After having a conversation with some coworkers yesterday about concerts — mostly them sharing which ones they’re going to or have attended — and trying to explain why I don’t go to concerts (partly because I’m a cheapskate, and partly because it’s rarely much fun to listen to music in a huge crowd of sweaty strangers while standing on a stale-beer sticky floor… for additional reasons see also the article “Concerts? I’ll Pass” which I may have linked to before…), I decided to just check to see if any bands I like were playing any reasonably priced concerts near me soon. This led, as you would expect, to a long trip down the music rabbit hole on the Interwebs. The result is, I now have tickets for two to an upcoming concert (not until November), and I’ve purchased eight new albums (digital) on Amazon (with gift card money… Thanks, Mom!).
I’ve been obsessing over this band called First Aid Kit for the past month, or maybe more. I heard their first release off their second album (“My Silver Lining” off Stay Gold).
I bought the album as soon as it came out, and I’ve been listening to it over and over. It’s so good. And, they’re on tour. So, I decided we’d better go see them live. Hooray! First concert since going to see The Infamous Stringdusters for my birthday last year!
Next up, I decided to branch out a bit and get some new music. I remembered a band that John Richards from KEXP‘s morning show (Seattle, 90.3 FM) has been going on about for the past week or so — French Style Furs. So I listened to the samples from their (newly released) album (Is Exotic Bait) and decided to buy it… along with:
- Lost in the Dream — The War on Drugs (currently playing while I write this…)
- Turn Blue — The Black Keys
- Let’s Be Still — The Head and the Heart (plus their first, self-titled album which I never bought even though “Lost in My Mind” is one of my favorite songs)
- Too True — Dum Dum Girls
- Instinct — Niki and the Dove (also Swedish, like First Aid Kit, and I’ve been obsessed with “The Fox” and “DJ, Ease My Mind” for what seems like forever…)
- Trouble in Paradise — La Roux
Music geeks, or people familiar with my music taste, might notice that this is a very Sub Pop heavy list… There is just something about that “Seattle” sound (and apparently also Iceland and now Sweden), that sounds good to me. Maybe it’s because my formative music years were 90s grunge. That, plus “classic alternative” — which explains why my favorite Sirius XM station is “1st Wave” (we got a free trial of Sirius XM with our new car… Millions of channels and I gravitate towards two, Lithium and 1st Wave).
Now that I have hours and hours of new music to listen to, and a concert to look forward to, I should probably get back to work on that writing project, huh? Procrastination, my old friend…
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