On shuffle
The CD slush pile on my desk is overwhelming. I really, really, really want to listen to everything that crosses my desk, but there's just so much music out there, and much of it just plain sucks. And after listening to five really awful albums in a row (or at least tracks 1, 5 and 7; these tend to be my favorite on any given CD, don't know why that is), it really makes me question why I listen to anything recorded after 1995. And I don't want to be that girl, i.e., the old and cranky one.
Which is not to say that I haven't found some gems this way. I found some lovely albums by just picking a disk from the stack and hitting play, among them Britpoppers Maximo Park, L.A. songstress Inara George (check out her new project, The Bird and The Bee), experimental-classical ensemble Ethel, Brooklyn geek rockers One Ring Zero. So it's a short and eclectic list, but it's evidence that delving into the pile can be fruitful.
Maximo Park - "I Want You to Stay"
Inara George - "Genius"
Ethel - "Lighthouse"
One Ring Zero - "Here Come the Mannequins"
After the break, we play a little sonic Russian roulette.
I chose this album, Bert Jansch's "The Black Swan," because it was buried deep enough in the stack so that excavating it felt like unearthing something special, but it wasn't so deep that pulling it out would disrupt the rest of the pile thus sending a cascade of CDs onto my cubemate's desk (which happens fairly often, and I am sure it annoys him, although he's nice enough not to say anything).
It was released this past September. My first impression was that it was some rather nice folk music in the Devendra Banheart vein (although a little less weird), and sure enough, when I checked the liner notes Devendra himself actually contributes vocals on track 4, "Katie Cruel." As does Beth Orton.
So I did a little research, and found out that Jansch is actually already a respected folkie and has been recording since 1965.
So much for discovering "new music". Oh well, it's new to me.
Check out "Texas Cowboy Blues".
