I was all set to begin the first full week of new Blogarhythms of 2008 by bitching about how I had to dip back into releases from 2007 (something you should fully expect me to do anyway) to jump-start the proceedings because the New Year just started and there really aren’t too many new releases to talk about yet. I chided myself for formulating this plan of attack as it took shape in my brain because I knew it was total nonsense, but it took getting taken by complete surprise by an album that wasn’t even on my radar to shake me out of my complacency and knock my ass back on track.
The sudden arrival out of ever-proverbial left-field in this instance is an eleven-track LP from Washington DC-based singer/songwriter Thao Nguyen and her band The Get Down Stay Down titled We Brave Bee Stings and All, which is set for a January 29th release on Kill Rock Stars. Having no previous knowledge of Thao or her music, my out-of-the-blue experience is a case of “hey that album cover looks interesting, let me see what that sounds like” gone wonderfully right. So if there’s any lesson to be learned from today’s post it’s that putting a sexy-but-classy photo of a lady’s torso accompanied by a drawing of a conspiracy theorists worst nightmare on your album cover is a fantastic way of enticing over-stimulated music fanatics into giving you a spin.
Spin I did, and it didn’t take more than a-minute-and-fifty-seconds of listening for an overwhelming feeling of gladness that I’d done so to overtake me. The album’s opening track “Beat (Health, Life and Fire)” immediately caught my ear with it’s marching-cadence snares, gently-weeping guitar, and twangy acoustic strumming that sounds something like a Bluegrass band covering U2, but with horns, and a chick who really digs Björk on the mic. Then the line “I’m never gonna leave and you’re gonna leave, but you’re never gonna love me like I need” spilled out of my speakers, and as the word “need” trailed off in a restrained run I hit the button to restart the song from the beginning. As I listened to the tune, letting it repeat over-and-over, lyrics sinking in line-by-line, feeling myself relating to each word, wondering how someone could encapsulate such specific emotions in song while making it so universally applicable that I as a listener recognized my own experiences in it, I realized I’d found my first favorite new song of 2008!
Listen to “Beat (Health, Life and Fire)”
Happily, the remainder of the album, which finds Thao and company tip-toeing between pretty ’70s radio-Pop, Country, and Rock, and Lilith Fair-esque Folk/Pop, proved as vivid, emotive and aesthetically pleasing. Comparisons to Fiona Apple, Cat Power, Feist and Nedelle ran through my mind as I listened to standout tracks like “Bag of Hammers,” “Yes, Soon and Soon,” “Big Kid Table,” “Fear and Convenience,” “Swimming Pools,” “We Go” and “Geography.” And I could also see how some listeners might hear a kinship between Thao and some more commercial “chick-Rock” artists whose names I shudder at the mere thought of.
But for me she’s simply my first favorite new anything of the year.
-El Keter
