A blog and nothing but since 2003. Some tech, lots of music, and if rambling was money, drinks are on me.
Fine Tune Friday, graceful in the morning light
I’ve always told people that I like melodies that you can follow with your hand. Some people understand what I mean and others don’t. It’s a little bit like reading music, where you can see the notes moving up and down the staff, showing wide melodic movement and variation of the notes. I can’t really read music besides seeing that notes are indeed moving up and down, so I just kind of do the same thing with my hand, watching the melody move. I’m a little weird.
Fleet Foxes, “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song”
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The Fleet Foxes record has been kind of a surprise. The EP was okay, but the album is brilliant. The constant comparisons that they get are to Neil Young or My Morning Jacket, but I find that their brand of Americana is more melodic and earthy than either of those acts, the anti-rockist choice of Americana: more closely related to bluegrass and hymns than to guitar rock.
“Tiger Mountain Peasant Song”s title kind of plays this hand a little heavily, but the melody rescues it. It starts as a nice but relatively unremarkable song before it’s lifted into loveliness by the chorus, from the first swooping line (”Dear shadow, alive and well), to the questioning note of the finish.
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June 13th, 2008 at 9:53 am
“He Doesn’t Know Why” is my jam. This album rules.
June 13th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
every listen gets it better. anyone get the MMJ yet? It’s flashback time!
June 13th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
transpose “it” and “gets”
June 13th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Listening to the MMJ as we speak. I like what I’ve heard. It’s definitely more like “Z” than “At Dawn” though. Which means that the lazy but obvious Fleet Foxes/MMJ comparisons are a little less appropriate than before. Just as there are a handful of MMJ type bands spring up, the band takes a radical left turn and decides to move in a Prince/Curtis Mayfield direction.