Spirit If...Kevin Drew and Peter and the Wolf
RnR on a Firebird
I will never be a highly skilled technically perfect guitarist.
And I don`t care.
I`m playing this instrument with fun and love.
And that's all that matters in my music.
For music produced by others, I am only looking for something unusual, original, fresh, beautiful, emotional, dirty, soothing, messy, uncoordinated, multi-layered, not too complicated, fuzzy, downbeat, melancholic, intelligent, soft, rough, raw, romantic, crooked, but with a great rhythm. Summarizing: I`m just looking for that certain something that rings my bell.
This is what I found in the past few weeks to be quite interesting:
As the title suggests this is an extremely mellow album. Something to wake up to in the morning. Preferably in a hammock on a tropical island with a view on a crystal blue ocean. The band originates from Austin, Texas, and was formed by the musician Red Hunter. It's genres are defined by wikipedia as "Folk, Lo-fi, Singer/songwriter". The coolest tune on this album? One which displays the album's strength? Definitely "The Bride of S. Travels" which is a delightful little tune. The first thing that makes in great are the "Ahaaaaaaa"'s. Perhaps not the most beautiful "Ahaaaaa's" you`ve heard in a song, but definitely fitting the song perfectly. The second thing that makes this song great is its topic, travelling, which makes the song perfect for daily commuters such as me. If you`ve got to run, safe travels. From the 2 minutes mark the ending of the song is set in, with a subtle guitar and Aya's to lead to song to its end.
Other great songs are "Fireflies", "Ballad of Redhook" and "This Kid I knew". Melancholy, romance and a bit of nostalgia would be to key words to characterise these songs. Finally I`ve got to mention "Bottle Rockettes", a perfect pop song. It already starts of pretty good, but at the moment when the female singer joins in to sing her lines this song goes into higher grounds. And the break "Hey now honey, I`ll be fine. I just got to clear my mind. You go have a super time, I stay here and clear my mind". And then she replies magically....well..just listen the song. It`s just..beautiful.
Starting off in complete musical chaos you might be inclined to immediately push the eject button and throw the disk in the garbage bin, but please, please, control yourself and wait. After a minute or 2 the song settles down and transforms into something a lot more soothing. If you read some of my previous posts, I kind off dismissed this album compared to other BSS releases, but after 1.5 years it has won me over. It sounds like the intended follow up to "You forgot it in people". What one me however was the fact that Kevin can write a beautiful song titled TBTF. Translated: To Beautiful To F*ck. It's a bit tragic, which I could would be the case if you found a girl who is TBTF. In other ways in can be the ultimate compliment: "You are to beautiful to be touched". Reminds me a bit of Nick Cave's Where the Wild roses Grow, but there the girl got killed. She'll stay forever young, which is again a great Bob Dylan song, a song which in turn again relates to Ageless Beauty from Stars.
Back to the album! F*cked up kid has a great hook in it, just after the line: "ah sh*t..I guess I`m in love..with the f*cked up kid". The Lucky ones is probably my favorite tune on this album. It has an great positive vibe to it, great breaks, a perfect chorus and an even better ending. After this song the more experimental side of this album starts with songs like Gang Bang Suicide, Frightening Lives, Big Love (Great song to test your speakers with or any other audio equipment). This is followed by Backed out on the, which is great rock song. Distorted guitars, loose singing, dislocated solo's..it has fun written all over it.
And then there is Bodhi sappy weekend, which after an easy start shows it brilliance at 47 seconds. That chord progression! Amazing! In general this album has a very relaxed vibe and it is certainly not as chaotic (read: busy) as the second and third Broken Social Scene albums, but it has it's moments of brilliance. Largely due to smart simplicity. I love this album.
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