Jingle Bells and Where Are You, Christmas?

Merry Christmas, y'all! Here's a festive rendition of a good ol'-fashioned tune from Crash Test Dummies which, well, sounds like it'd be right at home in Nightmare Before Christmas. It's tender music such as this which really helps me attune myself to the sweet spirit of the season.



And in case that doesn't strike your rank and vile fancy, you can also find prettiness again from Schmidt and Sharps in the vid below. Little Miss Schmidt has come a long way since "I Will."



By the way: apologies for the videos being chopped awkwardly. It's not my fault. Blogspot doesn't allow for direct video uploads anymore, and embedding a video with a wider-screen resolution than the one blogspot supports results in unattractive truncation. Fortunately the Christmas spirit fills us with too overwhelming a love of all mankind for us to harbour any sense of indignation or resentment in our hearts. Right?

Kasa No Hone

I think that means "The Umbrella's Bones." But its merit extends well beyond it's lyrical genius. It has a raw power without being abrasive.

Michael Meets Mozart.

Awesomeness? Another spectacular Jon Schmidt/Steven Sharp Nelson collaboration.

Quiet

So this is pretty much the saddest song ever.
Rachael Yamagata.

My Love

Sia, we love you.
(irrespective of who commissions thy awesomeness)

Exile Vilify

Valve drafted The National to write this here sombre ditty for Portal 2. I get the sense the song was intended to figure bigger in the game, but now it's relegated to hiding in a Ratman den. And a bit of a shame methinks this; it's a pretty(,) neat song. The National has a talent for understatement, and it works brilliantly here.

Gravity

It's by Lucy Schwartz and it's pretty.

Beautiful Girl

Hey, I'm a fan of beautiful girls!
This is William Fitzsimmons' gentle paean from his latest album, "Gold In the Shadow".

Nice Dream

This song is really neat. It's Sarah Bareilles covering an old Radiohead song,and it sounds amazing. Its spare arrangement is haunting and hypnotic.

Re: Your Brains

Teddy says this is musically unappealing. I say it doesn't matter. Aesthetic or no, this remains completely wonderful. If it makes me happy, that must count of something, neh?
This is the genius of Jonathan Coulton.

Back Home Weather

I can scarcely help but harbour strong feelings of devotion for this song; Matt Mays herein sounds so uncannily like Neil Young...except in the chorus, wherein he's just standalone wonderful. I heard my roomie playing this on his gee-tar and "Ooh," I said, "That's really pretty." He assured me it's a hundred times awesomer when Mays does it.



He even looks a bit like my roomie.

A Good Man is Hard to Find

An' it's a dirned shame, ain't it?
A song musically interesting in all sorts of ways for which I'd make a fool of myself were I to affect to describe 'em. But it caught my attention on account of its weird timing--it's set to a 5/4.




This here bloke is Sufjan Stevens.

My Fight (For You)

I don't know whether Greg Laswell is a fan of comedy or tyranny, but I do like this song. Yup.

Light the Shade and Message Stick

A couple delightful numbers from Xavier Rudd. We love him too on account of his manish beardfulness, 'course. And he's just a lot of fun. He's another bloke who defies classification.

Parachute

I was dismissive the first time I heard this song, but since then I've been hooked by its irresistible catchiness. All of the elements of this song somehow magically come together into something profoundly groovy. Its hard-to-place tone is mightily tasty.

Till the Sun Turns Black and Be Here Now

No, that is not a really long and awkward song-title--it's two shorter and less awkward song titles, conjoined by an "and"! Ma-HA! I discovered to my delight last night that Ray Lamontagne has an album of which I was somehow perplexingly unaware, its namesake being the first of the above listed songs. Anyway, Mr. Lamontagne is super-cool; I mean, check out that beard. Now tell me you don't love him.
Ha! That's what I thought.
I love the rustic, cracked, aged-wisdom sort of feel he's got going on, which he also here beautifully meshes with lovely sweeping symphonics. It's kind of magical in its paradoxical down-to-earthiness and soaring, gentle transcendentiality.

Details in the Fabric

A melancholy, sweetly hopeful acoustic ditty from Jason Mraz. It's a handsome, touching piece of work.

Hægt, Kemur Ljósið

I accidentally happened upon Ólafur Arnalds whilst hunting down Ólöf Arnalds, only discovering days after the fact that I was listening to someone wholly different than the person I'd intended. And as it happened, Ólafur turned out to be a way more exciting find anyway. Why cannot more music like this exist? Most people who dabble in the art of the composer these days are too prone to experimentalism to really be musical. Ólafur here stands as a happy exception. The following is from his album, "...And They Have Escaped The Weight Of Darkness".

Around Us

Jonsi (lead-singer fellow from Sigur Rós) said this of the birthing of his independent album "Go": “I started out trying to make a low-key, acoustic album, but somewhere along the line it just sort of exploded.”
So. Here's Jonsi exploding:

And It's Alright

Lovely acoustic piece from Peter Broderick. An interesting fellow, he; he started off as a composer of sorts and then, seemingly on a whim, decided to get into actually writing versed music.




And for contrast's sake, this is the sort of music this fellow typically otherwise spawns. Eclectic, anyone?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqQ30tEIdHQ