Saturday, May 09, 2009

Too Late To Change Me? - New Music I Want (Part 6)

I'm not sure quite why my taste in music has developed over the years, and in particular why it has become so much more diverse. There is not much that I liked twenty years ago that I dislike now but had you asked me then, about much that of the genres I now devour, I very much suspect that you would have got a pretty withering answer.
I don't think that I'm becoming less discriminating and isn't age said generally to lead to increasing conservatism? Then again would I (if it we
re possible then) have written what I think in a blog at all let alone in the "this is what I like now, how I feel about it, and if you disagree that's fine and you can just tell me" way I am doing at this moment? Absolutely not!
Neither would I have believed that in 2008-9 I would get to see an average of one live band a week or that I could find out about so much new music and in large part this is a result of the digital revolution of the last decade or so - MySpace and blogs included. On the other hand, and this is a matter of active choice rather than conservatism, I can now find may of those artists and their new music on vinyl...

Perhaps not the album 'Too Late To Change Me' on vinyl, (yet...), but a good example of the way things have changed and the tide of music from, or influenced by, New York.
This particular ripple hasn't really reached these shores yet, more than a year after its US release, but that's no reason not to give it a mention. If you like the style of piano-led songwriting exemplified by, to give just two examples, Regina Spektor and Sara Bareilles then you might consider this.

The next problem is to get my paws on a copy of the six-track CD, as my local independent record store certainly doesn't have one. This is where the cyber-local independent store cdbaby comes to the rescue. This album has already gotten very positive reviews there and I strongly suspect, that once mine arrives on this side of the pond, there will be another and it will appear here first!
Another album that I found out about by the same route last year, and find myself listening to with increasing frequency, is Kira Fontana - The Inner Revolution, which is slightly more alt-rock/pop and was mixed by Howard Bilerman, who has worked with Arcade Fire and Godspeed You Black Emperor, so you can probably now see how this tallies with my Canadian-indie addiction and yes, before you ask, I am going to see Metric live in Bristol next Saturday.
Many thanks are due to Ariel Publicity, NYC for giving me the chance to find out about and mention artists that would have otherwise almost certainly escaped my notice.


The item I was going to include next no longer falls in the 'new music I want' category and it is about as local as it gets. I bought it last week and it deserves a review of its own.

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