Early listening for High Violet!

NPR is streaming The National's new album, High Violet, a full week before it's coming out (mark your calendars for May 11).  Improve your work day and check it out here!

As Becca pointed out, NPR is actually a very unexpectedly good source for streams.  Be sure to check out their concert archive sometime-great stuff across all genres.

PS: after my first listen, I have to say...this is a wonderful album.

Concerts à Emporter

This post isn't about an artist; it's about another blog site.  But it's probably my favorite blog site ever: Concerts à Emporter.  The site is known as Take Away Shows in English, and is a dual language French/English site.  Now here's the even cooler part:  the guys that run the site record great artists giving mini-concerts all over the world, with a large portion of them being taped in Paris.  Each show comes with an explanation of where it was shot, what event it was at, and something about the artist. 

 Over the years that they've been doing it (the numbering system has lost me a bit, as not all clips are numbered anymore--I think that means that the clips weren't part of a "Take Away Show" specifically for them--but they're about to hit 100 shows!), they've managed to hit up some of my favorite artists.  Most of the videos are rough, hand-camera recordings, leading to the occasional bit that is harder to watch if you're not great with shaky visuals.  The music more than makes up for this, in my opinion.  The shows are usually shot in public, leading to great acoustic versions of songs and intimate performances.  The Arcade Fire show comes to mind immediately as one that wasn't exactly a small show; it's amazing what these people can get all of these artists to agree to do.  In short, I wish I thought of this and had that kind of access to so many great groups.

If you're looking for new music, I'd suggest you head over and click around a bit.  There are a few must-sees in my opinion, so here they are: 

The National 

Sufjan Stevens-The second song on the roof is actually an Innocence Mission cover. 

Bon Iver -Great versions of all of the songs, but the video of For Emma, Forever Ago gives you a good idea of how these shows come together (they end up singing an a cappella version of a great song in a stairwell for an apt building, dogs and confused residents included-then do it all again outside!)

José Gonzalés-who is actually Swedish.  Another great song of his to check out is Heartbeats. Monica and Emily may recognize it as The Song I Play On My Phone At 2 AM. 

Beirut-Zach Condon may be a bit crazy (see Nantes), but entertaining. 

Yeasayer-Beer bottle/floor slapping rendition of Tightrope? Priceless. 

There are other names you'd all recognize as well...I definitely can't recommend les Concerts à Emporter enough!

So now that I have officially started to be Very Busy, I doubt I'm going to get to a post a day/every other day/what I've managed so far.  This is inevitable with three classes going on, but oh well.  Hopefully I/you won't be deterred!

The National

So following Sufjan with the National seemed like the most logical thing to do, because as I mentioned at the end of the Sufjan post, he played piano on two tracks on The National's most recent full album, Boxer: Racing Like A Pro and Ada.  


Now, I've primarily run across two reactions when talking to people about The National.  People seem to either love them, or not see what all the fuss is about.  I'd like to go out on a limb and suggest that this might be because of the rather unique voice of lead singer Matt Berninger-a deep baritone that definitely doesn't sound like most other voices out there that I've heard.  I did a quick scan of how people have tried to describe it, and found some pretty entertaining ones, including "dark chocolate richness", "chocolate and wool", and multiple types of whiskey.  I think he sums it up best himself when he characterizes his voice as "anthemically sad".  


This certainly seems to be the case throughout Boxer, which was the first album of theirs I listened to on the recommendation of a friend (who is too busy with med school/globetrotting to have a blog to link to).  It actually took around two years for me to give the album a serious listening; luckily a not-so-fortunate sequence of events one late spring gave way to a summer full of redoubling efforts to find new music.  Boxer also runs quite the gambit of angsty emotions, which fit my general mood perfectly: from Fake Empire ("turn the light off/say goodnight/no thinking for a little while/let's not try to figure out everything at once") to Slow Show ("I leaned on the wall/the wall leaned away"), to Start A War, which I might have allowed to shape my thinking on real life a bit too much ("walk away now, and you're going to start a war").  


In terms of instrumentation, The National sticks to a basic piano/guitar/bass, with the occasional horn section on Fake Empire or strings on About Today, another one of my favorites (you'll start to pick up a theme: use of string instruments increases the probability that I will like a song about 3x).  Most of the songs on later albums trend towards the mellow side, although Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers includes a couple tracks worth of Berninger yelling (Slipping Husband), something that sounds odd to me since I picked them up relatively late in the game.  


The National is popular enough to have been on TV and soundtracks on multiple occasions, including a spot on Jimmy Fallon's show the other night to debut a song from their new album High Violet, set to be released in May.  It's called Terrible Love, and I like what I hear so far.  Definitely an album I'll be picking up once it comes out.  


Still haven't heard enough? Check out Apartment Story, Daughters of the Soho Riots, and Mistaken for Strangers. 


Later!