vintage

Whoa guys, I’m going to promise that next week’s stuff will be on time. Relying on the internet is becoming increasingly difficult these days. I’ll write a bunch in advance so you actually see them when they’re supposed to be posted!

Anyway, here we are at the double Tunesday post. In case you haven’t noticed yet, I love country and country-laced music, but we’re not talking Keith Urban or Garth Brooks here. I’m talking real country, that folky stuff with banjos and good bass lines and a little twang. In other words, the good stuff. It goes by any name: alt-country, Americana, bluegrass, folk, nu-grass, country-rock, or perhaps even psychedelic cow-punk (sorry).

The first track I want to share is by a fairly legendary Canadian outfit by the name of Blue Rodeo. I’m sure the name itself gives you some hints about its country leanings, but they are by and large a rock band (with a healthy amount of hoedown). Blue Rodeo have been around for 25 years and 11 studio albums, and they’re still doing pretty much the same thing they’ve always been doing. I mean this in the best possible way: they’ve found a working formula and made an incredible amount of great music using it. It’s bands like these that Canada should always be known for.

This song is from their incredibly popular 1993 record Five Days in July, which went 6x platinum … not bad for a bunch of guys from the Great White North. Here y’are.

Tunesday 10-1: Cynthia

The other track is by “nu-grass” favourites of mine, The Be Good Tanyas. I keep recommending this song to everybody I know, and then they’re always disappointed when their other songs aren’t quite like this one. Regardless, it was responsible for me collecting all of their albums and seeing them live, and it is still among my favourites. There’s something about it that just feels like sunshine — or as my friend Alex so eloquently said, “It makes me want to cook breakfast for someone in my underwear”.

Tunesday 10-2: The Littlest Birds

Enjoy! Sorry again about the incredible delays. Technology … not always a solution.

Also, I recently found out that Phoenix’s new album is going to be called Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. I love it already.