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New Music Tuesday: 3-20-2012

Good tidings everybody! Great news came to my inbox yesterday and I got some pretty good news in my mailbox too! Brandi Carlile has a new album coming out in June and will be part of a Johnny Cash tribute at Austin City Limits just a few days before my birthday in April. Brandi, I didn’t get anything for you for your birthday, how did you know what to get me for mine? She is so considerate. Who’s ready for new tunes? I thought so. Singer-songwriter Jasmine Van den Bogaerde may have a name worthy of being a Gossip Girl character, but this English lass’s wise-beyond-her-years persona makes Dan Humphrey seem immature. Those of you in the U.K. have been able to get their hands on Birdy’s self-titled debut for over six months already; but those of us in the U.S. and Canada can begin adding her gorgeous, melancholic, piano-driven original songs to our playlists alongside her cover of Bon Iver’s “Skinny Love.”This album is what I imagine Florence Welch’s high school diary would sound if it were being sung by her 15-year-old self. Feel good? No. Sound good? Hell yes.

Album opener “This Time” has got me psyched on R&B right now. Melanie Fiona has a voice bursting with soul and a bit of rasp that takes her low-pitched vocal lilts to epic baby-making-music levels. Someone over at So You Think You Can Dance needs to put “Wrong Side of a Love Song” in their ears and choreograph a dance in the same vein as Sasha and Twitch’s incredible “Misty Blue” routine. This is a damn-near perfect album in my book.

Musician Morgan Nagler is a curious combination of electronic and indie folk rock. I like this album but I can’t say I love it enough to want to play it front to back and I’ve been having a hard time figuring out why. At first I was wondering if her jumping from one genre to another was too jarring for my mood. Listened to one by one with space between tracks, I’m a big fan of her work. I think what it boils down to, for me, is her vocals. Each song seems to be sung with the same few notes using the same inflection and while everything else is changing in the background, her voice is what ends up sticking out more than anything. My recommendation: Don’t dive in head-first – rather dip your toes in first and take your time coming back.

Do I think Esperanza Spalding is gorgeous? Absolutely. Is she talented? Without a doubt. Does her music fly over my head and make me feel inferior for not really “feeling it”? Yup. There’s a reason she took home the prize for Best New Artist at the 2011 Grammy Awards and I’m trying really hard to be an eager audience for her. The problem is, I just can’t connect with these sounds on a personal level and even when I do for a second, it changes very quickly. It reminds me of those times in high school when I would go to the cafes closest to Northwestern University to do my homework and hope the other cafe-goers would mistake me for another college student. Try as I might to pull out a Faulkner book and look interested, I always ended up writing lyrics to Luscious Jackson songs or pretending I knew how to draw something other than Fred Flintstone (which continues to be the only thing I know how to draw). So, there you have it. If you enjoy neo-soul that is also overwhelmingly jazzy, you’ll probably end up enjoying this album very much. I welcome you to school me in the comments section. You can listen to the entire album over at NPR.

Honorable Mentions: Lost in the Trees (fantastic and gut-wrenching), Yukon Blonde, Avalanche City, Vacationer, The Shins, Tanlines, Josh Baze, Diggy (Rev Run’s son), Brad Mehldau Trio and Magic Castles.

Dis-honorable Mentions: Odd Future.

That’s it for this week, my friends! I want to say thank you to everyone who watched my first vlog episode last week and didn’t end up throwing their computer screens out the window. I’ll be back with another one on Friday and for anyone missing my Weekly Women to Listen to columns, I’ll be back with them soon! Tomorrow I’ll be busy speaking to eighth graders about the wondrous world of music blogging and interviewing. Hopefully I will also manage to get the whole “stay in school” message across, too.

As always, feel free to follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook or challenge me to a battle of the best old school playlist on Spotify. Spoiler Alert: Nothing beats my “Best of the Old S–t” mix.

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