The Listening Club - 8th December 2013

Yo yo,

Hope all is fine, and my my, that new winter sweater really suits you. Yes it does. I'm feeling astonishingly ahead of the pack, tapping this out on a Friday, but as I'll be spending most of the weekend away in the wilds of the Dutch mountains, getting ahead of the game is the name of the game. Ahem.

Last week, woo, how could you forget, was the #breakupvortex and what a heart-twisting experience that was. Some seriously excellent choices, and much restorative alcohol consumed along the way to ease the pain. Thanks again to all who chipped in a track, if you missed it, scroll down and give it a play, it's well worth it.

Weekly reminder too for the #festivevortex too, get your end-of-year choices made soon folks...

Yonder back in time, you might recall, the right honourable @matthewesdigs was left clutching the frisbee for his debut selection, and here he is with the intro...

"I was introduced to this band when reading an article about Bjork in which she mentioned them as her favourite band. As a person who collects random pieces of ancient and dangerous lighting equipment I was always going to be curious. 

I had absolutely no idea who this band were or what they sounded like and at first I was foxed by lead singers vocal style. His voice certainly is expressive, and he has range alright - but vocally it's not instantly accessible music.  But you get used to the voice, and you even start to like it, and then you pick up on the lyrics - which are brilliant - and you start to sing along (badly), and why not when you have a song which includes the word arbitrary about ten times, lets face it the word 'arbitrary' isn't used nearly enough in the modern pop vernacular.  

I would try to pigeonhole this band as NY art rockers; but there is much more to them than that - yes the songs are lively and there is a sense or urgency and there is rock, but there is a folky side to this album and there are classical and choral elements, and even a nod to the dreaded world music (sorry Holette). So its more than art rock really.

I hope you enjoy this record, and if you do its one of nine albums so there is plenty more where this comes from."

Reety-ho. Direct download is here, and the Mixcloud stream (which may reveal the track titles, you have been warned)  is here!

Search #listeningclub to see what's going on, and follow @listeningclub for the admin.

Hope to see you tonight at 8pm GMT!