RIYL51

I can't find anything coming out today to write about, so I'll use this week's post for four older albums I picked up recently. At the encouragement of Smedley Log proprietor Howard, I finally used one of those eMusic free trial offers that seem to pop up everywhere. Nowadays they usually only offer 25 free songs, but I had an old email that linked to a 50 song offer.

eMusic offers real mp3s, without all that protection and authorization crap that makes iTunes so frustrating to deal with. How eMusic works is that you subscribe to one of three levels, each with it's own number of downloads each month. The more you pay, the more songs you get each month, with the smallest package allowing thirty downloads a month for ten bucks. They don't have everything that iTunes has and if you don't use all your download during the month, you lose them. But they do have cool things, like once you buy a song you can download it again as often as you like (as long as you're still a paying member).

Personally, I've got too much music to listen to already, so I took my 50 songs and quickly (and without any hassle) left. Here's what I got:

Matthew Sweet Kimi Ga Suki * Raifu Originally made only for his Japanese fans, Sweet reunited his backing band from his breakout Girlfriend for this disc. For those who felt that Sweet had drifted from the hookiness of Girlfriend, this would seem like a return to form. To someone like me - who's always felt that Sweet has only gotten better since Girlfriend (especially with the quieter In Reverse) - this would seem like a step back. In reality it's a combination of both. There's definitely a lot of the pop that's been missing from Sweet's post-Girlfriend rockers and his post-post-Girlfriend introspective works, but  thankfully he doesn't completely abandon either of those styles for this album. Unfortunately, the combination platter feel of this  disc takes away the almost concept-album-strong singular vibe that usually accompanies his CDs. Still, even at his less-than-best, it's always great to hear some previously unheard (by me) Sweet.

Over The Rhine Live from Nowhere, Volume One This band is the reason Howard had been pestering me to try eMusic. OtR had a beautiful song ("Born") on a Paste sampler a few years ago and I was instantly hooked. In the past year they have released both a best of and this live disc, both of which I figured would be a good starting point for a relative newbie like me. The live disc promised some interesting covers the opportunity to hear "Born" live, so that's the disc I downloaded. Live, Karin Bergquist's vocal style is a bit different than the Margo Timmins/Maria McKee sound I've heard on the OtR songs I had previously downloaded from their website. It's more jazzy and smooth, which works fine for the standards that end the album but takes some getting used to when hearing it applied to band's originals. Ever since I stopped comparing the disc to what I expected to be, it's grown on me quite a bit. Not the album I expected, but Bergquist's voice (however she choices to use it) makes it a quality disc. Below are a couple mp3s from the disc that the band has put on it's website.

Over the Rhine - "Lookin' Forward" [mp3]
Over the Rhine - "Moondance" [mp3]

Laura Cantrell Not The Tremblin' Kind Laura Cantrell does the same city-girl-playing-country thing that Gillian Welsh does (though Cantrell plies the peppier side of Nashville), and like Welsh you can't help but feel the respect and love Cantrell has for that old-timey music - while at the same time not being afraid to put her own mark on it. Cantrell at times can sound like Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, and kd lang (and older influences, too, I'm sure), but she's also a fresh voice - more a peer to these artists than an imitator of them. And even if you don't care about all that history and respect, the disc is just a lot of fun to listen to. Below are two downloads from the album, plus I've thrown in what is perhaps my favorite song of hers (definitely the best titled), recorded live at a John Peel Christmas special.

Laura Cantrell - "Not The Tremblin' Kind" [mp3]
Laura Cantrell - "Churches Off the Interstate" [mp3]
Laura Cantrell - "I Lost You (but I Found Country Music)" [mp3]

Pernice Brothers The World Won't End Big thanks to TwoBusy over at TwoBusy for introducing me to these guys, and for recommending I download this album. It's not like I would have discovered them myself, since they seem to be completely ignored by alternative radio. That's a crime, because Joe Pernice and Company write and perform wistful pop music in the fine tradition of public radio favorites like Big Star and Wilco. This 2001 album is full of catchy songs that are so beautiful that you couldn't be blamed for missing the subtle humor that pops up all over the disc (though it's hard to miss a song titled "The Ballad Of Bjorn Borg"). I don't have any samples to offer from this disc, but the band does have streams of some later albums on their website. Give them a listen and just try to get them out of your head.

This week's list (same as last week):

1. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos
2. THE ROSEBUDS Night of the Furies
3. BRIGHT EYES Cassadaga
4. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE Traffic and Weather
5. ANDREW BIRD Armchair Apocrypha
6. MODEST MOUSE We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
7. KAISER CHIEFS Yours Truly, Angry Mob
8. GRANT LEE PHILLIPS Strangelet
9. TRACEY THORN Out of the Woods
10. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
11. SON VOLT Search
12. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
13. AMY WINEHOUSE Back in Black
14. CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH Some Loud Thunder
15. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
16. THE POSTMARKS The Postmarks
17. KRISTOFFER RAGNSTAM Sweet Bills
18. THE AUTUMN DEFENSE The Autumn Defense
19. ERIN McKEOWN Sing You Sinners
20. ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep
21. JILL CUNNIFF City Beach
22. PATTY GRIFFIN Children Running Through
23. MARK KNOPFLER & EMMYLOU HARRIS Real Live Roadrunning
24. OVER THE RHINE Discount Fireworks
25. THE DECEMBERISTS The Crane Wife
26. BRYAN FERRY Dylanesque
27. MATT & KIM Matt & Kim
28. VARIOUS ARTISTS Endless Highway: the Music of the Band
29. BAND OF HORSES Everything All the Time
30. THE PERNICE BROTHERS Live a Little

RIYL for the week beginning April 16, 2007. Backstory here.

Comments

[Karen]

Hey, I was just looking at eMusic yesterday -- I have a 25-song offer from MacWorld (where'd you get 50 songs??). I was wishing I could look at their whole catalog before signing up. What else is there that I might want? You have a pretty good sense of my taste in music.

[The Velvet Blog]

I didn't realize the Japanese Sweet CD finally got a domestic release. I'll have to pick it up.

[TwoBusy]

Don't forget to hunt down the Scud Mountain Boys and Chappaquiddick Skyline...

[howard]

And now I feel completely vindicated.

On an OtR note, most of the originals off of Drunkard's Prayer sounded great to me because I procrastinated on acquiring the studio CD until after I'd downloaded and listened to the live one. So to me the studio versions are the ones that sound a bit strange.