Paolo Nutni: "New Shoes" Video
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In this sentimental tune, country singer-songwriter Chely Wright (she of the 1999 hit song "Single White Female") muses about a river that can give life and take it away.
Allison Crowe: "Whether I'm Wrong"
"The antithesis of everything that's out there" is how director/producer Alex Postowoi (Joan Armatrading, Jann Arden, Bif Naked+) describes this super-natural video of Canadian singer-songwriter Allison Crowe performing live-in-the-studio. Crowe performs in a first, single take her song, "Whether I'm Wrong," which has been featured by the UNESCO-endorsed New Songs for Peace project.
The 404 394: Where The 404 gets a 404
Joining us in the studio again is Caroline McCarthy, bringing her wit and charm, and we also have Timothy Geisenheimer, who always has something clever to say. So apparently, CNET broke during today's live stream, which is why some people are getting 404 error pages when they visit our Web site. Today's Audio Draft is sponsored by Becks Beer in Conjunction with Last.fm, a subsidiary of CBS Corporation, 5000 XP GTS, is a rising European pop-rock star, Paolo Nutini.
The 404 386: Where we get lost in the dream
It's Wilson's turn again to choose The 404 semiweekly audio draft sponsored by Beck's Beer in conjunction with Last.FM, a subsidiary of CBS Interactive and CNET News and Reviews 5000, so naturally we're a little skeptical (but not nearly as skeptical as we are about the moon landing), but Mr. Tang comes through again with the beautiful music of Priscilla Ahn, a young singer-songwriter with a light, ethereal voice that drifts through the layered atmosphere of her acoustic folk melodies.
KT Tunstall: "Black Horse and The Cherry Tree"
KT Tunstall is a sparkling new songwriter with Chinese blood, a Scottish heart, great legwarmers and a cool name ? ?well, it?s got a bit more attitude than Kate which just says farmer?s daughter to me,? she laughs. KT celebrates classic singer-songwriting in the tradition of Rikki Lee Jones, Carol Kingand Fleetwood Mac with an articulate, accessible, immediate brew of rootsy sass, wistful quandary and after-hours atmosphere. The latest in a line of outstanding contemporary Scottish songwriters including Texas, Fran Healy, Teenage Fanclub and The Beta Band, KT?s unique perspective offers a rare emotionally connecting intensity through it?s gripping lyrical bite and heartfelt melody. Her debut album ?Eye To The Telescope? is the creative consequence of that inquiring imagination. ?My songs examine and explore little specific emotions or situations or stories,? she explains. ?They?re kitchen table songs, like a conversation between me and one other person. It?s almost like an alien has been sent to get emotional samples from human beings and put it all together on a record.? Since completing ?Eye To The Telescope?, life has been a blur of gigs, first as support to Joss Stone, then a tour of Europe, singing with ?klezmer hip-hop? band Oi Va Voi, who ignited the Avalon Stage at Glastonbury. ?It was blazing sunshine and I went on in a turquoise neck muff, glamorous dress and muddy boots and just had the best gig, really emotional. I?ve had emails from people saying that they cried. They promised it wasn?t the drugs.? Now KT is raring to channel all her infectious energies into her own music. ?I?m not exactly sure what has driven me so hard,? she says. ?I?ve never questioned it. I?ve never had a back-up plan. I was never going to do anything else.?
?I guess I knew from an early age that I could never do a job where I?d have to sit in an office all day long,? says Lily Allen. It seems unlikely Allen will be confined to a cubicle any time soon. The 21-year-old artist, pronounced by NME as ?the archetypal singer-songwriter for the iPod generation,? took Britain by storm this past summer with her debut album Alright, Still rocketing onto the U.K. Album chart at #2 and her first U.K. single, ?Smile,? topping the U.K. Airplay chart for six weeks in a row. Now she?s set her sights on America ? and early reports indicate she won?t exactly be flying under the radar here, either. ?She symbolizes a new blogging-age, middle-class girl: cockily ambitious, skeptical yet enthusiastic, technically savvy, musically open, obsessed with public expression and ready to fight back,? said The New York Times in a feature on Lily. Allen was born in Hammersmith, a borough in Greater London, and grew up all over London ? Shepherds Bush, Bloomsbury, Islington. ?I went to 13 different schools so I never had time to make enduring friendships. Music became a lifeline to me. I listened to punk, ska and reggae, courtesy of my parents? record collections,? she says, which explains why, in addition to numerous up-and-coming dance artists she counts The Specials, T. Rex, The Slits and Blondie as favorites.
Weird and visceral singer-songwriter Scout Niblett cuts right to her emotional core and exposes the mess as is. Her fearless approach is unencumbered by musical boundaries--and to a certain extent musical ability--resulting in an awkward yet rewarding listen.
Armed with little more than an acoustic guitar and her fragile alto, San Francisco folk singer/songwriter Emily Jane White offers complex tales of melancholy and isolation. Her gothic blues are starting to catch some serious attention and her debut Dark Undercoat is among 2007's strongest.
Home-recorded songs can feel incomplete whilst being as tantalizingly indicative as the sketches before a painting. The outlines, though interesting in their own respect, are not as satisfying as the finished version. Grizzly Bear, however, have approached song writing as a craft to master from their very first album, Horn of Plenty onwards. Enamored by how a song "reads", they were fully present from prologue to denouement even though singer/songwriter Edward Droste recorded them by himself in his Brooklyn bedroom. Fuelled by a bout of post-relationship inspiration, those first songs celebrated the creative liberation of the ProTools era. They explored the depths of break-ups through crystal-clear tones, field sounds and woozy, complex harmonies.
As Kelly Willis planned to go into the studio last fall, she really didn't know what to expect. She had spent the four years since co-producing her 2002 album, the lovely, laid-back Easy, on family matters: her oldest son Deral, born in 2001, got three siblings -- twins Abby and Ben born in 2004 and baby Joseph, whose birth followed in early 2006. "This time around, I had absolutely no time or energy to be involved in the producer role at all," Willis recalls. So she called a guy "who lives and breathes music," whose instincts she loved and who she felt "really comfortable around": Chuck Prophet, the edgy singer-songwriter who contributed guitar to both Easy and 1999's acclaimed What I Deserve. Together, they would create the most sonically adventurous album of Kelly Willis' seventeen-plus-year recording career, "Translated From Love."
