This week I am giving you three songs, which are kind of just two songs, but are different enough to merit the separation.
The first is a song by Elliott Smith (god rest his soul) from his album Figure 8.
Since he's been dead for over half a decade now I thought that I had already heard all there was to hear from him, but this song surprised me. I'm accustomed to the gloomy sounding songs that are more typical of his style, but this track delivers something in the way of pop-inspired, marketability. Of course, this makes it perfect for me because I believe that all music should exist in a form that you can either dance or sway to.
Also contained herein is an acoustic version of the song that Ishmael prefers to the more heavily instrumented one. I do not. I like knowing that what I'm listening to was produced in a recording studio.
And the last song is a from the Toronto songstress Kathleen Edwards. Miss Edwards was up for a polaris prize this year, even making it onto the prestigious shortlist. Despite that, prior to this week I hadn't heard her music, but it was worth the wait.
Far from what I expected (another Canadian female playing a guitar and singing cute songs about an assortment of strange topics) the sound that I encountered was much more soulful country than it was folk. The classic themes of country music are covered; heartbreak, addiction, prison, etc... but it's done with a certain sincerity that is hard to come by in modern country music. It's easy to tell that Edwards has a love for the genre, and she writes in a style and sings in a timbre that is heavily reminiscent of the masters that made country great.
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