Spring songs for April

This month, a few interesting musical discoveries, and a few things still playing from February - I guess some songs have staying power. There was no new playlist in March - I was just to busy with all kinds of interesting, fun things (spring break), including movies, two great museum exhibits in Milwaukee, an iMAX documentary, and gettiing together with friends in and around Mad-city. And then again, the February lineup was so good it will last for quite a few months... so, here comes spring music...

The most surprising new discovery is Adele Adkins, who is still not very popular in the US, but has managed to get to the top spot in the UK, and deservedly so: at 19, she sings with the maturity of performers several times her age, and she writes many of her songs. Although Chasing Pavements is her big #1 song, I prefer two lower-key ballads from the album (titled "19"), Make you feel my love and Hometown Glory. Her live club performances sound just as good as her studio recordings: what's not to like. Now we can only hope she will stay on track, not do drugs, let her budding talent grow and mature... After Jamie Cullum (who in 2005 released similarly titled album Twentysomething and has hardly done anything interesting since...), however, I am cautious about making grand pronouncements ("so-and-so is gonna be famous!"). But Adele certainly knows how to make great music...

On to other new tunes... Perhaps k. d. lang's recent new release (Watershed) will grow on me. So far only Coming Home has stayed put on my nano, and doesn't get much playtime either... Carrie Newcomer, on the other hand, has a totally addictive, warm, low voice that reminds me at times of Karen Carpenter. I like a few songs from The Georgraphy of Light, although wish they would sound a little less hippie+tie-die+flower power; and perhaps There's a Tree needs to have a tune that doesn't sound quite exactly like recycled (Peter Gabriel's) Salisbury Hill. But then again, Carrie Newcomer is so into hugging trees, searching for deeper meanings, so why not do some recycling. 

I'm totally, so not into Nora Jones's new song :) (written for her new movie), but I discovered that Larkin Gayl sounds exactly like Nora Jones used to (i.e., great; that's a complement); her Impossible reminds me of NJ's first, relaxed, easy-going release from a few years back.

After declaring that Yael Naim was not going to stay on my iPod for long in my February post, I managed to get addicted to Yael Naim's little silly song titled New Soul. Blame it on Apple. It's one of those incredibly sticky, silly little numbers that just gets stuck playing in your head on a continuous loop until you almost hate it. But all resistance is futile - as soon as you make it go away, it gets stuck again whenever they run that Apple MacBookAir commercial on TV. Might as well just give in. Giving in to the song is much cheaper than giving in to MacBookAir would be.  To be fair, though, I find Far, Far... (another song from Yael Naim's album) more fun to listen to, and immediately forgetable (it was meant to be a complement, too - sorta).

I have also discovered a few other gems recently. Kathleen Edwards (Buffalo) reminds me of Sinead O'Connor of days gone by (my spell check wants me to replace Sinead with pinhead; not so totally off the mark), and Bethany Dillon (When You Love Someone) just provides pleasant background driving music. It is meant to be a complement. Really. Not kidding.

I am still not sure if I'm, like, totally into Paddy Casey (Addicted to Company) and I am starting to dig Slow Runner (on LP Mermaids, especially Love and Doubt). But have some very mixed, confused feelings about Dave Barnes - I kinda like some of his stuff, but it somehow just don't sound right - it gets a bit too close to the "religious pop" I detest (because of being sooo schmaltzy, not necessarily because of being religious). I also ran across a song by Richard Julian who is an entirely different kind of animal (musically speaking), and doesn't go well with the other stuff on this month's playlist, but on his own is quite interesting, especially his World Keeps On, (which makes me think he don't dig religious pop neither) it would be all worn out by now if it weren't an MP3 file...

Oren Lavie and Yoav are still getting quite a bit of playtime, leftovers from my February playlist. They'll probably stay there for a while. They are not at all for something or against something. They just sound real good. Of course, I also play ABBA all the time. No, just kidding - that was just a phase.