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  • First Listen (and Free Download): Fleet Foxes “Helplessness Blues”

    ”Helplessness Blues” by Fleet Foxes
    To preview their sophomore album, Helplessness Blues, due for a May release, indie darlings Fleet Foxes have just posted the record’s title track for free download. It took me a long time to get over my initial skepticism about the band when their first album got so hyped, but it’s hard to deny the lush 70s-style gorgeousness of their country-folk-pop harmonies which come across as equal parts Eagles and Seals & Crofts.

    The first half of this new song sounds like something Simon & Garfunkel might have done for their Bookends album, a personal reflection that feels somehow bigger, almost like a generational reflection: I was raised up believing I was somehow unique like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes… and now after some thinking, I’d say I’d rather be a functioning cog in some great machine. Then, a little more than halfway through, the song takes a turn. What started as a simple, brisk campfire story song morphs into something slower, more rhythmically complex, more atmospheric. The unadorned two part harmonies of the first half give way to an almost choral sound: “If I had an orchard, I’d work ’til I’m sore.” It’s like a small Great Recession-era John Steinbeck novel in song. I can’t wait for the album.

    Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues by subpop

  • The Daily Awesome – State of the Union Edition: James “Sit Down”

    Who knew, when the six man Manchester band called James released their 1991 single “Sit Down” (a re-recording of a song they’d initially released a couple years earlier), that they had just delivered the perfect theme song for the fledgling 112th U.S. Congress – shell-shocked, grief-stricken and deeply divided – on the occasion of the 44th U.S. President’s third State of the Union address:

    “Those who feel the breath of sadness, sit down next to me
    Those who find they’re touched by madness, sit down next to me
    Those who find themselves ridiculous, sit down next to me
    In love, in fear, in hate, in tears…”

    This is a song that, in its studio version, offered a lot of solace to my financially-desperate, socially-inept, lonely, frightened, freshman-in-college-age self. But seeing this gorgeous live version from a 2001 farewell show, seeing that massive crowd singing its lyrics together like one great, glorious “me too” is at least as uplifting as two congresspeople from opposite sides of the aisle making a point of sitting down next to each other for the President’s speech – as if that’s so damn hard.

  • The Daily Awesome – January 6, 2010: Kelly Rowland “Rose Colored Glasses”

    Kelly Rowland ”Rose Colored Glasses”
    You gotta root for Kelly Rowland, having grown up almost literally in Beyonce’s shadow, as the perennial #2 of Destiny’s Child. Though she’s already put out two solo albums, and scored a couple of minor hits, she hasn’t put out that definitive record yet, and you have to wonder just how much her career has been helped or hindered by her association with longtime manager (and Beyonce’s dad) Mathew Knowles – an association that finally ended in 2009.

    While Rowland, who turns 30 in February, is still readying her third album – her first for UniversalMotown – for release later this year, she put out a cluster of great singles in 2010, including “Commander”, with frequent collaborator David Guetta, and the sassy, Ne-Yo co-penned “Grown Woman”.

    But my favorite of the bunch so far is “Rose Colored Glasses”, a grand, heart-wounded ballad about a relationship that looks good on the outside, but is rotting from within. Co-written by Ester Dean and Swedish pop mastermind Dr. Luke – the man who gave us Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite” and virtually the entire Ke$ha oeuvre – it’s an uncharacteristically emotionally raw song that, both in terms of sound and subject matter, seems like it might have been intended for Rihanna. But, let there be no doubt, Rowland owns this song, delivering it with enviable strength, stunning elegance, and an honesty devoid of self-pity that she projects both outward and inward, telling herself as much as she’s telling the listener: Everything seems amazing when you’re looking through rose colored glasses – Take ’em off.