Like A Star
From Corinne Bailey Rae

This music is so easy to fall in love with.

When Corinne Bailey Rae released her first album in the U.K. earlier this year, it was met with stunning success. It debuted at #1 on the Brit charts and she became an instant star. Her popularity starting rising like a river in a downpour and her music started popping up all over the world. By October, she was the guest on Saturday Night Live and in December, she received three Grammy Nominations: Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. Now, I hate the Grammys like everyone else, but this is still a pretty phenomenal accomplishment for a freshman effort.

What’s more, she deserves every bit of press she gets.

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[mp3]http://www.secondnaturerecordings.com/reborn/mp3/A%20New%20Language.mp3[/mp3]

A New Language
From Functioning on Impatience

In 1998, Coalesce released this, their second full length album. The music was typical of the band: loud, fast, hard, angry, and intentionally confusing. Its seven songs (spanning a mere, though blistering 20 minutes) were recorded in a whirlwind 3 days and released by the relatively new record label Second Nature Recordings. They turned to a “Matt Jones” (who, as far as I can tell, has disappeared into obscurity) for the album design. This was the greatest decision Coalesce ever made as a band.

The cover of Functioning on Impatience is nothing short of graphic design perfection.

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[mp3]http://www.southern.com/southern/band/EVENS/sounds/19660-06-No_Money.mp3[/mp3]

No Money
From Get Evens

I’m on a permanent Fugazi kick. Every once in a while, I’ll put on In on the Kill Taker or 13 Songs because I just can’t find anything else to listen to and I’ll end up listening to only Fugazi for three days. I don’t follow the band like I used to, so when I found out the Fugazi kids are on indefinite hiatus, I was torn between a basic feeling of loss and the thought, “Hey, they deserve it after 15 years of touring.”

I heard that they were on hiatus when I learned that Ian MacKaye got together with Amy Farina of The Warmers to create the Evens. More than being a departure from the Minor Threat/Pailhead/Fugazi sound for which MacKay is famous, the Evens bears almost no resemblance whatsoever to his former outfits (other than his signature voice). Maybe I’m getting old, but I found it totally refreshing.

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[mp3]http://www.tgrec.com/media/2928.mp3[/mp3]

Emp. Man’s Blues
From The For Carnation

You are getting very, very sleepy. You’re in a comfortable place. You can see fluffy white clouds floating through a sea of azure blue. You’re laying on your back in a field of soft grass. There’s a storm on the horizon. It looks dangerous, but it’s far away. How does the storm make you feel?

…

Good. Good. Now, take a deep breath. As you exhale, I want you to imagine you are breathing away your worries. You won’t be able to breathe them all away, only a portion.

…

Good. Good. Now, tell me about one of the worries that was left behind.

…

Interesting…

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[mp3]http://musicforsteve.com/music/JUNIOR_BOYS_InTheMorning.mp3[/mp3]

So This is Goodbye
Realeased 22 August 2006

Must Own

It’s hard to dislike this album. Nie unto impossible, I’d say. Everyone at work refers to this album as the “bleepity blopity music” and that’s actually a pretty accurate description. The music consists almost exclusively of engineered beats and vocals. Normally a recipe for disaster, Junior Boys have managed somehow to create a near perfect album. More than being expertly produced, they have created an album that is easy to listen to. There is no need to skip a single track.

So This is Goodbye is also something of an enigma. All at once the album sounds retro, modern, and way ahead of its time. There is nothig inherently new offered by this album, the genius is in the presentation. If I were feeling more adventurous, I would use words like “sensual,” “organic,” and “tranquil.”

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The Crane Wife
Released 3 October 2006

Must Own

It’s difficult to write music that people will like. It’s harder still to write bold music with broad appeal. But it’s nearly impossible to create an album that will be considered a “classic.” Relatively few artists have managed to climb this Mt. Everest of musical accomplishments and we all recognize the names of those who have: the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Nirvana, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Dr. Dre, Michael Jackson, OutKast, U2, Radiohead… There is a special place in music history reserved for these albums and always room in our CD collection.

