Quiet, Too Quiet

Dear Nora has some of the most depressing songs I’ve heard, but they’re sung in such a pretty, upbeat way, you don’t even notice until you listen to the lyrics.

The band has been, err, disbanded, but they played was at NYC Popfest 2007, so maybe they’re keeping it alive.

 

 

label: http://magicmarkerrecords.com/dearnora.html

myspace: http://myspace.com/dearnora

I moved a month and a half ago and finally unpacked my computer a couple days ago.  During the move, I went through all my CDs and found a bunch of treasures.

Back in 2001, after college I was unemployed for the summer and staying on a friend’s couch in Boston looking for work.  I had no money, but I was desperate for new music to listen to.  So I went to this thrift store which sold used CDs for $0.25 and came back with a bunch of unsigned band compilations.  They’re mostly unlistenable.

Here’s a sample of bands from Unsigned Bands – The Album Network CD TuneUp #7.

Some sort of heavy metal trumpet guy (Don Collette) and a couple power ballads by Ultraviolet, Blush, and The Affairs.

It’s pretty amazing that Nirvana just sorta wiped this stuff all away.

I heard this song for the first time yesterday. Pretty great cover of My Girl. But it’s another song that’s hard to mess up.

This is just awesome.  Doveman did these Cat Power style covers of the entire Footloose Soundtrack. It has a sad backstory of being a tribute to a deceased sister.  It’s pretty effective.

I’m certainly not going to criticize the songs, but they’d be so good with a full band doing these songs.  Maybe Sufjan Stevens it up a bit with some banjo?  They’re a collection of hymns the way they’re done anyways.

Wow, even WNYC’s Soundcheck is all up on this. Not that I blame them though.

All the comments on the blogs talk about how ironic these songs are, but I don’t see it.  They’re just great.

The mp3s have been C&D’d off Doveman’s website, but I’ve got two of the tracks here, because, you know.  Fuck the man:

• footloose
• holding out for a hero

I just accidentally stumbled on this song I hadn’t heard for at least a decade. I was clicking around my sister’s music and saw this band Noise Addict. First song, Body Scrabs & Bizzos. Took a while to recognize it, but I remembered it from this mixtape I had made in 1997 with songs my sisters were listening to but I didn’t have at college.

Hmm, what was on that?  Pixies, Julian Hatfield, Raincoats, Frank Black, um Sinead O’Connor? I liked that song, The Emperor’s New Clothes.

But yeah, Noise Addict. Ben Lee’s first band, from when he was 13.  Pretty neat.

And the song has this great line about 2,000 kids with guitars.

Update:

Well shit, it looks like my podcast plugin doesn’t work with the new wordpress 2.6.  Here is a hard link to the song.

Here is the footage of my sister’s wedding I was at. It’s a time lapse video under 3 minutes and the music is by Lullatone.

high quality

If you have trouble viewing that, try:
low quality

I found this guy, Urlrich Schnauss, who makes some great trance-y music. He plays with Airiel on their song Sugar Crystals. But his solo stuff is pretty great.

 

I’m actually working on a video very much like this one right now.

myspace

After painting my new apartment all day, I just want to bliss out to this song

Okay, look, I know anyone reading this has probably heard of The Raincoats. But I just relistened to this old favorite song of theirs, No One’s Little Girl, and man, it’s so good. The way the bass line comes in all mellow during the first verse? And the violins hinting sinisterly in the background? Just super. It almost convinces me that every girl’s dream is to reject a marriage proposal.

Apparently they have a myspace.