The Orbans

There's a great local band out of Ft. Worth that I've been hearing on the radio. Last week I caught their live session on a warm January day while cruising the tollway with my windows down. It could've been the weather, but I'm hooked. Check out their live sessions on YouTube or sample their entire album on amazon. Lovin' it.

The Social Network

I get chills every time I see this movie preview in theatres. I'm pumped about the movie, but it's mostly just because the song and the trailer are so well put together!

How good is that?! It's exciting because we were at the perfect age when Facebook came on the scene. I was at a large university that was one of the select few to have early access to Facebook, before it opened up to the entire world. In that regard, I think that this movie will sum up our generation and the past decade perfectly.

I'll come clean here; I am a choir-junkie. I started kids choir at church as a mere babe and continued on into every school choir, youth choir, select ensemble and musical I could audition for. It's a lifetime devotion...I'm just waiting to get old enough to join a big Baptist church choir without any awkwardness about being the youngest person there by a few decades.

All of this confession to emphasize how I can't get over the creepiness and the awesomeness of the song! Turns out, the new take on Radiohead's "Creep" is by a Belgian girls' choir that covers all kinds of famous grunge and hard rock hits. As soon as you click on to their website, you immediately hear their cover of Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters"...are you kidding me?! They've got it all from Nirvana and Muse to U2 and The Police.

Hi - my name is Alyssa, and if you're looking for an additional member, give me a call.

Small Joys

Not much explanation needed to share these little nuggets of joy!

Please listen to Ray LaMontagne's new album, "God Willin' And The Creek Don't Rise". .."New York City, you're killin me..." while I politely disagree, it's classic Ray and I can't be anything but thrilled!

Also, as a former Beyonce impersonator, I feel a personal obligation to post this. Sara B's new album is coming out (and she's touring with Greg Laswell!) in September so she's doing some fun things to help promote it. Check out her cover of Single Ladies for Billboard. She has a style that is much more fitting to me that the original beat's heels and leotards.

Indie-pendence Day

Thanks, iTunes for the catchy title that I just ripped off. Apparently this lapse in blogging and my recent head-first plunge into Corporate America has sucked out all of my creativity. My life may be lacking an appropriate creative outlet at the moment, but it is certainly not lacking in fantastic tunes! It's been the summer of diversity here at A Musical Snack...my playlist has ranged from Passion Pit and Local Natives to Eli Young and Lady Antebellum! I guess that's what it means to be indie in Texas...but I do hate to label.

A very cool find for Dallas folks and web streamers alike is the new KXT radio station. A blend of cool music and the always trendy, yet old-school NPR world news, KXT's tagline is "Music to the Core" which you have to love. I still surf the airwaves for a morning dose of Alejandro, but it has revitalized my daily commute and made my cubicle life a little less droning and cliche by introducing fun, local bands and playing those artists that you never get to hear in a public setting.

Check it out: kxt.org

Another sweet and budget-friendly find came to me from a little facebook birdie! Levi's brand has introduced a new concept they are calling Pioneer Sessions, where current artists re-craft unforgettable hits in their "Revival Recordings". Each week a new artist is posted with a remix of a classic and all are available as free downloads. When you get offered a free download, most people naturally assume a no-name artist butchering a song that you never really liked to begin with, but I'm talking She & Him covering "Fools Rush In", Passion Pit, Colbie Caillat, The Dirty Projectors, John Legend with The Roots, etc. etc. My personal fave is Ryan Bingham (you know, wrote the song for Crazy Heart) singing Otis Redding's "That How Strong My Love Is"...swoon.

"These recordings celebrate the most important part of music: The song, its influence and the inspirational effect on the generations that follow."

Go check out the site, read the stories, see the pics and download your favorites. Who can argue with that?

One Track Minded

It's the eve of a very big day for music lovers!

At midnight tonight, iTunes will automatically deploy my pre-ordered copy of John Mayer's Battle Studies. The Billboard.com review has already claimed it to be the "best and most adventurous of his four studio albums," and I'll cheerfully second that motion.

John Mayer is an interesting case study in the genre-segmented music industry. Guys love to hate him, girls scribble his lyrics in their diary, US Weekly is still talking about his love life and old-school players like Rolling Stone so desperately want to classify him as a pop sell-out. It's not really surprising that the Rolling Stone review gave Battle Studies 3 stars, but their average user rating was closer to a 4.5. But, even they had to admit that his new album "is a real study in craftmanship and understated guitar ninja-dom". At the end of the day, you can't deny what an incredible musician he is.

Thanks to a thoughtful friend in a high place, I got an early release of it a week ago so I've had some time to let it resonate in my headphones. If you're a devoted follower (like your's truly) you know that JM has a diverse repertoire that ranges from pop ballads and poetic love songs to full swing blues and hard rock. I think this fourth album is different because he's finally earned freedom from the record label and in turn has fused all those sounds into one coherent collection. He managed to reach the pop crowd with the "Half of My Heart" duo with Taylor Swift, the classic rock crowd with his interpretation of Robert Johnson's "Crossroads" and the US Weekly spectators with "Heartbreak Warfare". (Is he publicly jabbing Jennifer Aniston?!) And inevitably, girls will swoon as they deconstruct the other 50% of the album and try to interpret his quest to "find ways to keep the good alive" in romance. This is why I think it's brilliant, but I'll let you decide for yourself. My list of personal favorites is still evolving.


But consider yourself warned; this isn't his most upbeat and optimistic release. Once he set the album title Battle Studies, he took the theme to a new level and carried it out through other titles like "Heartbreak Warfare", "War Of My Life" and "Assassin". He said so himself, "(it's more) observations and a little bit of advice on relationships... kind of like a heartbreak handbook".

If you have better cable than I do, you should set your tivo to the Fuse Channel tomorrow night as they broadcast his first album performance live from the Beacon Theatre in New York City.

There are some other great things happening tomorrow as far as New Music Tuesdays go, but alas, I do have a day job...