music

While the big centers for art and music remain in notable locales like New York, Los Angeles, London, Tokyo and Berlin, the most impressive, innovative and important music has often come out of smaller, less well-known places. The most famous band in history hailed from Liverpool, a disproportionate number of huge bands came out of the quirky college town of Athens, Georgia in the 1980's and recently there has been a significant boom in top-notch music coming out of Austin, Texas. Back in England, the country's propensity for non-London centers of modern sound has continued to blossom. Like the small but powerful influence of the town of Bristol in the late 90's with bands like Portishead, today there is an electronic renaissance going on in Southend-on-Sea, a former resort in Essex. Along with Crystal Castles, British Sea Power and Klaxons, one of the most exciting bands to come out Southend in the past few years is These New Puritans.

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At some point in the mid to late 1990's, a select few musicians rediscovered the gentle campfire folk the likes of which Simon and Garfunkel perfected decades earlier. It wouldn't be until the earliest days of the new century that anyone would call this resurgence relevant, though. After the sunny, increasingly electronic sounds of the 90's wore thin, audiences became receptive to clever souls with acoustic guitars, many of whom recorded in their living rooms a la Nick Drake. All of a sudden The Shins, Iron & Wine and Wilco were appreciably big. Perhaps the most important and one of the earliest examples of this movement is Belle and Sebastian, a bunch of Scottish kids who practically invented twee. Read more

Earlier this week I made my case for why the English anarcho-pop group Chumbawamba ought to be considered more than just a one hit wonder from the 90's. Today it's all about the pudding of that proof, a small introductory playlist for anyone interested in Chumbawamba's sound outside of their Top 10 gracing "Tubthumping". The ironic part is that most of the band's material doesn't sound a whole lot like their hit. Really, it's just a tone-setting intro track. Most of Chumbawamba's music is considerably more lyric-heavy (not to mention smarter). Though they've been putting out albums since the mid 1980's and released their most recent LP in 2008 with a new one on the way later this year, so far the strongest period for Chumbawamba was between 1992 and 1997 with a block of four albums.

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Alright, I give. That lovey-dovey holiday is just a stone's throw from this dreary Thursday afternoon, so I'll play that old love song game. I don't know why I'm so averse to the idea of songs about love. Maybe it's because there are far too many songs that imagine they're about love when really they're just about sex, a crush or the cynical pursuit of easy record sales. It may also have to do with the fact that my childhood took place during what is certainly the worst time in history for music, the late 80's and early 90's. All those terrible slow dance songs a la Michael Bolton, only to be somehow overshadowed a decade later by the rage-inducing tones of Celine Dion. I shudder just to think of it. I'll grin and bear those memories for today's feature, a few love songs that actually qualify as good music.

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