Rhye

I'm always skeptical when an artist is compared to Sade. In a way, I feel bad for this dude (YES DUDE) because it seems like any review of his tunes are just endless comparisons to the lovely Ms Adu and her band. 

I guess it's a fair comparison, especially if the first thing that you heard was 3 Days:




but it's not the ONLY group you could compare him too, right? Anyone?


 This type of moodiness isn't my forte really. I skipped right over Portishead when they came out and that super melancholy/haunting vibe is just too mellow for me, but this album has some nice moments and he is ripe for remixes:






(this shit needs an edit...the track doesn't breathe at all, but I do like the drums)

 

2 Raum...what?

 

I heard a cool song in Cost Plus the other day. Shazam to the rescue and determined it was this:

LA LA LA - 2raumwohnung from carla trachsler on Vimeo.

I think I dug it because it reminded me of Kimbra a little bit:



I went looking for the song on eMusic and couldn't find the album it's on (got it through Amazon here) but found some really great samba/bossa nova by them on their earlier albums. 

Radiolab

At some point, as I often do, I wrote myself a note on a piece of paper. There were songs to look up, books to find and then at the bottom I wrote Radiolab podcast.

I finally got around to downloading a few of the shows on iTunes and I LOVE IT.

In looking through the list (with barely any description readable) I grabbed this one first.

Radiolab: Pop Songs

Some songs have the nefarious power to stick mercilessly in our heads, and some songs have the transcendent allure to overcome cultural differences. We ask how songwriters create these songs seemingly out of the ether, listen in on the music a deaf man hears, and examine the timeless appeal of the Elvis of Afghanistan.

Just super crazyinterestingcool stuff. 

Subscribed. 

James Hunter

I discovered that James Hunter had a new album coming out the other day and after hearing some sound samples was pretty stoked. In a RARE stroke of luck, I managed to see that he was playing at Lincoln Hall here in Chicago BEFORE the show actually happened and went down to check it out. 

Now as the James Hunter 6 the band was super tight and super funky. Maybe it's the 5 years since his last album or the personal stuff he's had to go through but his sound is way "rougher" than I remember from his last CDs.

Case in point, these 2 covers which KILLED IT. By the age of these video posts, the band has had significant time to hone these tunes into the soulful funky goodness that I experienced this past Saturday.


Baby Don't Do It - The Five Royales
 




Down Home Girl - Originally The Coasters, but this is more a Stones cover tempo wise