A Couple of Links Worth Clicking
New New Pornographers in August, including an interesting sounding boxed set that you can preorder.
Get the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's old, out of print EP from 2001.
A Couple of Albums Worth Hearing
Camera Obscura: Let's Get Out of This Country
Gorgeous. I could listen to Tracyanne Campbells voice all day and into the night. A great, heartbroken album. My favorite track, "Tears for Affairs," can be heard on their MySpace. Or watch the video...
Miranda Lambert: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
I do have a (mostly hidden) soft spot for country music. Probably has something to do with what kind of music I was listening to when Molly came on the scene and rocked my world. It also has something to do with finding good country music by someone who is young and fresh. I think I found some in Miranda Lambert, who is burning up my iPod.
Honestly, it was hard for this guy to pick up the album and pay for it. It's called "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" for crying out loud. I felt like I was buying Kotex. But it's good, new country music by a girl with a striking and sassy voice. Check her MySpace songs.
The Village Voice comments,
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a conceptual wonder. "Famous in a Small Town" makes wise about "the telephoto lens of fame," while "Guilty in Here" recalls the self-conscious aggression of Elvis Costello and the Attractions playing country on Almost Blue. Lambert turns the Rolling Stones on their heads when she sings, "I don't think I have any more room underneath my thumb." Her distracted, sexy vocals glide over an overstated drum attack and an amusing selection of sound effects, and she sounds cooled out on Carlene Carter and Susanna Clark's "Easy From Now On," which proves this wild child is big-town savvy.
AllMusic reviews,
...these are lean, hard-hitting, tuneful country songs, delivered with a classic outlaw strut and a vicious modern punch. If Lambert has a thin, almost girlish voice, she's hardly girly -- there's an edge to her delivery that leaves no doubt that she possess nerves of steel. But for as strong as she sounds on the plentiful rockers here, Lambert also lets her guard down on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, as she as she soaks her "Love Letters" with tears, sweetly sighs in "Desperation," and sadly wishes she was "More Like Her" as she looks on as her ex-lover returns to his old love. This last song provides a neat flip side to the rampaging title track, which also hints at this album's complexity. There are songs that are larger than life, songs that are achingly intimate, and they all add up to rich artistic statement of purpose that is also a hell of a lot of fun.
[...]
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend would have been impressive if it was just a showcase of her strengths as a singer or as a songwriter, but since it is both, it's simply stunning, a breakthrough for Lambert and one of the best albums of 2007, regardless of genre.
Warning: the following videos include a non-ugly girl in non-baggy clothing singing great songs. Nothing terribly provocative, but I know that some who read my blog are pretty sensitive about that stuff. Enjoy. See other videos at the CMT website.
"Famous in a Small Town"
"Kerosene" (from her debut album)