Monday, March 30, 2009
Monday Music #13 (Sophie Johnson-Hill, Carol Keogh)
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned my laziness regarding my music wiki. It hasn't gotten any better. I'm making progress, but only in the sense that the Terrible Trivium's chipping a few grains of sand off a cliff with a needle is progress. Some things fall by the wayside, like my list of artists and names to check out.
The saga, briefly: I kept a WordPad file, then decided to put it online on the wiki. In doing this, I blanked the file. This was dumb. I rebuilt it, partially, on my first wiki, and then the site went under. That was also dumb. Right now it isn't rebuilt so much as sporadically scavenged. I have names, but nowhere near as many. Collecting them again is going to take time. So that's one purpose of these posts: collecting names, and remembering why I was intrigued in the first place.
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A lot of the names, for instance, would have been lost to the Google ether, like Sophie Johnson-Hill. Apparently someone left a comment on her page, some time ago, possibly in the merry month of May. She's got one of the most amusing "About Me" blurbs I've seen in a while; fortunately, the music backs it up.
The vocal parts on "Life Has Taken Its Toll" could come straight out of a diva's anthem. They wouldn't sound at all out of place amplified and backed by a loud chorus. But they're not. They're stripped of everything but a hesitant beat, backing vocals ghosting about the place creepy chords, and what sounds uncannily like a wind-up skeleton doll. It's a pop song dragged into hell and back, then autopsied. And it's absolutely wonderful.
(How wonderful? Someone else was supposed to be discussed here until I ran across the song literally an hour ago, and that was the end of that.)
I encourage you to listen to her other songs, too. A lot of them are hip hop-influenced, which may Not Be Your Thing, but at least try. They're good. Very good.
Listen here.
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Of course, there are some artists I don't need any assistance whatsoever remembering. They're just that good. And if anyone belongs on that list, it's Carol Keogh. She can do little wrong as far as I'm concerned. Tychonaut's Love Life is only one of my favorite albums ever.
But I was a bit afraid she'd disappeared into the ether. She has a Myspace blog, but it was silent (her right, of course.) She'd done some tracks with her new project The Natural History Museum, but there wasn't much news on that front. And then, out of the blue (song title!), she reappears with guest vocals on a Jerry Fish song and - finally! - a Myspace of her own.
"Into the Blue" starts out sounding like it's going to be pretty straightforward until it suddenly bursts into bloom a few seconds in. Put simply, it's one of the most gorgeous songs I've heard all week, likely all month, possibly all year. The piano lilts and sighs along and Carol's voice is in fine form throughout, especially when it soars at the ends of the choruses. It's not as complicated or experimental as Tychonaut, sure, but there's The Natural History Museum for that. Sometimes the most beautiful things are the simplest.
Listen here.
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