There was once a wise man who said, it is not the holidays without a holiday song from My First Earthquake. As you might imagine, that wise man is me. Their videos are as strangely enchanting as ever, and I will be sure to post last year’s holiday song on Christmas. As always, you can download the song freely, so have at it! But watch the video first, because otherwise it is for naught!

Downloads

Holiday Sweaters – (MP3, 5.2 MB)
Holiday Sweaters – (YouTube)

I am all about sentimentality at the moment, and finding the right tunes for said moments. I happened to stumble upon these plucky lads from an ad for play.create, a wonderful night of charitable events. Explosions in the Sky are an American instrumental group, specialising in just such music.

Now, I’m not one for instrumental music, short of orchestral scores: I just find it to be rather dull. Explosions, however, are incredibly pleasing to the aural palette, which is probably the best I can say about them. I’m sure many won’t really get what I’m digging at, but there’s something soothing and flowing about these tunes – they tell their own stories as well as, if not better, than what most ‘musicians’ care to shove down their microphones these days.

Unlike most of my entries, these folks have MP3s! And a lot of them too, so take your pick. The tune I heard in the ad was Day Five from their 2005 release The Rescue, but feel free to poke around this page for some more. They’ve very nicely put up the entire album as well! Ain’t that swell?

Downloads

From The Rescue:
Day One – (MP3, 6.7 MB)
Day Two – (MP3, 5.6 MB)
Day Three – (MP3, 6.7 MB)
Day Four – (MP3, 4.4 MB)
Day Five – (MP3, 9.0 MB)
Day Six – (MP3, 6.6 MB)
Day Seven – (MP3, 6.4 MB)
Day Eight – (MP3, 3.9 MB)

If there is one thing that I don’t like about most so-called “supergroups,” it’s that people focus on how cool it is that so-and-so’s from various bands are now all in the same band, and competely ignore that their music is as inane and trite as it ever was. That’s one of the reasons why I prefer bands who term themselves a “music collective,” because they tend to focus on good music more than their invented popularity. With that, Learning Music is a music collective from Los Angeles that produces an album every month. While such a quantity may not mean there are stringest quality control standards, there are plenty of gems to be found. These songs are from October’s album, which was produced and co-written by Alex Silverman, who I have written about before. I must say, the lad has some musical chops on him.

Downloads

From Famous: The Jonny Pride Story
Ambitions – (MP3, 5.9 MB)
They Didn’t Tell Him – (MP3, 6.1 MB)
Heads A Rock – (MP3, 6.8 MB)

Since everyone has decided to get off their kiester and post again, I figured I might as well do it too! After all, I like being cool.

Now, apparently there are bands that I think everyone has heard of, but that idea does not mesh with reality! At least that is the case when I referred my good buddy Hughster to the lovely tones of Nouvelle Vague. Granted, people out there in blog land may say otherwise, but I don’t really know them so it means NARY A THING.

Anyhoo, Nouvelle Vague are a great French outfit who take a bunch of old, popular and seemingly random tunes and cover them. The frosty thing about it is though is that the singers they get onboard to cover the songs have never heard the songs they’re covering before, which, instead of ending in a complete disaster , actually sound great! It’s rare I’ll find a cover version to be better than the real song, but Master & Servant on their latest album, 3, completely beats out the Depeche Mode original. Sorry guys! As well as that, there’s a brilliant version of the Violent Femme’s famous Blister in the Sun, which is a heck of a lot funkier than the original.

Downloads

From 3
Master & Servant – (MP3, 3 MB)