Ramona Lisa - Dominic

I always get a quaint feeling whenever I see connections in the music that I listen to. Take just now for example. I'm a Twitter subscriber to Kurt Feldman (frontman of the now-defunct The Depreciation Guild, ex-drummer of The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, and vocalist for The Ice Choir) and Twitter recently informed me of Kurt's various followings. One of these was Ramona Lisa, stage name for Caroline Polachek, who's also the vocalist for Chairlift. After listening to "Dominic", I was immediately reminded of "Unhold" by Delorean, one of my favourites off of their Apar album. For me, that vocal style is a real imaginative way to use autotune (it's definitely a stylistic choice given that she sings wonderfully without it in other videos). Anyway, I didn't for a second actually think it was the same person but I was certainly tickled when I saw Caroline Polachek in the title of the "Unhold" music video. **EDIT** Oh and of course "Everything Is Spoilt By Use" by Ice Choir features her too ... and I totally unwittingly linked that song above originally too.

So, clearly, I must, for the sake of destiny, listen to all of Caroline's things. Below is "Dominic" released under her stage name Ramona Lisa from her 2014 release Arcadia. An absolutely fresh and relaxing song and video.

Bran Van 3000 - Couch Surfer [alternative]

The other day I heard a bird whisper in my ear that I had a blog where I post music stuff. Ludicrous! Since the last post here, a lot of things have changed. I'm in a new town, started two new jobs, started seeing a beautiful lady. Music hasn't been as huge a part of my life as it used to be when I would seek (desperately) for something to distract me from the frenzied thoughts in my head so that I could actually study with some semblance focus.

Well, musings like that really belong to my other blog so maybe I'll just stop here.

I have two albums from the Montreal collective Bran Van 3000 and I really got them just to listen to two singles: "Drinking In LA" and "Love Cliche". I was pleasantly surprised to find that I liked the rest of the albums a lot. It consists of simple late-90s guitar, electronic samples, laid back spoken word, and gentle female background vocals. All very relaxing and done in way that's not repetitive as one goes through the album (though, to be honest, I haven't really sat through the whole album yet). It doesn't help that I tend to have a soft spot for Canadian music.

"Couch Surfer" by Bran Van 3000 from their 1998 album Glee