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out this week 10/14...antony & the johnsons...windy & carl...

Posted by Brad Schelden, October 18, 2008 05:30pm | Comments (2)

I am now even more obsessed with Antony & the Johnsons. After their amazing show last week it is really all I can think about it. I was completely blown away by the show. It was tragic and sad and beautiful and wonderful all at the same time. This was also my first trip to the Disney Concert Hall. What a perfect place to see him play. I seriously just wanted to stay there all night. I kind of want to live there permanently. We did sort of feel like tourists walking around the venue and looking around at everything, sort of like how tourists do when they first visit New York City and can't stop looking up at the skyscrapers. He ended up playing a bunch of new songs that were not from the recently released EP. I don't think I even noticed any of the songs from the EP that night. The new songs sounded fantastic and I am now even more excited for the new album next year. There were of course songs that I wanted to hear that he did not play, but he did manage to play some of my favorites, including his cover of "Crazy in Love" by Beyonce. It was a fun crowd to be around as well -- many celebrities were in the crowd that night. I was sitting next to a certain reality star of the show Work Out. Totally random. It just made me happy that he was a fan. Everyone was just in awe of Antony that night. It will be hard to compare other shows to this night. It was really that good.

Not a whole lot out this week. Christmas is around the corner, but once again the labels don't seem to have a whole lot to offer us. There is one new album that I have become a bit obsessed with. For some reason it took me over 10 years to finally discover Windy & Carl. I have long been a fan of the label Kranky. This new album Songs for the Broken Hearted will be their fourth on Kranky. Before this were Depths (98), Conciousness (01), and The Dream House (2005). They have also had about 6 or 7 other albums in between those Kranky albums over the years, in addition to a 3CD compilation in 2002 called Introspection. I have heard of them but never really gave them a listen until now. I was just waiting for somebody to tell me to listen to them, but it never happened. I thought they were a little too new age for me or maybe a little too experimental, but I really didn't know for sure. I gave this new album a listen and fell in love after the second listen. They almost sort of hide their greatness within the album. You may not find it right away. The casual listener could easily dismiss the album as another album of ambient droney shoegaze, but you just sort of have to open your mind a bit and let the album sort of take over. There are brilliant short little songs with vocals hidden between the rest of the album, which is mostly ambient sort of guitar pieces. The album is also very full of emotion. Depending on what kind of mood you are in, it could either drive you to tears or make you feel happy and content. This is another sort of album that I think of as musical therapy.

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