Tag Archives: new music

Beirut – Gulag Orkestra

First great musical find artist wise of 2006 at long last.
Partly thanks to emusic flinging a free mp3 at me as a daily download and then thanks to the reviews on emusic saying Pitchfork was not on crack this time.

Fortunately, the artist is tuned on enough to have free downloads of his good songs on his website, so go there and hit the piano for sounds (just under b and e), and get yourself Postcards From Italy at the very least.

I see this as fitting into the genre of slacker indie with odd instrumentation from which my good old Favourites Fog and Why? came from, but the horns and accordians have a lovely old feel to them in contrast to the turntablism, sampling and hip-hop the anticon brethren indulge in. Worth listenning to even if you decide you dislike it. One thing I can’t quite work out is that although he does sing a bit (especially on Postcards From Italy) like Rufus Wainwright he somehow doesn’t annoy me in the same way as Rufus does. Maybe it’s because he is just wailing when he wails.

Because you know I am just a giant head

They Might Be Giants have been a geek music fixation of mine since 1990, which feels like an awful long time ago now. I was young then. Way back when they had the wonder of dial-a-song (718 387 6962 narrrrrr…) to use as an instant outlet for songs.

Now they have a podcast, and they’re doing it with alarming regularity. Most of it’s a random mix of older classic tracks, but they keep on chucking in interesting live versions and good new stuff. Every so often they even post something so obscure I’ve never heard it before.

If you have the slightest interest in TMBG I’d thoroughly reccomend going and subbing up as it’s like a dial-a-song that prods you. Check TMBW (This Might Be a Wiki) for details of what you’ve missed, including the ever growing list of podcast exclusives.