"Say, girls: have you seen the Casualties of Cool CD? Girls?" |
I've tried to draw out and savour this joy by restricting myself to a "new" album every six weeks or so. Unfortunately for me, DT's management just yanked the bulk of his earliest material from eMusic. And, frankly, that's also unfortunate for Townsend & Co. The pattern I'd fallen into was downloading an old album of his, getting hooked, then ordering the CD so I could add it to my wall of plastic and grok on the art, etc. That's a double stream of cash that has now been reduced to a single. Perhaps I should thank him.
Speaking of "grokking"... |
The last artist to hit me the same way was Steven Wilson, via his original band Porcupine Tree. His new disc Hand. Cannot. Erase. is getting a fair bit of play, also. He's taken a morbid real-life story and used it to launch typically beautiful and haunting reveries exploring his usual concerns: the tension between privacy and isolation, connection/disconnection with would-be intimates, family anxieties -- the usual ball of wax-and-thorns.
It works -- splendidly, of course -- but I tend to return with more frequency to his Porcupine Tree stuff. Signify is still a record I can listen to from beginning to end, and experience the shivers as the final track ("Dark Matter") reaches its apogee. What can I say? My aural development is arrested and remains most pleased with Wilson's early metal-techno-prog hybrid.
Wait: that's not Townsend. |
An early contender for the Spring Cleaning Soundtrack is So Delicious! by The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band (homepage).
As big & damned as you can handle. |
It's catchy, bluesy and boisterous stuff. Steven Horowitz (PhD) gave it a lot of thought -- possibly too much, but his ruminating certainly gave me a nudge in the right direction, and I've been enjoying the music ever since.
This sort of thing happens in Toronto, apparently. |
Sculpture in the top picture, "The Tree of koo-SANZH" (tree of cussing) by the younger, shared with permission.
2 comments:
Nothing better to start off another spring than Whisky Prajer's musical recommendations, IMHO. I'll be having a dollop of that Damn Band and then, possibly, go see them in Philly in April. Thanks, Darrell, for the suggestion! They've got a whiff of JJ Grey and Mofro...which is a most enjoyable whiff, indeed.
My pleasure, DV. I was initially chuffed to see they'd already played in TO. The Rev and his big damn band are due back in Canada this summer, I see -- albeit in Windsor. I might just have a bluesfest in my future.
Post a Comment