Where is your music heard on the net? Make sure you have your digital exposure covered:
http://virtualmusic.tv/2011/02/2010-music-website-heat-map/
(courtesy of virtualmusic.tv)
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Jan 27 2011
A 2010 Fave: Sharon Van Etten’s “Epic”
If a lemon and smokes breakfast yields songs like hers, I'm in.
Happy New Year! I’ve been in Colombia hearing some remarkable music that I’ll be writing about soon. I mention it now as an excuse for the delay in mentioning a favorite album of 2010, Sharon Van Etten’s, “Epic.”
The singer/songwriter genre is particularly tricky one. The lyrically gifted ones can detail a personal struggle for insight from anguish that summons us to reflect on our own lives . Those less talented confuse earnestness with relevance or self-absorption with awareness. On “Epic”, Sharon Van Etten hits an artistic grand slam. Listen and learn, kids.
On each track of Epic, Von Etten’s vocals are front and center, her evocative lyrical tales supplanted occasionally by echo-laden ambient vocal sounds and a smattering of drums, reed sounds, pedal steel, and bass. Every element frames the songs beautifully. The entire album is testament to the powerful reach of sonic simplicity and outstanding songwriting.
Can’t wait to hear her music live when she plays Lincoln Hall in Chicago.
Check out: Sister Don’t Mind
Record label: Badabing Records
Interview: Sharon Van Etten Village Voice
Sharon Van Etten Tour Dates (courtesy of Brooklyn Vegan)
Tags: A&R, Odds & Sods
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Nov 24 2010
A Holiday Hit on Radio Hyundai?
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- We need wheels.
I’m reading a newspaper (yes, I’m a Luddite) when this distinctive female vocal singing a Christmas standard cuts through the background noise of the TV in the next room. The vocalist, singing lead and harmonies, has a detached coolness in her delivery that borders on robotic but remains infectious nonetheless. However, it is her harmonic choices in the multi-tracked back-up vocals that are particularly intriguing. They possess a fine balance of past and future – so retro they wouldn’t sound out of place in The Wizard of Oz, while their coolness suggest a kind of techie futurism. Me like.
I look up to the screen and catch a musician-duo dancing and mugging around a shiny new car. It looks like they are having great fun while they are opening car doors, popping out of the trunk, and singing into a mic from the driver’s seat. It is deepest integration of a relatively unknown artist with product in a TV commercial that I can recall. The band is Pomplamoose, comprised of Nataly Dawn and Jack Conte from Marin County, and the song is Up on the Housetop. Here is their Hyundai commercial
It turns out they have had millions of viewings of their video versions of hit songs by Lady Gaga, Beyonce, and many others. Ben Folds and author Nick Hornby even recorded a video with them at their home studio.
What do you think? Is this the future of artist discovery? Are TV commercials the new radio?
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Tags: Ben Folds, Beyonce, Hyundai Christmas Commercial, Lady Gaga, Nick Hornby, Pomplamoose
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Nov 19 2010
Music Discovery site VYE delivers the goods
Every day there are new music discovery sites touting intuitive access to music and video content. This one, VYE, created by a talented 17 year old in Australia, actually delivers. Is your music on it?
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Nov 18 2010
AC/DC’s Highway to Hell
I may not be able to recall the numeric combination on the lock I use four times a week, but I can tell you exactly where I was when I first heard the AC/DC track “Highway to Hell.” June 1978, alone, listening to WLUP, driving my parents silver ford Fairmont wagon with red pleather interior, on Molitor Road, heading south of I-88, Aurora, IL. (Yep the Aurora of Wayne’s World. A bit which was as remarkably accurate as it was funny, imo.) The late afternoon summer sun was bright on the windshield as the drums kicked in behind the opening D chord of the title track.
Producer Mutt Lange
was in full maestro-mode on that album, fleshing out the very best elements of a great hard rock band and distilling them to their most potent punch. When Bon Scott’s voice kicked in, I nearly drove off the road as I cranked the volume to “11″ and my foot hit the accelerator.
If you want a lesson in doing things right in the studio, listen closely to this recording. The line-up is basic: vocals, two guitars, bass, drums. Each track’s arrangement and mix is tightly constructed and meticulously straightforward. There are no accidents on the album. Every note, every swelling chord, every accented beat, sounds like it could exist in no better space other than that precise moment. As with all great music, on Highway to Hell, God is in the Details.
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