About one week ago, I was at a used/new children’s bookstore and heard the dulcet, torrid sounds of Sufjan Stevens who sounds a bit like he met Neutral Milk Hotel on a strange night in the middle of a rough-and-tumble Michigan bar. That probably doesn’t do justice to his music, which is plaintive, solemn, and surrendering – a bit like Steven Merrit but more down-home, more straight for lack of a better word. You can purchase his music on Amazon, but you might as well buy the goods for $12.00 each, postage paid, on the SoundsFamilyre label site.
I listened to the Magnetic Fields’ new album in the car this weekend and was moved almost to tears by the last song on the album, It’s Only Time, on which Merrit cries “Marry Me, Marry Me” with a warble in his voice that defies gravity.