I've been thinking that since I'm not too prolific with the "life moments" blog format, I should just start posting about the music I'm listening to instead. It's likely the music posts will lead to some life moments musings and that way I get to do my favorite thing--talk about what amazing new (or new-ish) things musicians are offering up these days and why they give me "the feeling."
The feeling is something that happens to me when a song really takes hold and compels me to listen to it over and over again. Sometimes when I haven't had it for a while I start trolling my friends' playlists on Spotify for something I haven't heard of but might--just might--be "the one." Or at lest the one for right now. Occasionally the one turns out to be one of a bunch of great songs by an artist previously unknown to me and I get to revel in the feeling for a good long while and come away with a new favorite band/artist. Otherwise I just burn up that one song until the feeling is gone. It's always sad when that happens, but there is no avoiding it. Rationing doesn't work, and it kind of defeats the point of chasing the feeling anyway. When it comes to music bingeing, go big or go home.
The artist I most recently went most apeshit over was Phosphorescent. Want some to hear a guy with an appealingly unusual voice choke up about his twelve-too-many failed love affairs layered over gorgeous, soaring, etherial backing tracks that flow innocently into your ears and then get to work slicing up your heart? He's your guy. Here's Song for Zula, one of the (deservedly) best-known tracks off his last album:
Yeah...um, so Phosphorescent dude (Matthew Houck) is not only sick of love, he thinks it's bullshit, a an evil force that has disfigured him and turned him into an enslaved caveman who can only move in slow motion. Povracita! I could love you so good, Matthew Houck, but I won't because then you will stop making killer albums like Muchacho, which is 98% pure gold.
Another guy I've been digging on recently is Daniel Norgren. I don't know anything about him, but there is something about his delivery and the simplicity of his arrangements that reminds me of J. J. Cale (RIP)--except their voices are totally different. Not-quite-apt comparison aside, here's Black Vultures, a song about being out of luck and out of options and knowing it full well but doing whatever the fuck you want while waiting for whatever is going to happen to happen.
I am particular about my revivalist singer-songwriters (there are just too damn many of them), but there is something about the naked quality of this guy's voice that really gets to me. I feel like he was transported to this decade from the Great Depression a la some kind of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure happening. He just sounds old, and his songs sound like they were recorded on a wax cylinder, but he is--as far as I can tell--not old and not mysteriously arrived from the early 20th century. He's just the real deal, and he fucking rips it up. The only thing I don't like about him is the industrial/experimental noise tracks interspersed between the songs on his latest album, Buck. But perhaps I am too impatient, too eager to get to the feeling.
That's it for the first installment of "What's in Neuro Crash Girls' Headphones." I promise I'm not depressed and that I don't only listen to white men!
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