The second someone recommends a song or album to me, my expectations start to rise. For movies too. I was worried when I went to see Interstellar because three of my really good friends had already seen the movie and had told me at length of how amazing it was. The movie overcame the build up and totally blew me away.
So for the end of the year in music, I want to pass along three bands/albums that I discovered this year and really enjoyed. Instead of focusing on their music I’m going to focus more on the reason that I checked them out in the first place.
Dovetail- Mount Karma- I’m so tired of seeing write ups where blogs/magazines/bios describe the new artist by saying “if so and so had a musical baby with so and so…”. So dumb. But when I was scrolling the internet before SXSW in March I saw a tiny little headline saying there was a band who sounded like The Beatles, The Beach Boys and Muse. MUSE?!
For some reason adding Muse into the bag of usual suspects really perked my attention. I’m not usually a sucker for headlines like that. But it worked this time. Glad it did.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJRX2YzuVLs
Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/artist/6wkfUp3u5n3gNiK1tl0Fhi
Colony House- When I Was Younger- I’d heard they signed a record deal and were working on an album, I talked with their A&R guy earlier this year a couple times, their drummer, Will, bought a house in my neighborhood, the band I used to be in played a couple shows with them. So when they actually released their album, there had been so many seemingly organic impressions, I was primed to connect with the album, I checked it out.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qodjejRp8I
Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/artist/6R664N4cEza3eORSqKSgO4
Augustana- Life Imitating Life- This was all about reputation and trust. I loved their last album. I’ve probably written about it before. Some guys I’ve been playing for really like Augustana and told me to check out their new album. I did. I didn’t like it as much as the previous one. They told me to give it a few more listens. I did. Now I love it.
The reason why I took the time to listen to it a few more times was because Augustana was already a familiar voice. A voice I trusted to sing to me and take me somewhere I wanted to go.
Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/43mMU0PwhSXcS007HfrASo
Why does music work sometimes? I don’t know. Do everything in excellence.
