Friday, August 14, 2009

Music for Saturday

Thursday I heard that Hope Sandoval has a new album coming out soon and that her band Mazzy Star is currently working on a new album as well. It's been a long time since their last album Among My Swan, so I'm curious to see if Hope and David Roback will do anything new. If this tune is any indication, then probably not. But that's okay, it's still a pretty song.

Hope Sandoval - Blanchard.mp3

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Monsters of Folk are some of my favorite musicians teamed up. This line-up is what originally got me into M. Ward, because in 2005 when I saw Conor Oberst, Jim James and Matt Ward singing "O'Brien/O'Brien's Nocturne" on Austin City Limits on PBS it instantly became my favorite song. It didn't strike me at the time when I went looking for the writer of the song and found Matt Ward, and promptly bought all his albums, but later it occurred to me that any one of those songwriters could have written that song, but it was Ward. If Oberst or James had written that song, then I would have been listening to a bunch of Bright Eyes or My Morning Jacket albums non-stop for the past 4 years, instead of M. Ward's, but they didn't, and so I didn't. M. Ward is the best songwriter of the three, and in my opinion the most sincere in his delivery. His songs have the continuity and lack of pretension that Oberst's haven't, and the emotional reality that James' don't.

Still, put them all together, and something magical happens. Just like that night when I heard them all singing, "I got a brand new song to show ya, though it probably ain't gonna blow your mind."

So here's a couple brand new from the Monsters. Buy their album when it comes out in September, I think you'll enjoy it. I know I will.

Monsters of Folk - Dear God (sincerely M.O.F.).mp3

Monsters of Folk - Say Please.mp3