What I've been listening to lately

One of the great things about the endless expanse of free time that is winter break is that I have plenty of time to discover and listen to new music. Read on to see what's been getting the most plays from me lately.



First up is "Awake My Soul", from Sigh No More by Mumford & Sons. I'm usually not much of a folk rock fan, but I really love this whole album. Usually, my problem with country and folk is either 1) it's musically boring and repetitive, or 2) it has melodramatic lyrics but no real passion. Mumford & Sons pass both of those qualifications with flying colors, especially in this song. In particular, the build-up from 2:22 to the end always sends chills down my spine, and they change up their instrumentation enough to keep it sounding fresh. "Awake My Soul" has a pretty prominent organ part, which is not exactly a common feature in country/folk music. "Little Lion Man", another of my favorite songs of theirs, has a delightful mix of electric guitara and banjo.

They're also very good at writing lyrics that are powerful without being heavy-handed: "In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die; where you invest you love, you invest your life". You can just tell how much this song means to them when they sing it; it's a long, long way from "Achy Breaky Heart".

Other songs from this album: Little Lion Man, The Cave





Next up is "The Eraser", from the album of the same name by Thom Yorke. Yorke is best known as Radiohead's frontman, but this is the first album he released on his own. It's an absolute tour de force of electronic music; every song has a totally unique texture and sound that's all its own. While I was listening to this album, I started thinking about the incredible potential for music made with the aid of computers. With a computer, you have nearly limitless ability to innovate and create fresh, new sounds. Yorke has obviously realized this and taken advantage of it, as you can see by his work on this album and on many of Radiohead's albums.

There are a couple of moments I really like in this song in particular: when the drums first come in and anchor the almost meterless piano chords into a compelling groove; the bubbly, jumping around synth that enters in the second verse at 2:03 and 2:20; the beautiful outro starting at about 3:40.

Other songs by Thom Yorke: Harrowdown Hill, Idioteque




(Apologies for the random video going with it, this was the best audio I could find)

Along those lines, I've gotten back into a Nine Inch Nails album that I got a while ago, Year Zero. The first half has a more traditional rock sound than the Thom Yorke material, although it does have a lot of very computerized effects. However, after the cool a cappella moment at 1:50, it plunges off the electronic deep end. The remaining minute and a half consists solely of digital bleeps, bloops, and bwooms, but they're all arranged in a compellingly musical way. It's like a drum solo from the future.

Other songs from this album: Good Soldier, Zero-Sum





And now for something completely different....

This is an awesome Mashup With A Message™that I came across recently. For reference, if you haven't heard them, here are the two original songs: Ke$ha's Tik Tok and Katy Perry's California Gurls. This mashup switches back and forth between them extremely quickly, including the backing track, and it's almost impossible to tell; that's just how similar they are! This is another video with a similar concept, and you should really listen to it if you have headphones. It actually plays three whole songs at once: the two already mentioned and Miley Cyrus's Permanent December. The trick is that it plays them in different stereo locations: Tik Tok is to the left, California Gurls is in the center, and Permanent December is on the right. It's a really impressive effect - if you just let your ears relax and don't focus on any of the individual songs, they all mesh together to the point that you can barely tell it isn't all one song. However, if you want, you can focus in one direction and pick out any of the original songs.





And now for something completely differenter...

I finally listened to Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto all the way through in one sitting for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and I've been absolutely captivated with it ever since. I actually bought the sheet music to his first three concertos a few days ago so that I could play through it. I've been working on one of the easier sections, the Eb major theme from 2:13 to 4:30. It's absolutely gorgeous, and it stands on its own quite nicely without the orchestra part.

There are tons of moments in this movement that I love, but the very beginning might be my favorite. The slow, delicious build of those ominous chords, before it takes off and propels us into the powerful statement of the first theme by the orchestra - now that's art. If not the beginning, it's when that theme comes back in a big way for the first time, in the maestoso section at 6:28. This time, the piano is playing a secondary theme that was introduced earlier, and Arthur Rubinstein's wonderfully precise articulations make an excellent contrast to the enormous legato sound of the orchestra.

I gave the timestamp so you'll know when it is, but do yourself a favor and listen to the first 6 minutes and 27 seconds of music too. Hearing those two themes collide after all that buildup is an incredible moment; even Rachmaninoff was a mashup artist, who knew? Honorary mentions for best moment go to the fast and accelerating coda in the last 30 seconds or so and the absolutely flying parallel arpeggios at 4:19.