Me on Last.fm

"New Grass," Talk Talk

Song: "New Grass"
Album: Laughing Stock
Artist: Talk Talk



This is a beautiful song that I didn't know much about until I did some digging. It's been on my "Somber Favorties" list for ages-- probably culled from a "Listeners Also Bought" suggestion. Turns out, this one is a classic and my ears served me well.

To me, their story is another one of transcendence. Talk Talk was an 80's British pop band, sort-of a low key Duran Duran. Remember "It's my life... don't you forget..." (I posted a last.fm preview of it below). When I hear that song I feel like donning a Swatch and putting up the collar on my lime green Izod.

But, this song is different. It turns out, they didn't much care to be pop stars, preferring instead the pursuit of their craft in the studio. They got themselves all embroiled in a law suit with their label and things must have been hell. But, then they won the law suit! How often does that happen?

Anyway, this album was their last. It was recorded with a full orchestra (a model of how to make the most expensive album possible) and was a total departure from the pop that their label wanted them to make. Some reviews of the album were dismal when it first came out-- but history has proven these artists (Mark Hollis, Lee Harris, Paul Webb + many guest artists) to have been visionary. They may have invented the down tempo genre with this record (released in 1991) as well as the term "New Grass," an emerging genre of it's own.

There's a really good bio here, a review here and a pretty scanty wiki page here.

Just to refresh your memory:
Talk Talk – It's My Life

"Just for Now," Imogen Heap

Song: "Just for Now"
Album: Speak for Yourself
Artist: Imogen Heap

I read this song like a love letter. Not the steamy sort, but as one from a friend with the insight and desire to call 'time-out' on the chaos of life, pause and remember.

Of course Imogen Heap is talented, has a great voice and makes innovative use of looping-- all assets. But, rarely does an artist assist me to access the playful, yet frequently heavy contents of my memories of youth the way Imogen Heap does. Her themes, her voice, and her techniques all help to accomplish this. I was amazed and delighted to learn from her wiki page that her mother was an art therapist. I feel that her music is originating from her creative voice of youth-- and that is my ideal for an artist.

To complete my total infatuation with Imogen Heap, I learned that she was left alone by her boarding school music teacher and that she responded by teaching herself. The eventual result... an incredibly introspective, personal style for which she was nominated for two Grammy's last year including Best New Artist. This kind of transcendence is undeniably attractive.

"Electric Worm," Beastie Boys

Song: "Electric Worm"
Album: The Mix-Up
Artist: Beastie Boys

This is an instrumental, blusey, wah funk song from the kings of suburban Hip Hop. With that many genres involved, it has to be good. I've always had a love/hate relationship with the Beastie Boys; loving them for the quality of their raps, hating them for... well I'm not really sure (being white?). They're all grown up now, proving with this track that suburban rappers don't die, they just start listening to Booker T. and the MG's.

If you like this track, as I do, you might like these too: "Tom Cat," by Muddy Waters, "Red Beans and Rice," by Booker T. & the MG's and "Look-Ka Py Py," by The Meters.

The sound quality of this youtube video is terrible. Listen to the iTunes sample above to hear it. But, it's fun to see the band playing the music.

"What It Means To Be Human," i am jen

Song: What It Means To Be Human
Album: The Broken EP
Artist: i am jen

When I saw and heard this for the first time, I was captivated. Still am. It's high quality, hand made for you! i am jen's web site is cool too.

"Destiny," Zero 7

Song: "Destiny"
Album: Simple Things
Artist: Zero 7

This video download is the best live video I can find and came originally from their web site. Here's an excerpt from a letter I wrote to a friend after seeing this video in 2004.

Part of it for me is just the honesty of the song. Alone and lonely, fine with it and yet in love. I guess I've been thinking a lot about loneliness lately... It's partly the human condition: we're all alone in some ways, making our way through the world. But, it's also partly not loving ourselves enough, not being our own best friends due to childhood trauma or whatever. The cure, I know, is intimacy... with ourselves, with each other. Real connections, our relationships. It's also hopeful. Many of their songs are hopeful. I love that. As bad as things may be, there's hope. I share that disposition to the world.

Part of it is watching this band put out something good and pure and honest. It just happens right there on the video. It's people understanding something together and doing what they can. It's two people with a vision, making it happen and shepherding it to creation. They're sending out this real thing and people (I, you, lot's of others) are responding to it. I just really feel that music has been kind of dead--- or rather that I've been dead to music (maybe both). For me, that is just like being really dead. Music is such an important part of my life. It always has been. It's in me, it's in my family and I lament having lost my way. Watching that video made me want to come home to music again-- and that's a journey that I've only recently started. Pop music in recent years, in my view, has been largely about manipulation, commercialism, ego etc. I get nothing from "Destiny" than pure artistic expression of human emotion and human experience. To me, that is what art is. It's about expressing our unique experience in the world, and expressing emotion in a way that moves, changes, heals, evokes.

Their song "This World" is just awesome. To me, it's like a single human voice doing three things at once-- protesting the state of the world, explaining that we've lost our way and expressing hope that we might find it again. I just have to believe that that's possible. They just nailed it so well.

Of course the technology that they've used to produce all this intrigues and interests me too.

Can music change people? This music changed me.