If you knew about it and didn't tell me, we're no longer friends

 So one of my favorite bands in the whole entire world is the Gaslight Anthem. They're far cooler than I could ever aspire to. Brian Fallon has an uncanny ability to put americana in melodic form, his rough voice sounding at once familiar and antagonistic in a way that I always associate with open roads and midwestern small towns...

On the other side we have Damien Rice. If I were to go deaf tomorrow I think I would spend my last night with hearing listening to Damien Rice music. I get the feeling from the research I've done and the interviews I've watched that Damien and I wouldn't get along but God Damn if the boy can't write a song that wounds and heals in one line. I once wrote a nearly 20 page paper for school that analyzed every song from O in depth.

Today, in search of the Gaslight Anthem's newest album I stumbled across Gaslight Anthem covering a Damien Rice song. Everything I love about music in contained in this 3 minute song. I'm only being dramatic because I've spent the last hour with this song on a loop, mostly while closing my eyes and saying over and over "I would have cut so many people to be there when this was performed" Politically correct? Not even a little. But Damnit this song is my soul tonight. 

So after a solid hour of Brian Fallon getting his Irish on I looked up where the song came from. It was performed on a radio station in 2010. HOW DID I GO ALMOST THREE YEARS WITHOUT KNOWING ABOUT THIS??? As per my usual routine in life, I blame everyone else. Surely someone in my life knew this existed and didn't tell me. It's almost exactly like finding out about Being Human two seasons in. Much like a show about a vampire, a ghost, and a werewolf sharing a flat in Bristol, when one of my musical icons covers another I need to know about it. Step up your game everyone else in my life. Sheesh. 

If you're looking for said amazing song it can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPLxXQ5Vwhg

It's blowing through my stoney ears

I find that once I've gotten hooked on an artist, waiting to hear more from them can turn me into a junkie waiting for a fix. I think about it in between every other thought. I am deep into that process with Johnny Flynn.

He's a weird artist, just hearing him you wouldn't picture a skinny blonde British kid with a beat up face. He plays guitar with a heavy dose of soul so it feels every time like he's gonna suck me into a smoky jazz club 80 years ago. And then the fiddle on the song comes up and I die a little every time. He has this ragged, strained voice that feels like it belongs to someone much older. You know those stupid talented people in your life that do "a little bit of everything" but everything they do is perfect? This guy routinely walks onstage with five different instruments and plays them so well and with so much finesse that he seems to stream the music out of his hands and into the thing he's playing. And then his lyrics read like a damn Shakespeare play. It's surreal.

So as I sit in my bed coughing and sick for the second week I'm finding that the most soothing thing I have is not the bottles of cough medicine (Although you better believe I am clocking my doses of that just like my mama taught me) it's the album Been Listening. Generally speaking I'm more drawn to the lilting folk he put into his debut album A Larum, but there comes a time when you gotta strap in for the changing of the seasons.  Johnny's second album follows a winding range of emotions that always reminds me of one of the studio musicals from the 40s. Start with an upbeat kick, move in to the deeper more stirring song, ect. The whole emotional spectrum is accounted for. Four songs in Been Listening rolls in like a tide as the lyrics speak to music's relationship with time. "The music's gone the music's dead/The music left and in its stead/A single song, a chorus strong/A symphony sans right or wrong" Oof. If you haven't heard this kid yet, check him out and then buy everything he's got to offer. 

Hello World

So here's the deal, I've been meaning to write more every day for a long time. So this blog is sort of a self challenge. I'm going to try to get on at least a few times a week. Sometimes I'm gonna post short things, pictures I like or things that annoy me that I just want to get off my chest. My writing partner/sister keeps urging me to write music reviews so I might dabble in that. I might go completely crazy and post about how the squirrels are taking over. We'll see how it shakes out. One way or another I just want to try to write a little more. Here goes nothing