Archive for the 'Music' Category

The Bird and The Bee – My New Favorite Band!

Published on February 21, 2010 in Music. 0 Comments Tags: .

I have been getting really into this band called “The Bird and The Bee.” They are composed of Inara George and Greg Kurstin. I’m not sure which one is The Bird and which one is The Bee. Or if it’s just a band name. I bet they get asked that a lot. I’m guessing that Inara is the bee, because almost all bees (the worker ones) are female. Anyway, what was I writing about?

My music-listening tendencies have been pretty unfocused recently. I just kinda try out whatever music I hear about. The last artist I sorta latched onto was Ingrid Michaelson after seeing her in concert in Ann Arbor back in 2007. I listened to some Andrew Bird but didn’t get super into him or anything. The Bird and The Bee is the first band whose albums I am listening to over and over again, and getting really psyched about. I even bought their single to hear some new songs. How crazy is that!?

I will now recount how I first became acquainted with this band. I am not ashamed to admit this is a very “Stuff White People Like” story. I was at The Gap, trying on some clothes in the fitting room. Then I heard this song that sounded pretty neat. So I used Shazam to figure out what it was. It turns out it was “You’re a Cad.” This happened on November 29th, 2009 at exactly 1:51pm Pacific Time. Thanks for the extreme data accuracy, Shazam!

Anyway, I made a mental note to check out the band, after purchasing a cheap sweater. I actually don’t remember if I bought a sweater, but details make a story more interesting. I put a few of their albums on hold at the Seattle Public Library and loaded them onto my iPhone to listen to on my commute to work. The rest is history.

The Bird and The Bee is probably so interesting to me because they have such a unique sound. Their website describes them as a mix of “Brazilian Tropicalia, ’60s psychedelic pop, and sparse electronic beats.” Inara has a wispy yet super-focused voice that really adds a lot to the complex arrangements.

To say that their “sound” truly defines them would be a disservice, though. In addition to a neat sound, their songs stand out because they’re really well composed. I think a lot of current alternative music focuses on the ambience, and not a whole lot on a coherent melody. The Bird and The Bee’s music not only contains some neat melodies, they also do some fun things like layering melodies on top of each other, making canon-ish things happen. Their songs actually start somewhere and build up to something. Maybe I’m just being a fanboy, but I really appreciate the songwriting skills of the duo.

At this point in the post, I should really just let you listen to their music. Here’s one of their songs along with a music video: Polite Dance Song. The concept of the song is wacky and the video fits it quite well.

They also have an awesome cover of How Deep is Your Love on the single that I got. Oh, and a wacky song about a weeaboo’s love for Japan.

The Bird and The Bee have a new album coming out, apparently a tribute album to Hall and Oates! I should probably just pre-order this as I’ve liked everything else they’ve put out so far.

Harry Connick Jr. – Your Songs

Published on January 12, 2010 in Music and Review. 0 Comments Tags: , .

I’m a pretty big fan of Harry Connick Jr. I listen to his Christmas album year-round. And look at the picture above! He’s totally man-crush material. So it is with a heavy heart that I have to give his latest album, “Your Songs,” a bad review.

HC Jr. is best when he’s singing jazz standards, or songs that have been creatively arranged as jazz standards, like his Christmas songs and his really cool album, “Songs I Heard,” which consists of a bunch of songs from kid’s movies. I really like Songs I Heard because it takes familiar songs and transforms them into something unique that Connick can work with.

Your Songs pretty much seems like a cash-in album. Harry C basically loaded a bunch of popular songs into this album so that people would buy it. “Oh, it has ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ on it! It even has a Beatles song!” The problem with the album, and I’m not sure how the producers didn’t catch this very early in the process, is that the arrangements are so dull that Harry sounds like he’s in pain throughout the album. The arrangements don’t fit his singing style because they’re popular songs, and Harry Connick Jr. is not a pop singer. The thing that bothers me most is that this is a completely safe album. There were no risks taken in the vanilla arrangements. So what we get is a really sub-standard pop album from a really good jazz vocalist.

These may be my songs, but Harry: you can keep them!

(Yeah, so what if my only reason for writing this review was the cheesy last line? I’ve done worse on this blog!)

They Might Be Giants at SoDo Showbox, Seattle WA 11/10/2009

Published on November 11, 2009 in Concert and Music. 0 Comments Tags: .

flood

So I saw They Might Be Giants in concert last night. This was a super special show where they played all of the songs from their album Flood plus some other songs as filler.

There was actually an opener called “Guggenheim Grotto.” Their music wasn’t too bad. But it seemed really inappropriate as an opener to TMBG. Like their songs were about love and pretty serious without any funny lyrics at all. You could kind of tell the crowd was not into them. I felt they should’ve had a more appropriate opener, but oh well. I guess there aren’t really a bunch of bands that are like TMBG and could open for them.

They didn’t actually go on stage til around 10pm, opening with some kind of song about elements. I haven’t listened to their kid’s albums, so this one was new to me. Then they did some other songs before launching into Flood. Along the way they also did some weird puppet show, but it seemed like they had less random stage stuff than the last concert I saw, where they channeled a dead person or something.

