Different Years, Different Ears

You might have noticed that there is now a new tab residing at the top of my blog - 'Taste of the Moment' - which has come as a result of a shift in the music that I'm listening to at the moment. I've always been one to have one of those music libraries that almost makes no sense; a mix of almost everything is something that I've always found myself with. I take great pleasure in putting my music on shuffle and seeing where it takes me but recently I've started to do that a lot less. Instead I've become an album listener (that being the whole album in one sitting) which somewhat signals a change in my approach to music listening. And it's not only the way I'm listening to music nowadays, it's also what I'm listening to as well. I've found myself going back to my Dad's music collection again for more Bowie, Clapton, Young etc and I've certainly been rewarded. In today's post I'm going to talk about a couple more artists (on top of the ones mentioned above) that I've taken a real liking to in the last few months.

The first artist and probably the one that I've really taken to most is Adele. It was around about the release of her second album that I really started taking a liking to her music which I think is same for a lot of people. I knew of her and I had heard her stuff before then but her recent album '21' really hit a chord with me. It is not only very emotive and cathartic on the part of her writing but it is also very easy to listen to. If there is one thing in music that I crave more than most then it is the ability for an album to be both background music and music that you can 'concentrate' on. There are some absolutely scorching tracks on the album that I would happily listen to over and over again - something that I've got a nasty habit of doing with music sometimes.

The next artist is one that I'm not sure many people will have heard of but it is someone with the most amazing voice - Diana Krall. Admittedly I only know of her because of my deep love for the music of Elvis Costello who is married to her but I guess that is the way that you find new music isn't it? Costello has his own chat-show in America called 'Spectacle' where he interviews famous people from the world of music and plays some of their music with them. On a recent episode that I watched the guest was Diana Krall but, as you can imagine, it might have been a little weird for him to sit interviewing his wife so up pops Elton John to take the reigns. The whole program was just her sitting at a piano with her 2 piece band in the background grinding out the most beautiful jazz music. Some of the stuff that she did was spell-binding and really took my breath away - something that I thought music wasn't able to do in such as way that she managed.

So there are just 2 of the great things in music that I've come across as of late. Another method that I have for finding new music is searching for my favourite bands on Youtube and then having a look at the sidebar to see if anything catches my eye. That was how I came across the two videos that are on the new page of my blog which I'm sure a lot of people will enjoy listening to. I'm going to try and keep it fairly up to date and hopefully I'll be able to share a few gems with you through it. If anyone comes across any great music then I'm always on the lookout for new stuff that I've not heard before, whatever genre it happens to be.

Thanks for reading and have a look at the new page at the top of your screen,

Martin