Confessing Evangelical

One of the greatest pleasures of 2006 has been discovering probably more new music than in any year since I left university. This is largely (though not entirely) thanks to Emusic. I signed up to this service a few months ago, and after a shaky start (during a couple of months I downloaded nothing at all) I've downloaded around 37 albums, plus various odd tracks here and there (some considerably odder than others...).

Here's a top 12 artists that I've discovered over the past twelve months (in alphabetical order by first word, because I'm too lazy to reorder the listing from my ~/Music directory). In some cases, you have my permission to gape at the fact it took me so long:

• Bruce Cockburn: Stealing Fire, Big Circumstance, Life Short Call Now, Inner City Front, Christmas
  
  
• Joanna Newsom: Ys. Mad-as-a-fish, harp-accompanied twittering has never sounded so good.
  
  
• John Prine: Fair & Square, John Prine
  
  
• Laura Cantrell: Not the Tremblin' Kind, When the Roses Bloom Again, Humming by the Flowered Vine
  
  
• Low: Christmas
  
  
• Martha Wainwright: Martha Wainwright (listening to the wonderful, painful, heartbreaking "BMFA" as I type this. It's about her father, and he deserves it.)
  
  
• Sufjan Stevens: Seven Swans (with Illinoise currently in the post, as not available on Emusic UK for some reason)
  
  
• Tanya Donelly: Whiskey Tango Ghosts (not strictly a new discovery, as I love the early 90s album "Star" by her previous band, Belly. But see my note on John Prine, below.)
  
  
• The Piney Gir Country Roadshow: Hold Yer Horses
  
  
• Tres Chicas: Sweetwater, Bloom, Red and the Ordinary Girl
  
  
• Warren Zevon: The Wind
  
  
• The White Stripes: Elephant
  

As the links make clear, all of these have albums available on Emusic, though not all of these were Emusic discoveries: I found a couple of Bruce Cockburn albums in a charity shop (£2 each!), and my wife bought me John Prine's latest album last Christmas*, to my initial bemusement, but rapid delight. (* OK, so "last Christmas" is not technically in 2006. Sue me.)

Incidentally, should anything on this list make you decide you finally want to join Emusic (what kept you?), then do please drop me a line or leave a comment, and I'll send you an invite, which should mean I get some free downloads myself. Look, I've got 26 albums in my "Save for Later" list, so I need all the help I can get...)

Labels: die-DRM-die, emusic, music

Does your granny always tell ya' that the old songs are the best?
Then she's up and rock 'n' rollin' with the rest...

So here it is (nearly) Merry Christmas, and I hope everybody's having too much fun to read blog posts. But hey, I'm not going to let that stop me, whatever Umberto Eco might say. So here's some very non-Slade-esque Christmas music to pass the time.

Now, I may not get the opportunity to follow Thomas' fervent recommendations and watch A Charlie Brown Christmas this year, but I managed the next-best thing: reading The Gospel According To Peanuts while listening to one of my latest eMusic downloads: Vince Guaraldi's 1965 soundtrack album to the film. I'm not normally a jazz fan at all, but I love it.

Other eMusic Christmas downloads (I had a productive morning yesterday):

• Bruce Cockburn's Christmas. Bruce Cockburn is one of my big personal discoveries in 2006 (a good year for finding "new to me" music), after serendipitously chancing upon a couple of his CDs in a charity shop a couple of months ago. His Christmas album is superb, with highlights including the upbeat "Early on one Christmas morn" and gorgeous settings of "O Little Town of Bethlehem" and It Came Upon the Midnight Clear. If you download only one album this Christmas, etc, etc.


• "Slowcore" band Low's festive album, also (imaginatively) called Christmas. Check out the opening track, Just Like Christmas, and also the only original song off the album, If You Were Born Today.

So that should keep me busy for the next few days. But I'm sure I won't be able to resist the occasional blast of Noddy & Co...

Labels: bruce cockburn, christmas, emusic, music, peanuts