For the most part they played songs from Flood in sequence, though for some reason they rearranged Racist Friend and maybe also Particle Man. I think some of the fans were like “WTF” because of that. Personally I’ve listened through Flood so many times that it seems like one giant song. So any break in the sequence is pretty noticeable.

While I like the concept of playing a whole album for a concert (plus other songs), in practice it seems kind of absurd. Some songs just don’t make sense live, like Hearing Aid or Minimum Wage. But in the spirit of experimentation and randomness I can accept it. While Flood is a really good album, I would’ve liked to hear more songs from other albums, too. They did play She’s An Angel, which was cool. And Famous Polka, The Mesopotamians (which I guess they use a lot as a pseudo closer), Shoehorn With Teeth and Why Does The Sun Shine? But what about Ana Ng and Don’t Let’s Start? I guess you can’t fit all their songs into one concert…

As with the last time I saw them (almost exactly two years ago to the date!), TMBG is really good live. Some of the Flood songs seemed a bit under-rehearsed, but besides that they were good. Linnell sang a wrong lyric in Letterbox and I think everyone noticed. Also, random thought of the concert: “Is it weird that there is a giant room of people all singing along to a song about buying prosthetic foreheads to wear on their real heads? I guess not.”

Also similar to last time, the band left, then came back for two or three songs, then left again. At this point I was really tired and started walking off. But then they did a second encore! That’s how you know they’re professionals. I just hope they don’t push it so much that each song requires an additional encore, starting from the first song played. That would get tiring. The last song they did was Fingertips from Apollo 18, which I think they also did the previous concert I saw. It’s a crowd-pleaser.

Hopefully I will get to see They Might Be Giants again some time. They really are fantastic live (especially Linnell’s piercing voice) and really fun, too.

Ingrid Michaelson at Neumos, Seattle 10/12/2009

Published on October 13, 2009 in Concert and Music. 3 Comments Tags: .

ingridband

I got to see Ingrid Michaelson in concert at Neumos in Seattle last night. I previously saw her for the first time in Ann Arbor, 2007. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see her in Ann Arbor last year because she sold out pretty quickly.

From what I remember of the last time I saw her (I haven’t re-read my other concert post yet), she seemed really modest and was excited that people in the audience knew the words to some of her songs. After two years of success, it seems like she’s a lot more confident, but also kind of diva-ish. Not that she’s a bitch or anything, but she’s sort of less charming in the way she was before. She still mentioned lots of random stuff like crying a bunch after watching The Family Stone on the tour bus and how much they like all like Mexican food.

Before Ingrid and the band came on, there was an opening act guy named Matthew Perryman Jones. I wonder if it’s his real name or a fake stage name! He was pretty good, but his songs were kind of yawn-inducing. He was nice though, and he said that all proceeds of the music and shirts and stuff would go to a child in need. Then he revealed the child in need is his child! What a joker.

Ingrid and the gang came on kind of late, and started with Soldier, which is the opener of her new album, Everybody, which I haven’t written about yet. Then she played a mix of songs from her past three albums. The first time I saw her, she only brought her friend Allie, but this time she had a full band, which is kind of necessary for playing a lot of the arrangements in the new album. The older songs felt a little weird with a full band though. To be fair, some of the arrangements were refreshing, like Far Away turned into a much richer song and I think Giving Up almost turned into a country song, which had an awesome effect. This is exactly why live performances are worthwhile to plunk down change for.

Ingrid said she was tired because she had taken a nap. I can relate. It’s hard to get back on track after taking an hour nap. She sounded fine, though. Her voice was as nice as I remember it. There were times that she used a little too much vibrato though. But she’s totally still got it talent-wise.

I think her songwriting has gotten better as well. I really like Die Alone, don’t get me wrong. But it’s just a little too repetitive. Her new songs are much better in that sense.

Oh, also, when she sang Can’t Help Falling in Love, some girl fainted. And she said it happened the previous night, too! Maybe it’s an epidemic. Or maybe people just know they can get Ingrid to come to their rescue and get close to her by pretending to faint during that song…

Overall, I think Ingrid Michaelson has improved quite a lot. The lacking maturity factor that I wrote about in my previous posts seems to have resolved itself. Maybe is a really good album. And Ingrid is a really good performer (and so are her bandmates, especially Allie). Oh, and her other girl guitar player is kind of cute. So go see her live if she hasn’t already sold out in your town! Apparently she has sold out everywhere she’s gone so far. Hopefully I will get to see Ingrid again some time soon without a skip year like before!

Found Audio #01: Working Undercover For the Man

Published on July 11, 2009 in Found Audio and Music. 0 Comments Tags: .

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Found Audio #01: Working Undercover For the Man

Here’s the first installment of my Found Audio series of “podcasts.” The start of my tape (at least, one side of it) featured a recorded session of Dial-a-song, They Might Be Giants’ phone song service. You call the number and they play you a song. Back when I recorded this, long distance phone calls were not free. Unless, of course, you used Dialpad, the PC to Phone service that worked over 56kbps connections circa 2000! Due to the transmission of the song from NY to phone to internet to my speakers to my portable tape recorder to my Macbook Pro, the sound quality is not the best.

This was a pretty popular dial-a-song, but not their best. I think I had recorded another one, possibly “Hovering Sombrero.”