i could be brave

Saturday, August 27, 2005

Music Purchases

Categories: Life • Music • Religion

I buy music constantly.  Sometimes I regret the purchases.  However, I’ve been on a roll recently and my most recent four albums I purchased have all been very good.  Good being in the eye of the beholder of course…

First up I bought the newest album by Sufjan Stevens titled Illinois.  Yes, like the state.  Sufjan’s music is hard to describe.  It is highly experimental which brings with it everything that can mean.  There are songs on the album that are just wonderful, and then there is stuff that you just shake your head at.  Out of all his albums that I have this is the one that is the most immediately accessible.  Less head shaking goes on during your first listen than with his other stuff.  I highly recommend it if you are up for something different.

Next up is the newest album by The Choir.  The Choir are one of those bands that just won’t go away.  In this case its a good thing.  The members started out doing covers and running around being typical kids trying to be in a band.  This eventually coalesced into The Choir which had a small amount of mainstream success in the seventies (during which time I was not yet eating solid foods).  They are Christian’s and thus much of their music dwells on religious matters.  The rest runs the gamut of sled dogs, chickens, and your typical relationship problems.  No two Choir albums are alike, their style is constantly shifting.  Their latest, Oh How The Mighty Have Fallen, is fairly subdued in style.  Where The Choir always shines is their lyrical content (written almost exclusively by the band’s drummer no less) which has a great way of presenting things in ways you wouldn’t normally think of.  This album continued that tradition.

One of the purchases wasn’t really a blind purchase.  I’ve had the album in Mp3 form for years.  These Mp3’s were of the 128kps variety.  Yeah, they sounded like crap.  So when I found a used copy of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue I snatched it up.  Really the album, and the artist speak for themselves. 

The last recent purchase I made is the latest album by Nickel Creek.  Nickel Creek is a folk band.  Before you start getting visions of 40 year old men with beards playing the banjo please stop and click the link to their website.  See?  They are young and fairly normal looking.  Nickel Creek’s earlier albums contained a lot of standard folk songs redone with a quicker more modern touch that Nickel Creek gives all of their folk music.  These standards would be mixed in with the occasional original piece.  However, Why Must The Fire Die is, except for one Bob Dylan cover, entirely Nickel Creek.  Since discovering this band I’ve been waiting for an album where they just went for it.  This is that album.  It is simply beautiful.

Posted by Jamie at 12:50 PM