to forsake my years with Pandora and iTunes. Spotify covers those music services with ease and then beats them in the belly of the very beast in which they long to live: Customizability and Variety. With the $10.00USD a month Premium version of Spotify, I can stream high bit rate music and download 3,333 songs each to three separate portable devices like an iPad or an iPhone for non-streaming, offline, listening. The Spotify library has more than 15,000,000 songs and using Spotify makes me feel as I did when I was using Rhapsody before I had to give up that music service in my move to Mac computers.
Continue reading → Bye Bye Pandora and iTunes: The Spotify Review
One of my coworkers told me about the brilliant musician Justin Vernon who took a number of months while recovering from illness in a cabin in Wisconsin to record a full album on his own employing some basic equipment and would have sold the album entirely on his own but decided to sign to fantastic record label Jagjaguwar, home of such other luminaries as Dinosaur Jr. and Black Mountain.
I know so many amateur guitar players who spend thousands of dollars buying a great axe, but they won’t spend a few dollars on a regular basis to put fresh strings on their guitar! The one thing that will improve the sound and the heart of your guitar when it sings for you is always making sure you have new strings on the instrument. Dirty strings are dead strings. Dead strings depress you. When you’re feeling disappointed in your musical sound, you practice less, and you avoid playing more.
Where is Fiona Apple and what hath the world done with her? On October 6, 2005, I celebrated her in print in my Fiona Apple Turnover article:
The enchanting Fiona Apple has turned over a tricksy new musical leaf with the release of her latest album, Extraordinary Machine. The machine is she and extraordinary she is! Fiona’s music on this new album is no longer solely glum and gloomy like her previous public efforts. She now presents us with a sexy curiosity and a jaunting, lilting, melodic sense that is bright and blossoming in a dull Pop music world.
Continue reading → Where is Fiona Apple and Why Isn’t She Singing?
Neil Young is one of our greatest living musicians who writes so beautifully about the American experience. He’s always cagey and fun and eloquent and challenging. Neil’s new album is out this week, and it is called “A Treasure” and the music lives up to the album naming.
When a friend recommends an album for listening and you have a hard time getting into the album, it’s easy to put the album away and think to yourself that you will just listen to the album later. When one of my coworkers recommended that I listen to and review the new album by My Morning Jacket, I committed to it completely before I had even heard a song on the album. Once I had decided to write the review, I had written the check — but could I cash it?
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