I needed to download my monthly tracks from emusic.com yesterday and I was out of ideas. Their autorecommender is usually very hit and miss for me (mostly miss and miss), but I gave it a shot and out popped Shearwater's album Rook. I must have got to it from my love for Okkervil River. Anyway I listened to the album twice yesterday. I find Jonathan Meiburg's voice haunting and disconcerting, sort of a cross between Anthony (from A and the Johnsons) and Thom York of Radiohead. I was looking for a decent video of theirs to put up today, when I stumbled upon this "NPR Tiny Desk Concert", which appears to be a sort of unplugged gig at NPR studios. Ignore the grating sound from that horrid instrument at the beginning, the first song, Rook is excellent. The other three are not bad if you have the 18 minutes to burn. I like what the YouTube blurb says: "a ... set that's at once pristine and ramshackle - equal parts clarity and clatter".
And what is with the guy with the 3D glasses?
Taking shape
21 hours ago
2 comments:
I do declare I told you "Get Shearwater. It's one of the dude's from Okkervil River. He's getting a PhD in ornithology at UT and he names stuff after birds. It's your bag, man."
I swear sometimes I'm like Cassandra around here.
The NPR Tiny Desk concert is from the All Songs Considered show, available by podcast. It is immensely worthwhile, especially when they have the discussion shows with Carrie Brownstein from Sleater-Kinney, Robin Hilton, and Stephen Thompson. Incredible music geekery.
Now that you mention it, I do remember. That is why the name seemed so familiar. The whole bird thing is a little bizarre, his previous band was called "Kingfisher". His story about birding in the Falklands in the middle of the clip is cute. I have been watching some of the Tiny Desk concerts they are nice.
Ed, I also scored the newest Frightened Rabbit and the Modest Mouse EP from emusic yesterday, both are worth listening to. All in all a decent month for emusic downloads.
Cassandras of the world unite.
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