Indie Retro Soul

Soul seems to be making a huge comeback. The sound has been redubbed, quite originally, indie retro soul. Over the weekend I was listening to a local radio station, WFNX, and heard a song that sounded all too familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Which in retrospect makes sense because I hadn’t heard it before. It turns out it was by Fitz & The Tanrums and just came out last month. Here it is: And then last night I was listening to music with some classmates, and a friend put on some new soul music. I was positive that, he too had just discovered Fitz & The Tantrums. Nope. It was Eli “The Paperboy” Reed, who happens to be from

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TED X Beats

Someone with far too much free time has remixed a bunch to TED talks to some beats. This one’s my favorite: The rest of them are here. Somewhat related, I stumbled upon this pretty good Dan Ariley talk earlier today: His book, Predictably Irrational, was a quick, interesting read too.

More Vinyl Recommendations

From the comments of my previous post on vinyl, Gabe Francis adds some great recommendations: Here are a few vinyl records I can’t stop listening to: 1. The Best of Nina Simone 2. Remain in Light by Talking Heads 3. Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan by Bob Dylan 4. Post War by M Ward 5. Moon Pix by Cat Power Gabe and I met this past summer in Costa Rica while he was working there as a Kiva Fellow. For those who don’t know about Kiva, it’s a community-based micro finance organization that connects potential lenders around the world, such as you and me, to low income individuals and organizations that need small loans. Unlike donating to a charity, when you give money

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The Sweet & Low Down

This past weekend I went to the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge to see Girls, Guns, and Glory. But the highlight of the night turned out to be the opening band, The Sweet & Lowdown. Miss Tess, one of the band members who mostly sings and plays the guitar (but also plays the upright bass on occasion), used to have the Sunday night residency at Toad, one of my favorite venues in Cambridge. I’d seen her play there countless times before she moved out to Brooklyn a few years back. If you have the opportunity to see either Miss Tess or The Sweet & Lowdown in Boston or NYC, I highly recommend going. Here’s a clip I recorded from the show

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Sunday Spins

I’ve been listening to a lot of vinyl lately. After years of procrastination, I finally put together a proper stereo system and picked up a new turntable. It’s been great. There’s something extremely satisfying about listening to records. It’s not just the warmer sound of vinyl (although that’s certainly part of it), but I think an even bigger draw is the routine. These days it’s just too easy to toss on Pandora or a playlist with a few hundred songs. And then you can go do something else. The music becomes background noise. Listening to records is different. The couple minutes it takes to pick out an album and put it onto the turntable is an investment. It’s small, but you’re not

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Top 7 Albums of 2010

All of my favorite bloggers are posting their year end lists, so on day three of this site, I figured I’d post my own. I’ll be honest. My original plan was to put together a full top 10 list, but I just couldn’t come up with 10 albums from this past year that I’m actually excited about. But I really enjoyed these seven (in no particular order): 1. Acrade Fire – The Suburbs 2. LCD Sound System – This is Happening 3. The Black Keys – Brothers 4. Broken Bells (Self Titled) 5. Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy 6. Monsters of Folk (Self Titled) 7. Ok Go – Of the Blue Colour of the Sky The best music video

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