Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Music of the week

I listen to a lot of music while I work and a lot of it is kind of off the radar. After some discussions with friends over the Christmas holidays I decided to start mentioning what bands are currently getting played on my computer. This week I keep flipping back and forth between Bright Eyes' "I'm Wide Awake and It's Morning" and Bon Iver's "For Emma, Forever Ago". Both are very mellow. I'll start with Bright Eyes.

Bright Eyes perfectly captures the "bare your soul" type of music. In that sense, it reminds me of some of the early Dashboard Confessions stuff. His voice sounds frail and the lyrics seem to come straight from his diary. Songs like Poison Ivy and First Day of My Life get me all sappy.

Bon Iver was suggested to my by Tony. Apparently this guy spent a winter of seclusion in a hunting cabin up in back country of Wisconsin, during which he recorded this album (he added background vocals and other instruments later). It is emotional and somewhat raw. He sings falsetto for most of the record, which threw me at first. His lyrics do not touch me like Bright Eye's do but I am definitely drawn to his style. It reminds me of Band of Horses, which I listened to for nearly the whole summer. My current favorite track is Skinny Love.

Well, hope you enjoyed this and I welcome any suggestions. You can stream music from both bands at MySpace. Here are their links:
http://www.myspace.com/brighteyes
http://www.myspace.com/boniver

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree about bon iver's lyrical offerings. when you just read his words on paper, they tend to be very universal in meaning to the listener while the tone assumes a very personal underlying meaning to him. The beauty of that album I think is more in the landscape of mood he builds. I personally love the two part "Wolves" song.