Acts of Volition

A recent instance of the recurring Reddit thread, “What is the most beautiful song you’ve ever heard?” is full of so many beautiful songs, you could get lost in it for hours.  •  When you hear something special in a piece of music, you want to others to hear it and to know that you shared that …

David Bazan, (songwriter/musician of Pedro the Lion, Headphones, etc.) speaking on the podcast Conversations with Matt Dwyer:  •  ““The vast majority of anybody who’s ever heard my music doesn’t want to hear it again.””  •  The entire interview is worth hearing. Come for the earnest discussion of …

Google’s new Music service is so simple, it doesn’t have any links or buttons. They didn’t even need a period at the end of the second sentence:

I’ve always liked the idea of using a live performance for a music video. Not necessarily concert footage - it could be live to camera just for the video. The band Hey Rosetta! (the exclamation mark is theirs) have done just this in their beautiful and affecting video for the song Bandages. It was …

In this interview with Chris Murphy from Sloan, he was asked about song-writing themes as the band gets older. Chris says:  •  ““I’m trying not to write songs about how much I hate getting up at 5:30 am with the baby. It’s so boring but that’s all I know these days.””  •  Chris, I would love to …

This mix of dozens of YouTube clips of musicians covering Radiohead’s Paranoid Android is a remarkable editing job:  •  Thanks to Paul Kim for sharing.

On their 20th anniversary as a band, Sloan has release their best album in a while. The Double Cross arranges song order, bleeds one song into another, and calls back to hooks from other songs in the way that made their 1998 album, Navy Blues, so amazing.  •  Like all of their albums, The Double …

Fact: there is a Canadian-made Larrivee guitar on the International Space Station.

In David Byrne’s talk at the TED Conference, “How architecture helped music evolve”, he takes a walk though the history of venues and their accompanying influence on musical styles. Apparently birds adapt their music to the venue too.