Wednesday, March 9, 2005

The Tiny

All praise to the MP3Blogs! I don't know which of my rotation of music blogs pointed to this tune, but indie record label Eyeball Records is making a high quality mp3 of one of their artists available on the web, and I have listened to it maybe ten times today. Closer, by Stockholm band The Tiny is quirky, quiet and unlike anything I've heard in years. An elfin-voiced Ellekari Laron, backed almost exclusively by a cello and a violin (spare piano and occasional guest instruments notwithstanding) lullls me into a mood I can't quite describe. I feel like I've entered an alternate reality. The last time I listened to a group that was so unrelentingly downtempo and avante garde was when I originally discovered Van der Graaf Generator. Now I'm just debating whether to buy the song, or the whole album.

Some of the reviews I've read say that the album is deeply repetitive ("As each song flows into the next without much of a change in tone, tempo or arrangement..."), and once you've heard one song, you're done. I went to CDBaby, and they have sample streams of the entire album, 2 minutes per song. I can see the point about repetition, but careful listening reveals subtleties among the songs that make me think I might enjoy them all. I'm pretty sure that I'll be buying Closer and Across the Bridge. Guess I'll just have to dig into the sample streams a few more times.

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