MUSIC THREAD

I've spent the last few days listening to my old Paul Kelly CDs and trying to figure out why he's still virtually unknown in the US.

For those who are unfamiliar with him -- and judging by his American sales numbers, that's virtually everyone -- Paul Kelly is an Australian singer-songwriter who has been recording for about 25 years. He's big down under, but has never broken through in the US, and largely quit trying to in the late 80s, I think. For my money, he's top 3 of the best songwriters of his generation (my other two being Joe Pernice and Neil Finn, and his sound is sort of a cross between those two). He used to sound vaguely alt-country before the term existed. He's gotten folkier as he's gotten older. He gets compared to Elvis Costello and Bruce Springsteen, and neither one is particularly off-base.

His first album released in the US was "Gossip" by Paul Kelly and the Messengers, and is one of the best CDs I own. (The band was Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls in Australia up until that point, in a reference to "Walk on the Wild Side" by Lou Reed; they apparently figured that name wouldn't fly in the US, which was probably wise.) I don't know that he's matched that one, but virtually everything he's done is damn good.

If you've got a decent used record store by you, I highly recommend seeking out any of his albums with the Messengers -- "Gossip," "Comedy," "Under The Sun," or "So Much Water So Close To Home," or his greatest hits disc "Songs From The South." Unfortunately the selection on iTunes is terrible, and they can't tell him apart from Paul Kelly the soul singer or Paul Kelly the film composer. The best thing they have is a live version of "Leaps and Bounds" from a Mushroom Records compilation.

For the torrent-savvy, his entire discography is uploaded on mininova.org.

Anyway, just wanted to share the love. The guy's brilliant. Really.

 

The OC mix 2 is really good and I stumbled upon it from Yahoo music stations. Really good mix of different alternative music.

 

Here's the advance of Talib Kweli's third solo album, Ear Drum, not due in stores until July 24.

http://www.mediafire.com/?fozzo31dz3d

EDIT: IJAG had trouble with that link, so if anybody else did, this is a hell of an album to download. Here's another link:

http://tinyurl.com/ynod9s

 

New single is fairly solid. Not as 'rappy' as they started to get on the last effort.

 

I'll see if I can send you a link for the new album, Oz.

Here are 10 Linkin Park leftovers, not all from 2007, but you definitely haven't heard these.

1. No Roads Left
2. What I've Done (Live)
3. No More Sorrow (Live)
4. Morning After
5. Given Up (Live)
6. QWERTY
7. High Voltage
8. Reading My Eyes (Live)
9. Carousel
10. My December

http://www.sendspace.com/file/wls8w5

 

CD-quality version of Kanye's second upcoming single, "Stronger."

http://www.sendspace.com/file/63w4zx

 

I'm glad there are people outside of Australia who have heard of our iconic singer-songwriter Paul Kelly. The good news is that his next CD is out in July. One of the tunes from it, God Told Me So, was on his myspace website and it's a cracker.

Songs from the South is a great introduction to Kelly's work.

 

I can't wait until the new "Graduation" album from Kanye West. I'm listening to the "Can't Tell Me Nothing" mixtape right now. Fire.

http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/mixtape/id.151/title.kanye-west-cant-tell-me-nothing

 

i'll be there as well, especially sunday. it'll be my second time at the festival and second time seeing both the new pornos and of montreal. i'm especially looking forward to hearing some of the NP's new material. and of course, barnes will be on the top of his game. here's to a "repudiated immortals" encore!

 

yes, Kelly is fantastic

(but judging from the music threads on here, won't appeal to most sports writers ... Kanye West? Linkin Park? Jason Mraz???)

 

I was just given a couple links in the past week that I think the majority of this board will find interesting.

I don't know if these have already been mentioned before, but I can pretty much guarantee I've never seen them on this thread.

The first is called metaCRITIC (www.metacritic.com) ... It's basically a site that culls all the various reviews that are out there and computes an average ranking of music, movies, DVDs, etc. on a 100-point scale. It's pretty cool, because since it's averaged out, you get a more consensus opinion of the product.

The second site is called The Hype Machine (www.hypem.com) ... What it does is scours the blogosphere for mp3s that people are posting on their music blogs and compiles them all in one place. It provides a handy little music player that makes it easy to listen through the songs and also allows you to check out the actual blogs from whence they came. Admittedly, there's a lot of stuff on here I would never listen to, but there's also a lot of stuff that sounds pretty good and that I'd be willing give a closer listen to.

 

Here's one of my favorite sites for music news.

http://blog.largeheartedboy.com/

For some downloads, go here:

http://puritanb.blogspot.com/

And for a generally good musc blog, go here:

http://fuelfriends.blogspot.com/