Well, make room for one more.

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[mp3]http://www.musicforsteve.com/music/TV_ON_THE_RADIO_wolf-like-me.mp3[/mp3]

Wolf Like Me
From Return to Cookie Mountain

TV On The Radio makes music that is its own genre. Any number of hyphenated genres almost work. Soul-Punk. Indie-Funk. Alt-Fusion. Urban-New-Wave. Not only do these attempted definitions miss the mark by miles, they simply can’t do justice to the music itself. Nobody makes music like this. What’s more, nobody has ever tried. TVOTR have mastered the art of whatever it is they are trying to do. Welcome to the age of [nameless genre].

TV On the Radio makes music that is initially hard to listen to, possibly difficult to understand, and instantly easy to love. Mark my words when I tell you that this album will appear in almost every Top Ten list as the year comes to a close.

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[mp3]http://www.musicforsteve.com/music/kayla.mp3[/mp3]

Reflection Seen as Shadow

It wouldn’t be Music for Steve if I didn’t post the entire Sparkwood and Twenty-First album.

This little dandy is a now entirely un-obtainable recording that I happened across sometime in 1998. I knew someone in the band. Or at least knew someone who knew someone in the band. Whatever.

I remember exactly where I was when I first heard it. My friend Stephanie (who I call ho-ju and who I miss dearly) was dating a guy in the Bay Area (who, I must admit, I didn’t really like, though he was nice enough… I forget his name). We had gone down for the weekend, probably caught a show, and crashed on somebody’s floor somewhere. At some point during the weekend, we ended up at ho-ju’s boyfriend’s house, hanging out in his tiny bedroom. He popped a CD in his dinky little stereo and mentioned that his friends had just recorded it. I expected straight-edge hardcore since he and most of his friends were in straight-edge hardcore bands… Heck, everyone was in a straight-edge hardcore band in 1998. Anyway, I knew which friends he was talking about and they were your run-of-the-mill, clean-cut, straight-edge kids who had recently discovered the joys of large-guage earrings, but not yet tattoos. “So,” I thought, “bring on the the Ignite wanna-be’s.”

Instead, what I heard blew me away.

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[mp3]http://www.burningheart.com/_lib/util/stream.php?p=/34/163/1442.mp3&f=Refused-New%20Noise.mp3[/mp3]

New Noise
From The Shape of Punk to Come

This is the best punk song ever recorded. More than being the culmination of all punk music before it, Refused simply destroyed the future of punk music by pushing it as far as it could possibly go before it had no choice but to evolve into a new genre.

I was roundly mocked when I said that in 1998, but 8 years later I still think I’m right. New Noise delivers exactly what it promises: a new noise. Using every punk trick in the book combined with just the right amount of modern production, no other band has been able to create anything quite like this song. Newer punk outfits like (+44) have to settle for sounding “old school,” modern hardcore has evolved and is now refered to almost exclusively as “metal,” and even the kids at Victory Records are wearing make-up. With The Shape of Punk to Come and particularly with New Noise, Refused drew a line in the sand and marked the evolution point in the entire punk movement.

The reason this song sounds surprisingly modern 8 years after it was recorded is not because Refused was “ahead of their time.” Put simply, Rufused is the time.

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[mp3]http://spintonic.net/audio/spintoband/brownboxes.mp3[/mp3]

Brown Boxes
From Nice and Nicely Done

Any band willing to use a chorus of kazoos as the center peice of a song meant for radio play deserves to be famous.

Currently, the Wikipedia entry for this band reads in its entirety:

The Spinto Band is a rock band from Wilmington, Delaware.

Period. That’s amazingly sparce for a band that has been recording and touring since 1997, but trust me when I tell you it will not stay sparce for long. The Spinto Band couldn’t have picked a better year to release Brown Boxes and their latest single Oh Mandy (video below the fold). With clear similarities to bands like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the Shins, and the Decemberists, both the indie scene and the music industry at large are not only ready for the Spinto Band, they’re downright begging for it.

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