Make Music New York is around the corner and I’m feeling Soooo ready! Be sure to go outside on the first day of summer to enjoy music all around you!
I’ve arranged a great line-up to perform at the store front of Pasanella & Son:
http://makemusicny.org/schedule/venue/profile/100526
My 30 minute set at 7:45pm will be just me and a ukulele!
In the meantime, from 6pm to 7pm, I’ll be at the Battery Park Bosque (Bowling Green Station) where there’ll be an upright piano that I can bang on! http://makemusicny.org/schedule/venue/profile/100393
I hear the weather is going to be lovely, so please come on out and enjoy yourselves…listen, sing, sway and dance!
The Sleep’s debut album has many elements that make a great record, for me: a specific mood, melodic delivery of said mood and attractive sonic candy.
On my first listen to Never in a Million Years, I noticed how I had been listening to instrumentals for quite some time before hearing any vocals–for about 6 minutes in fact. I understood immediately that The Sleep lays emphasis on ambience, vibe and sonic texture. When lead vocalist Laura Smith sings for the first time in “Never”, I was pulled in deeper into their aural territory. Her vocals are not in the forefront of the mix, but instead blended with the rest of the entourage making it seem like she’s an added texture to the song, and not necessarily the focal point.
This doesn’t mean her melodic contribution and contemplative voice aren’t worthy of attention, in fact, it’s quite the contrary. Her voice is commanding with a touch of sweetness, reminiscent of Beth Gibbons in Portishead, but with more absolution. Haunting and hypnotic are what comes to mind when describing what i hear.
Track 5 “Take Me” is one of my favorites on the album. The taunting phrase, “is it worth it?” made me second guess what I had been doing at the time, as if the song were talking to me directly. I remembered this wasn’t a voice on my head, but a song I was listening to. Powerful stuff.
I look forward to where The Sleep will take me next, I’ll be along for their next hypnotic ride.
www.thesleep.net
One of the requirements for a song to be a “greatest song ever written” has to be surviving the winds of change and time. While this song was only released in 2006, it has not ceased giving me goosebumps when I hear the familiar beginning.
The song? “Future Foe Scenarios” by Silversun Pickups off their album Carnavas.
Singer Brian Aubert has a touch of the mumble syndrome, found in many modern rock artists. Occasionally, however, key phrases come through sound and clear. The title for one, “future foe scenarios” gives you some food for thought. Who do you work for baby?/And does it work for you lately? A sound question for someone who might have lost their way. Who is this song for? Who is he singing to? He talks about some sort of Revolution, baby! With no intro, there’s no delay in taking you into this experience…the song jumps right into the first verse with only vocals and guitar, The things we laid, do not amount to much…
Each line is delivered with patience and precision, giving you time to digest the lyrics. The music adds color with bouts of guitar noise and bells. The vocal performance is so appropriate for the song drives me insane. There’s an unmistakable passion in his voice that yearns for your emersion. If he were a leader in a pack, we would all be following blindly.
I still listen to the album in its entirety—it’s an excellent album, after all. But when that track comes on, I always think “Wow, this is such a good song,” to which the Brian Aubert says, “It’s alright. It’s alright.”