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Nick is a good friend and sometime collaborator of mine. He’s also a fantastic songwriter and a killer singer. “Evaporate” one of my favorite of his songs, off his latest album Ampersand. It’s a great example of how to fuse acoustic instrumentation with electronic...
Candi Staton has one of my favorite voices in the history of music (besides Lauren’s, that is!). She sings with such honesty and rawness on this song about an ill-fated love affair. The emotion comes through strong, even when accompanied by a cheesy late-60s-mode...
What I love most about this song is the story behind it. David Bazan was raised Pentecostal, and rose to fame as the lead singer/songwriter of the Christian indie band “Pedro the Lion.” Then he had a crisis of faith. He stopped playing churches, he left his Christian...
This is one of my favorite songs in the world. There’s something about Nick Cave’s rough rock n’ roll voice, paired with a tender string-soaked arrangement, that I find deeply moving. I particularly love how the piano is recorded; it sounds so warm and full of life....
One of the reasons I love the neo-folk duo Shovels & Rope is that it’s a husband-wife collaboration – like Sky-Pony. “Bridge on Fire” is one of my favorites of their catalogue. I find it to be a study in how effective simplicity can be. The guitar and drum parts...