There are a number of slightly embarrassing trends in my music consumption. For now, I’m just going to admit to an obsession with falsetto that compels me to listen to things that I normally wouldn’t. Moving right along…
The Prize Fighter Inferno: 
The album, My Brother’s Blood Machine, is about half cheesy dance-able indietronica and half depressing acoustic lullabies. (I’m filing this under “morose shit”.) The sound is definitely experimental, progressive, and strongly features Claudio Sanchez’s impossibly high voice. On the dancey side, there’s “the Margetville Dance” and “78″, both of which sound like the b-sides of a mistakenly unpopular 80′s exercise VHS. On the soft elegy side, there’s “The Flight of Moses Early and Sir Arthur McCloud” and “Easter”, which are surprisingly great (for me) to ease out of bed to . Also, the lyrics have some sort of Elliott Smith-level-of-depressing conceptual back story to them, if you’re in to that. Not bad for the creeptastic lead singer of Coheed and Cambria.
Luke Pickett:
I started listening to Her Words K
ill because someone told me that the singer had an “angelic voice”. In retrospect, there’s not a whole lot that’s impressive about the proto-post-hardcore singer/screamer outfit, save Luke Pickett, the angelic singer. Luckily, Her Words Kill had the excellent foresight to disband and Luke Pickett became an acoustic solo act. The first track I listened to was “And Asleep I Am Your Everything” and the man’s voice is truly angelic… and by angelic, I mean beautifully androgynous (… and really everything the man does seems to be vaguely *politically* queer). In the middle of the chorus, Luke makes his uncommonly alto voice jump yet another octave at the end of phrases for a really nice effect. One of my personal favorites is “Blood Money”. I mean, when does anyone ever talk about male-victim domestic violence, much less write a song about it? The video for the song could easily be a slick promo for a domestic violence NGO (Peep it here.) More than the falsetto, Luke Pickett does a great job of creating believable male sentimentality. Since he mostly wrote songs about failed relationships, I’m glad he figured that one out. Good examples of this: “Cruel Love”, “Make Me Beautiful”, and “Dream Love Cure”, despite the drum machines. What’s tricky about listening to Luke Pickett is that some of his solo stuff seems to have actually been released under Her Words Kill. Also, he’s slated to release a new album this year, but he’s being billed as r&b, covering up his tattoos, pre-releasing awful pop tracks, and wearing tweed. I’m just going to preemptively say that I’m not excited.
I’ve been sleeping on my love of Gotye (pronounced go-tee-ay like the French surname Gauthier) for a while, because I wasn’t completely sure what to say. Essentially, he’s an indie Australian producer who makes “electronic” albums that have no coherent theme. He’s a minor deal in Australia and not really talked anywhere else. I’ve had his second and most popular album, Like Drawing Blood, for some time and it’s my favorite of the three he’s put out so far. His tracks range from somber and morose “Heart’s A Mess” and “Night Drive” to dancy “Thanks for Your Time” to retro “Coming Back” and “Learnalilgivinanlovin” to experimental “Distinctive Sound”. Gotye’s first LP, Boardface is not as great as Like Drawing Blood, but contains one of my favorite of his songs “Out Here in the Cold”. His latest, Mixed Blood, is a remix album of some select tracks on Like Drawing Blood. I don’t generally like remixes, so needless to say I didn’t enjoy Mixed Blood at all, but it’s easily someone else’s steez.
He has a badass afro, a beautiful voice, and seems to do cross-legged wall sits for fun. Judging by his promo photos, the accomplishments of his labelmates (Missy Elliott, Diddy, Paul Wall, etc.) and the guest appearances on his self-titled debut album (Wycelf Jean, Lupe Fiasco, and Q-Tip) , Kevin Michael was probably groomed to be a mainstream big deal. For whatever reason, he fell short of Billboard success. All this to say, sometimes his lyric writing is softcore and stereotypical in spots, like many or most big deal R&B singers, but his voice and music production are always impeccable. His slower tracks are my favorites : “Love Letter” and “Liquid Lava Love”. Others to note: “Vicki Secrets”, “Ain’t Got You”, “Stone Cold Killa”, “Too Blessed feat. Q-Tip, and the acoustic versions of “We All Want the Same Thing” and “It Don’t Make Any Difference to Me”. He’s slated to drop another full album this year. We’ll see how that goes.
Leela James is fly. She doesn’t waste time singing stand-by-my-man love songs. Instead, she writes a lot of angry ex-lover songs, one of which has a backbeat composed mostly of shattering glass. But I don’t just admire Leela James for her anger. For one, her cover of No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” makes you wonder why Gwen Stefani was ever made a “lead” singer, in my humble opinion. Secondly, her lyrics always manage to hit hard… even when she’s singing a song about her love of soul food. She and her backup singers also do a shit-ton of solid old school harmonizing… she even released a whole album of old school R&B covers to announce her commitment to bucking contemporary factory produced R&B (I haven’t heard many of the tracks though). I like all of her A Change is Gonna Come album, but if you need inspiration, try “Music”, “Rain”, and “Didn’t I” (the one with the glass).
