Music reviews

The maze story post started out as part of what I was thinking about writing for this post. I was thinking about the Music I Can't Live Without and what makes some music so powerful at keeping demons at bay. It's usually some combination of an achingly sweet melody, a smooth singing voice and the lyrics (there's one song I'll listen to on repeat just for the line "honey child, I miss you just the same" even though the meaning is the opposite of the words). Actually, now that I tried to specify the criteria, I can think of way too many exceptions. Some songs are just soothing for no apparent reason. Listening to them makes me feel at peace with myself right now, not at some future point when I've magically become a better person. Of course the feeling only lasts as long as the song, but sometimes that's enough, and if I can assemble enough of them into a playlist I can stretch the feeling out long enough to regain the composure to cope when the music stops.
On Scrivener's recommendation, I downloaded the Decemberists' Picaresque from emusic (like iTunes, but cheaper and with cooler music). At first I was disappointed. I still don't like the first song on the album much and the singer's voice sounds a bit harsh on my ears. As the album progressed though, it grew on me more and more (I think my second favourite song is Ella's favourite, although I hadn't listened closely to the lyrics until that post). And then it got to the last song, Of Angels and Angles, and I was in love. This is one of the best of those songs I was trying to describe above, I just wish it were longer. I've been trying not to play it too much, in case some of the heart-stopping beauty wears off before I really need it. Thanks for plugging the Decemeberists so much, Scrivener!
Emusic gives you 40 songs as a free trial (if you'd like to try it and get 50 songs instead, email me and I'll send you a link - disclaimer: I also get free songs that way) so I also got Arcade Fire's Funeral (which amazon has been recommending to me all year), The New Pornographers' Twin Cinema, which I also love (and they're touring with Belle and Sebastian! Yay!) and The Beginning Stages of the Polyphonic Spree, which is gorgeous (they have a cute game, too).
After getting all that music for free, I felt I owed it to them to sign up for a month at least (only $10 for 40 songs, though. Sorry if this is coming across as a big ad...) so now I'm trying to decide between getting the remaining back catalogues of Belle and Sebastian and Elliott Smith or more new stuff. (I tend to categorise my music the same way as books - by some amorphous theme that only makes sense in my mind so I was surprised the site kept insisting Elliott Smith and Belle and Sebastian were similar. Elliott Smith goes with Radiohead and other depressingly beautiful bands in my internal catalogue, and Belle and Sebastian with the happy hand-clap/kiddie-shout bands)
The only problem with emusic is they only have a subset of albums by bands I like so now I'm very tempted to buy more CDs too...