Finn Brothers: Everyone Is Here; plus other see dees
This will be the first album recommendation I have made based on … almost no exposure to an album. This little disc, Everyone Is Here, has a single called “Won’t Give In,” which is available on iTunes as a part of a three-song download. Unfortunately, I do not have iTunes and do not have the time to grab it, so I am sitting here hoping Cities 97 will play this song again for New Music Monday. It was just one of those songs that grabbed me. Traveling 70 miles an hour eastbound on I94 with the windows open, some subtle nuance of the tune grabbed my eardrums and told them “this is something special.” Then again, I am suggesting you buy a compact disc based on 30 seconds of hearing bits and pieces of one song from it. This means either the song is so amazing that 30 seconds of it filtered through traffic causes melodic brain convulsions, or I am utterly misguided and should be doing better things during the driving task.
Friends, I fear the latter may be true - however, I will listen more and come back at a later date with a confirmation or complete rejection of my current assessment.
Speaking of buying things on Amazon, you may be interested in a little screen shot I took recently while perusing monitors:
Wow! Zero percent off? For me? You shouldn’t have. Shucks, I’m … I’m overwhelmed. It’s like Christmas in June.
Outrageously steep discounts aside, I recently figured out Amazon’s logo. You know, how they have an arrow going from “a” to “z”. Clevvver. How many years did I look at that without noticing? Five, actually. Oh, hush. Am I a moron? Yes. If obvious logos also throw you for a loop, you may be surprised to know that FedEx has an arrow hidden in their logo (and a teaspoon too, but I’m not telling you where that is). I also have an incredible problem failing to hear song lyrics correctly. I still think it’s “roses really smell like woo woo woo.” That just sounds better than “poo,” don’t you think? This train of thought might prompt you to wonder what horrible change has come over that has caused me to listen to top 40 music. Frankly, I pondering the same question. Though, being a piano player, I certainly can respect that one wicked lick of a piano introduction at the beginning of “Roses.” Secondly, pop music has held a strange attraction for me as of late. The songs are like slow train wrecks … with trains that are really flashy and wrecks that are repeated over and over with slight variations. In the business of train wrecks, you just can’t beat the “slap” sound effect in User’s “Yeah.” I never thought I’d say that. And to think, all of this composed while listening to George Winston. I really am off my rocker.
Final recommendation: The Juliana Theory, Emotion is Dead. A friend of mine loaned this to me way way (and by the double “way” I mean a really long time ago) back and I had not listened to it yet. On a whim, I popped it in and it was really prrretty good. Then I heard “We’re at the Top of the World” and became completely addicted to guitar riffs opening up the song. You might like the entire album, but do give this song a try on Amazon’s samples; it is three minutes and seventeen seconds (though you only get 30 seconds at Amazon - poor you!) of sonic harmony so well-produced and written, it seems out of place with the rest of the selections on the album.
Excuse me while I resume bizarre juxtapositions on my play list including, but not limited to, Winston before Encore and Engelina, Enya after Switchfoot, and Norah Jones snuggled up next to PvD.