Sufjan Stevens

I just found this video on Youtube and remembered what a great songwriter Sufjan Stevens is. This is called For The Widows In Paradise, For The Fatherless In Ypsilanti and it's from the album Michigan. He's such a good composer, so if you haven't yet heard much of his stuff look up Illinoise - probably his best and most successful album. Unlike Michigan, it has a more orchestral nature and the songs are very lavishly arranged, making use of a wide variety of instruments. Personally, I also find Illinoise is a happier album and it is much more upbeat in general.
Top Songs: Casimir Pulaski Day, Jacksonville, Chicago

For Emma, Forever Ago - Bon Iver

For Emma, Forever Ago, the debut album by Bon Iver (Justin Vernon) released in the UK in 2008, is not an album you can listen to lightly. The songs demand attention to be truly appreciated.

The simple rhythmic strumming of the guitar and the periods of unaccompanied singing add a stripped quality to the music; Vernon’s quivering falsetto delivers unbridled emotion. There is no doubt that its production has played a massive part in this album’s success. Written and recorded by Justin Vernon in a log cabin in northwest Wisconsin, the album is extremely minimalistic – consisting mainly of Vernon’s voice creeping over deep, earthy acoustic guitar. The raw power transmitted by the untouched, unpolished quality of the sound is truly incredible.

It is this quality that separates him from the rest of his contemporaries and makes the album so incredibly moving. Vernon has poured all his life’s heartache into 9 songs.

The highlights include opener Flume, which makes up for its somewhat ambiguous lyrics ("Only love is all maroon/ Lapping lakes like leery loons") with a stunningly beautiful melody. The trumpets and guitar in For Emma are also wonderful – free to weave in and out of Vernon’s vocals, dancing around the rest of the accompaniment. However, the masterpiece of the album comes at the end. Re: Stacks, the epitome of everything Bon Iver, is a gentle lament over a night of drunken gambling ("There’s a black crow sitting across from me/ His wiry legs are crossed/ He’s dangling my keys/ He even fakes a toss"). The chorus is a short, sweet number surrounded by the long, languishing verse.

The album is worth every second invested. It's an album filled with melancholy, heartbroken, world-weary songs. If you are yet to experience Bon Iver (one of the minority) then go look him up. For fans of Fleet Foxes, Goldheart Assembly, Grizzly Bear and Laura Marling

Top Songs: Skinny Love, For Emma, Re:stacks, Flume

Also, check out La Blogotheque on youtube for some awesome videos of Bon Iver playing live. As well as other bands like Fleet Foxes and Phoenix. Their "Take Away Show" series is really great.

Go Do - Jonsi

I recently heard Jonsi's (of Sigur Ros) relatively new single Go Do and I absolutely love it. It's a spiralling, giddy celebration of life and I can't help feeling uplifted every time I hear it. I've heard people say that it's a bit shallow, but I personally love it and I think it deserves great credit. The song is powered through by a brilliant percussion that is fleshed out with piano, ukelele, some sort of pipe/flute and Jonsi's high-spirited vocals. There's a great live version of it here - check out the drumming. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. I can't wait to get my hands on the album.

The Alchemy Index - Thrice

Thrice's 6^th and 7^th albums, fully released back in 2008, formed their eagerly awaited Alchemy Index – an ambitious project which saw the band compose a set of six songs for each of the four elements: fire, water, earth and air.

Fire and Water, the first half, is a contrasting combination – sticking to the Thrice’s heavy, hardcore roots in Fire, and then departing into the ambient, swelling tones of Water.

Fire, although the weakest, least subtle of their elements, is still powerful. Thrice are raw and unpolished here – their guitars overdriven, Kensrue vocals roaring and raging overhead. Most of the album is stunningly distorted and the guitar and drums are driving forces that break down all barriers to the emotion in Dustin’s voice. The atmosphere is maintained dramatically – gang vocals, chanting and repetition all adding to the urgency and anger of it all. The Flame Deluge is a brilliant closing – all static and distortion whilst the lyrics are left unfathomable. The drumming is absolutely epic and the emotion is uncurbed and scathing – you burn with anger and are sated by the gentle finale. Firebreather is a juggernaut of an opener, the guitar pounding, Kensrue demanding:

"Tell me are you free?

In word or thought or deed?"

Water recalls Vheissu’s Atlantic and For Miles, with swelling, synthesised tones – making use of Teppei’s talent on the keyboard. It is this bleak contrast with Fire that makes the combination work so well. The single, Digital Sea, is a marvellous, pulsating joy for the ears. The synth backing, jerking drumming and scarred melody come together so perfectly. The use of a walkie talkie to distort the vocals is also inspired. It’s rivalled only by Song for Milly. Night Diving has to be mentioned. A heavier instrumental that is crafted magnificently to keep in with its element, it explores a totally different side of Water - one less melancholy, less dampened and less restrained.

Air and Earth, their most recent offering has seen them depart from their past style. They leave the more conventional sounds of Vheissu and The Artist and the Ambulance to venture into a more mature, more versatile style.

Earth is a folksy, stripped down selection - the drums carving out simple patterns and the guitars humming below Dustin’s voice as it breaks with emotion. The lyrics, often Biblical, seem capture the essence of the Earth – whether in the cry of: “Come all you weary/ Come gather round near me” or in the childish, yet disturbing Lion and the Wolf: “And both the wolf and lion crave the same thing in the end”. The highlight of these six songs comes from Moving Mountains – the lament of a man of faith who doesn’t “know the first thing about love”. Lion and the Wolf is a twisted nursery-rhyme styled story told by the band in a way to disturb anyone who listens carefully. The piano circles around you, the lyrics paint a gruesome picture and the vocals mock.

Air, befittingly, is lighter and subtler than Earth – superior also. Dustin’s vocals soar free over the soft patter of the drumming and the gentle picking of the guitar. The lyrics jump from the political in Broken Lungs (Are we fools and cowards all/ To let them cover up their lies?) to the mythological in Daedalus (But I’ve got a plan with some wax and some string/ Feathers I stole from the birds) – and they pull it off well. Song for Milly Michaelson is probably the best song in the whole Index - Kensrue’s voice lilting over the slow, pulsing, trickling guitar. The lyrics are so purely, beautifully innocent: “I love the night/ Flying over these city lights/ But I love you most of all”. Daedalus’ crescendo is thundering and dripping with emotion – anger and sorrow pervading the band’s sound.

The Alchemy Index contains some of their best songs to date, but I’m not so sure that it matches the consistent genius found in Vheissu. If you’re a fan of heavier stuff go for Vheissu, but if, like me, you prefer something a bit mellower, then the Alchemy Index is a great album to get your hands on.

Top Songs: A Song for Milly Michaelson, Daedalus, Moving Mountains, Digital Sea, The Whaler, Firebreather, Come All You Weary