I’m too busy with other stuff at the moment to write much about the deeply soulful Michael Kiwanuka, so I’ll let his beautiful tunes (with phenomenal arrangements) make the point that allowing your influences to show can be a righteous expression of individual creativity!

He has a couple of short EP’s on iTunes that are totally worth the download price.  Kiwanuka's EP’s are also available on vinyl, but I could only find them on Amazon’s UK site.  His website is here (and it looks like a full length record is due in 2012).

Be sure to check out both videos because the tunes differ stylistically, exemplifying Kiwanuka's range.

It’s easy to understand why Feist has Mountain Man handling the backup singing on her current tour.  The powerful and evocative voices of Molly Sarle, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, and Amelia Meath are distinctly compelling.  This discovery is especially cool for me because these three unique voices came together at my alma mater Bennington College.  Their song arrangements are daringly spare, which focuses attention on the artistry and beauty of their vocal interplay.  The music they make is simply gorgeous.


You can listen to them at their bandcamp site here, or on Myspace here.  And they’ve got two recordings available on iTunes.  They were also the subject of a brief piece on NPR which you can read or listen to here.


Both of the following vids make clear how exquisitely these three women sing together.  “Loon Song” benefits from slightly better sound quality, but “Animal Tracks” is particularly interesting to me because it was recorded in a dining room in North Bennington (where I rented an apartment while attending Bennington College).

*** edit (another thought) ***
One of the unique powers of music is the way it connects you to the past while ushering you more fully into the present.  Mountain Man's singing does this powerfully for me.  While tradition is evident in their sound, they push this resonance into the future beautifully!

 Enjoy!

- Miles 

****
(By the way, I love when this kind of discovery occurs when following a trail on the web.  This journey began when I was checking out Feist’s Letterman performance (featured in my prior Feist post) on economist Paul Krugman’s blog.  Through that performance, I was turned on to Mountain Man and ultimately reaffirmed the creative spirit that is fostered at Bennington College!)    

My first ever blog post - this is exciting!  The home page of this site is where you'll find the latest about what the band is up to, but here on the blog I'm stoked to have a place to share my thoughts and creative inspirations.  Music is a spiritual endeavor for me, and I like to share things that affirm that experience.  

Lately Feist has been blowing my mind with her unreal singing, cool guitar playing and emotionally charged arrangements (check that horn line in "How Come You Never Go There").  I'm also impressed by how the live arrangements in the following vids differ dramatically from the recorded versions.  Seems like Feist is continually tweaking things to squeeze the biggest impact out of the tunes.  I like these performances even more than the recorded versions, and I like those a lot, so that's saying something!  "Secret Heart" is from Paris 2005, and "How Come You Never Go There" is from the David Letterman show only a few days ago (also worth mentioning that many otherwise capable bands sound horrible on live tv; not Feist).

*** edit *** Just learned that the three backup singers in "How Come You Never Go There" are their own group, Mountain Man, and they met at Bennington College!  

Enjoy!

- Miles