listen closer

ch..ch..changes

okay so three entries in and i've already decided to switch things up. thanks to various links i've gotten a pretty surprising amount of hits, but not that many downloads. but i've got the space so for the time being there'll be two songs daily. hurrah woo woo, etc. so thanks for coming, and i hope you find something you like.

elsewhere: mp3blogs are blowing up! scroll down to the bottom for an npr feature including commentary from sean (of said the gramophone) and matthew (of fluxblog) also thanks to moistworks for the linkage.

the good life "for the love of the song"
from the upcoming lovers need lawyers ep on saddle creek. tim kasher and his two bands, cursive and the good life, put everything to like and dislike about them right up front. it's easy to decide really, and i'd wager most people who like them, like them for the same reasons others wouldn't. well file me under the former. sure he's got 40 songs about songs. sure he's self conscious. sure sure sure... but i love it. this one is a lot more upbeat than his previous two albums as the good life. tim does an amazing job lyrically of cutting to the bone of what it's like being smart, but not really that smart. emotional, but not really that deep. maybe i just hear myself in his songs. but to me there's something honest about them. for people like us, "art is hard" because it starts feeling fake if we try to make it deeper and more meaningful than our lives really are. sometimes you just have to sing what you're really thinking.
[buy the album!]

dntel "(this is) the dream of evan and chan"
by now i'm hoping that all of you have heard the glory of postal service, but i have a feeling a lot of people may have missed the reason postal service exists. well, in 2001 jimmy tamborello recruited ben gibbard to work with him for a track on life is full of possibilities, this is that track, so essentially it was the first postal service song, and as good as anything on give up. layers of static and ringing reverb and ben's distinctive (in his own words) "puny girly voice." sometimes when songs use a lot of static and white noise they run the risk of losing some of the melody and beauty. the static only adds to the beauty here. like you're hearing it through a radio two rooms away. this song makes me close my eyes and smile.
[buy the album!]