Free music on iTunes has been very good to me lately. Today I downloaded a song from R.E.M.'s new CD that sounds very reminiscent of their sound the last time I bought anything from them 15 years ago. In all seriousness Uberlin has a good sound, characteristic mumbled vocals by Michael Stipe, very similar sound to Time Out of Mind to me. I also got Lucinda Williams' track Buttercup...a gutsy, blues song about lost love. Williams has long been a critic favorite but slow in garnering a large fan base. I saw her in concert once, years ago when she opened for The Allman Brothers. She was obscure and unknown then, but she has come into her own with this song.
A few weeks ago I downloaded Amos Lee's Violin which I have posted about earlier. I also got Iron and Wine's Tree By the River and Randy Montana's 1,000 Faces both of which have been great discoveries for me. I am constantly listening to them while working at my desk. Lyrically and musically most of this new stuff fits into what my students call "banjo music" which is really singer/songwriter. I find solace in a well crafted song, which lays open the human story, usually the human predicament and tries to make some sense of it all. Sometimes the artists get it right, other times it's clear that their solution is void of the truth of the gospel. I always am reminded by a quote I saw years ago by legendary music producer T-Bone Burnett (Counting Crows, Allison Kraus, Robert Plant, Gregg Allman, O, Brother Where Art Thou?), "As a Christian you can write about the light or what you see because of the light." Both I think need to be done, artfully and truthfully!
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