Songs Useful In Any Contemporary Attempt to Ignore The Holidays

“At Least,” Sticklips, from IT IS LIKE A HORSE. IT IS NOT LIKE TWO FOXES

My nephew is a senior at Bard College. He gave me this for Xmas, so that I would know what the Bard students are doing. There was another CDR, too, from some other band. I was not at all interested in the other. But this album is kind of amazing to me. Sort of a neo-folk singer-songwriter thing but combined with some analogue synth noise, and the occasional beautiful rock-song-with-rhythm-section. To me they sort of sound like Altered Images which was a great British post-punk band no one much listens to anymore. Someone else said the singer sounds like Jenny Lewis, but I think this is far stranger and more singular than anything Jenny Lewis has done. My vote for most unusual debut of 2009.

“Home,” Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes, UP FROM BELOW

I heard this song on ALL SONGS CONSIDERED, and more often than not I resist things I first hear about there (Fleet Foxes, please no!), but I loved this song from the first. The secret weapon, it seems to me, is Jade, who sings the girl half of the duet. Alexander, who sings the boy half, is the more frequent lead singer, and, as a result, I am less interested in anything else they do. Jade has a smoky, twangy voice, sort of Loretta Lynn-esque. And there are dozens of people in the band, it seems. A sort of controlled chaos is the order of the day. But this lodges in my unconscious every time I play it.

Cuddle Magic

Cuddle Magic is a band recommended to me by my friend Matthew Carefully (that’s his recording name, and he too is worth investigation). They are apparently Berklee School of Music types who, like Edward Sharpe, et al., have fashioned a big tribal ensemble, though in this case it is virtuosic and characterized by a lot of time signature changes and modulations. To me it sounds a little bit like the early seventies period of Frank Zappa/Mothers of Invention. CUDDLE MAGIC don’t have an album yet, but this video of them playing in a diner is remarkable and exceedingly promising:

“Hold My Head,” Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, ALWAYS SAY PLEASE AND THANK YOU

I was first given this album by the brother of the bass player at a reading I was giving in Bennington, VT. I think it was six or seven years ago. I played it a few times and liked it, but then, as is often the case with things I find most rewarding, it took hold of me much later on. This is a truly original band who sort of play goth/country music with two lead singers and a cast of great players who sometimes wear very unsettling outfits. The song I’m recommending starts as a sort of Old Testament parable but then gives way to the most beautiful repeated chorus since “Hey Jude.” It just goes on and on and on. Apparently they play it live a lot too. They are the architects of the Denver Sound, but none of the other exemplars of that sound are even close.

“This Hungry Life,” Tanya Donelly, THIS HUNGRY LIFE

Donelly somehow managed to be in a lot of bands of great note without ever becoming a household name, and that usually means to me that something really subtle is going on. Something well worth attention. And I love artists who keep making work long after the most fickle audiences have gone elsewhere. Tanya is making the best and most adult music of her life now, twentysome years later, and this song is a good example. It’s absolutely devastating about the ravages of middle age. I’ve had a chance to watch her sing it a few times too, and you kind of get goosebumps and stuff.

P.S. I have a little music column on The Rumpus (www.therumpus.net) where I cover unreleased, unsigned, and self-released music. If you have suggestions of excellent things that I have not heard, please contact me there with names, URLs, etc. I chase down every lead.

Rick Moody.