New Tunes Tuesday!

[seventhe]

Alright, New Tunes Tuesday it is, and I have a couple things to toss out at you ....

Artist: Lights
Album/Song to Try: Skin&Earth, Intro/Skydiving, New Fears, We Were Here
Style: somewhat ethereal alt-pop
Thoughts: Spotify threw me a Lights song on one of my radio channels, and I was immediately intrigued at the similarity to Ellie Goulding, who still holds a special place in my heart. Lights' Skin&Earth is sort-of like Ellie's first album Lights (hilarious!), which has this amazing ethereal-crystalline feeling to its complex lyrics and strung-out harmonies, met up with Ellie's disappointingly-trite pop-dance thing she called a third album, and created a child. Lights' lyrics are nowhere near the intricate depth of Ellie's first album, and her feel isn't quite as layered or deep, but there are echoes of that amazing album throughout Skin&EEarth, which just has a really cool feel, and has brought me back to it over and over this last week.

Artist: Gin Wigmore
Album/Song to Try: Gravel & Wine, "Black Sheep", "Man Like That"; Blood To Bone, "New Rush", "Nothing to No One"
Style: uniquely gravely-expressive voice spins rhythm over a combination of folk, pop, rock, dance
Thoughts: I don't know how to describe Gin Wigmore's voice other than awesome. She goes for it like few artists are able, and manages to wrangle around a dozen different styles - sometimes in one song. Obviously I like her more ragged, driving song with a beat and a purpose, but she hits soft and winsome often enough. Almost everything I've heard of hers is just plain good.

So far your suggestions have been GREAT - keep 'em coming. Let's talk tunes!

Comments

[althea_valara]

I'll share some Final Fantasy XI songs, which are probably new to those reading as I don't think there are many FFXI players around these parts.

FFXI is actually my favorite Final Fantasy OST, which somewhat surprises me because it was NOT composed by the great Uematsu-san, but rather Naoshi Mizuta. He was one of the composers on FFXIII-2, so you might be familiar with his work from there.

Excuse the naked links, I'm on my Kindle and it's too much of a pain to make pretty links.

The Reblic of Bastok
https://youtu.be/iefGrRfDOPY
Bastok was my home city. It's a bustling industrial town, home to the smithing and blacksmithing guilds. I love how this song represents that - it definitely has a city feel rather than the Kingdom of San d'Oria or the Federation of Windurst.

Selbina
https://youtu.be/oiGxNFlOO5k
Selbina is a tiny port town, but saw a lot of activity because one of the main grinding spots was right outside town. This song makes me want to do a jig.

Ru'Lude Gardens
https://youtu.be/g4EFhDquyFA
I heard this song a LOT because the Gardens was the preferred place for bazaaring on my server, so I spent hours there. The Gardens were the top floor of the Grand Duchy of Jeuno, and this song definitely has a grandiose feel to it.

More next week!

[seventhe]

This is great - I don't know any music from FFXI other than what shows up in FFRK or Distant Worlds!!

[alwaysbeenasmiler]

Oh gosh, Ellie Gouldings first album was so amazing-- everything else after sort of fell short with me-- (isn't that the way of it in general, I think I felt the same about Lorde's second album-- it wasn't as good as the first)

Thanks for the music recommendations-- I really need to check out Lights, since I love electro pop so much!

[seventhe]

Her first album was OUTSTANDING. it's actually what started me down this path of electro-indie-alt-pop in the first place - I was blown away. Her second album I was about 50/50 on - half the songs still had that same feel, but it was a lot quieter and almost sappy in places, which isn't my style. The third one was an utter disappointment - not that it's bad, but Ellie started out on such a high note, and the third one just sounded like mainstream pop to sell records.

I think I may have liked Lorde's second album better than her first, but I'm now wondering if that's the case, and I may have to relisten to them today at work to decide ;)

[alwaysbeenasmiler]

Yeah, her first album was like "HIT EVERY POSSIBLE NOTE"-- and I feel the same with the second album, there were some really good albums, it it was so different, and in a lot of cases, different can be good-- but in this case, there was just less memoriable songs.

I highly suggest you look into Nerina Pallot,

"Dear Frustrated Superstar"
"Fires"
"The Graduate"

her third album, "Year of the Wolf" is pretty hit and miss for me.

Not exactly electro pop but still really good music

[seventhe]

thanks for the rec! i'm actually creating a spotify playlist with all of the recommendations i've been getting :3