Auditory Discovery

For me, there's always been a thrill in discovering more music that I like. It's almost universally never cutting edge brand spanking new, but I think if I made a conscious effort to keep up with all of that, I'd end up frustrating myself with the amount of rubbish that I had to wade through. Anyway, point in hand, the last time I went on a proper independent music 'hunt' I came up with three bands that I still adore even to this day; Fields (the new Fields.), Tin Hat Trio (renamed themselves Tin Hat now, I believe) and Crippled Black Phoenix. They're all vastly different from one another and I'll admit, especially in the case of the last two bands, not to everyone's tastes.

I've been listening to a lot of the latter, lately. CBP, as you might expect from the name, to me, can be summed up in one word. Miserable. Certainly not miserable in the eyeliner-black, wrist-slitting 'my life is awful kill me now' dramatic emo teenager way. As soon as it fills my ears it puts me in mind of drizzly northern cities; a lonely, grimy iron vessel ploughing through a bleak sea; pollution choked industrial alleyways. It's that misery of the mundane, I guess. What I also like about each album, is that I feel they each tell a story. It's not all doom and gloom, either - there's brief moments of hope like a small bit of sunshine breaking through the cloud cover. You know that advert for ITV they had with the kids along the overcast beach and the tatty umbrella? I think that perfectly sums up this band, for me.

I still wish that advert hadn't been for ITV, of all things. What a waste of a good idea.

Sadly, the latter two have done very little in the way of new material. Fields promised a new album this year but as of yet nothing has been heard. Tin Hat haven't put anything out since 2007. CBP recently put out a chock-load of new stuff in '200 Tonnes of Bad Luck' and 'The Ressurectionists', but I've listened to both of those albums to death now. So anyway, I got on Amazon, and I started nosing around.

And I found Silvery and Band Of Horses

I think anybody listening to this, who knows me, will identify one of the reasons why I immediately liked the former. The latter sounds a bit (dare I say this) coldplay-y/keane-y (when I still liked Coldplay). Even so, both have the potential to ultimately annoy me with repeated listening. There was some other stuff I found too - this just happened to be the two most recent artists out of the selection of about five I've pinned for purchase. When I have the money.