Hem - Things Are Not Perfect in Our Yard

A simply beautiful song, unreleased, only available on their website. (Graphic by Dan Messé, one of the geniuses behind Hem.)

Things Are Not Perfect in Our Yard

Note: the link will download a .zip file that contains the song in mp3 form. If you want the other three new songs from their website, go here.

With any luck, and if their pattern holds, these songs will eventually find a proper home on a future Hem album.

Shara Worden Hits the Big Time (?)

I was flipping around the Rolling Stone website today, when suddenly I saw a familiar face.

My Brightest Diamond.

They appear to have a web-only feature on up-and-coming artists, and this time around they featured the lovely and talented Shara Worden. There's a couple of interesting tidbits there (she worked with the guy who also produced Tom Waits' Alice and Blood Money). And it's Rolling Stone, so they've got to try and put a label on this indefinable artist. Here's what they came up with.

Sounds Like: Bjork gone minimalist, with a bit of American chamber pop sheen thrown in for good measure.

Uhhh ... sure.

The highlight for me was the video. She does an version of "Inside a Boy", accompanied only by her own acoustic guitar and occasional sounds of barking dogs. (She's performing at a public park in New York which apparently is an off-leash park for dogs.)

It's amazing to hear this powerful song stripped down to its core. It works, even with this simplest of arrangements. And her voice is, as always, glorious. (She always seems to grin when she sings. I guess I'd grin, too, if I had pipes like that.)

Check it out.

June - The Best Month for Music

Three of my favorite artists are releasing new albums this month. (And, as it happens, all three of them are currently on EMusic. I think I'll be able to get each album the day it's released in record stores - although there are good arguments for picking up each one as a physical CD.)


As mentioned earlier, My Brightest Diamond will be releasing A Thousand Shark's Teeth on June 17. (And there's just nothing else I can about Shara Worden without qualifying for a restraining order.) This album will be one for the ages.


The mysterious and brilliant band Shearwater is coming out with Rook on June 3. (Two new tracks, "Rooks" and "Leviathan, Bound," can be heard here.)

If you don't know these folks, you should. Start out with their magnificent album Palo Santo, which was released in 2006, and re-released (in a 2 CD expanded edition) last year by Matador Records. Here's a great live performance of "Red Sea, Black Sea," featuring the wildest abuse of a tambourine ever captured on video.






My Morning Jacket is coming out with their eagerly anticipated follow up to the mindblowing Z on June 10th. It's called Evil Urges. If you caught them on SNL, you know that this one's going to be good. And if you didn't, you can check out the title track in their corner of MySpaceland. (Check out the falsetto that Jim James unfurls - sexy!!!)

Summer Soundtrack: My Brightest Diamond

I'm completely rocking out to the new song by My Brightest Diamond. It's everything that makes Shara Worden great: her soaring voice, fuzzed-out rock guitars (louder and crunchier this time). Plus there's a string section that roars and thunders (think of the string section on Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir"). The lyrics are swirling and mystifying, poetic in the best possible way.

God, what a great song. Here, have a listen.

Inside a Boy

The remix by Son Lux turns the original inside-out in astonishing fashion. Pitchfork describes the remix (and the remixer):

Son Lux's Ryan Lott brings a composer's craft to the techniques of underground hip-hop, and his chopped-up "Inside a Boy" charts a similar path. The string-draped original has drama and grandeur enough, but Lott dismembers the rhythm section, opening with little more than skittering strings, stabs of electronic percussion, piano, and Worden's pristine voice. Other rumbling beats, muscular guitars, and all manner of additional orchestration soon return, but the context is more abstract and disorienting than on the album version. "We crash like lightning into love," Worden sings, repeating the word until all is full of that stuff. Boy meets girl, song goes supernova.

God, I cannot wait to hear the rest of this album. And, if she follows the pattern she set with Tear It Down, there will be plenty more remixes of her new stuff.




For those who also worship at the altar of My Brightest Diamond, there's a preview of her new record here.

NPR Music