Monday, February 16, 2009
Monday Music #7 (Margaret Healy, Cortney Tidwell, Kristin Hersh)
It's been months and I have yet to finish reconstructing my music wiki. I convince myself that an artist page a day (with many days skipped) is a good rate, but it really isn't, considering how much I have to go. If Referata decides to meet the same fate as the late, lamented ScribbleWiki, I have no idea what I'll do.
The real downside here is that I lost my To Buy List. I thought it was such a great idea to take it off the WordPad file on my computer and put it online. Whoops. I'm reconstructing that too. And a lot of it, lately, involves revisiting old friends who have, it turns out, been up to a lot. These are nice discoveries.
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Margaret Healy released an album, ...and you are, a few years ago, which I can only assume is excellent. I've been looking for it for years, however, and have yet to run across any copies. The Internet has failed me. Maybe in Ireland things are different.
What's a bit easier to find is "Something Real," which was up on her Myspace for a short time. It's one of the most gorgeous songs I have. Musically it's more acoustic/electronic blend beauty (I need a better word for that, because it makes up most of what I love these days.) The lyrics are fairly blunt - anything with "smoking shit" would have to be - but the music's as wistful as anything Sarah Brightman or Loreena McKennitt has ever recorded. There's even a request for a grand declaration of love, right there at the end, but it's only flowery for a second. The declaration turns out to be "Are you okay?" That's perfect in every possible way.
I hadn't paid attention except for trying to find that old album, but maybe I'm in luck; she's got a new one coming out in April called Girls, Boys and Clockwork Toys.
"Tick Tock" could be the same speaker, but the sound is... different. There's nothing wistful about the music; it's all been replaced with deranged-carnival ebullience. The speaker's whole world has been quite thoroughly upended, but instead of anything remotely mournful, you've got topsy-turvy strings, a bouncy xylophone, and cymbals, all in major. It's practically vaudeville, and it's well worth a listen.
Listen here.
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Cortney Tidwell also has a new album coming out. She's American, so it was considerably easier for me to find her debut. I haven't listened to it nearly as much lately, which is a shame, because it's beautiful. It's music for walking down the sidewalk or looking out the window and watching the lawns become secret gardens for a minute or two.
The only thing about her album was that towards the end, the songs tended to flow together. Some of this might be due to my neglect. I'm not sure. Fortunately, "Palace," from her upcoming album Son and Moon, doesn't seem to be one of those. The opening is nice enough - almost a cappella, background vocals circling each other - but towards the middle, everything expands. (If you've heard "Eyes are at the Billions" from her debut, it's the same idea.) There's plenty of turbulence going on, but it's all at a distance. The foreground's lovely, fuzzy haze. It fills rooms. I'm interested to see how the full album extrapolates from it.
Listen here.
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I've only done two artists for Monday Music for the past few weeks. This isn't a hard and fast rule by any means. For instance, if Kristin Hersh releases a new song, I'm likely to break it.
"Gin" is up on her CASH Music page. It's not part of Speedbath, technically, and I can understand why - on the one hand, it sounds enough like the natural progression from "Rubidoux"; on the other hand, it's not nearly as harrowing. but Kristin mentioned she wants Throwing Muses to record it. It's certainly got enough twists for it.
CASH Music, incidentally, officially launched the other day. I'm excited. You should be too.
Listen here.
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