Music to Be In The Cold and Gray By

It’s been college busy. Busy and cold. Cold and wet. And for such days, when your head and eyes ache from the paper-n-computer work that isn’t physically taxing but we kvetch about it no end anyway, you don’t want to listen to cerebral electronic music at the end of the day. Maybe weather and work are turning me into a rocker. Maybe I just like this music more than I’ve let myself agree I do. But the dulcet Scottish tones of Arab Strap aren’t ceasing to please me, nor is Jeff (Neutral Milk Hotel) Mangum’s live album.

It’s not so much that it’s gloomy music for gloomy weather, because it’s not really (the music that is; the weather is shite). It’s that both artists practice the sort of metasongwriting that seems to be the only form of sung music I enjoy these days. Their lyrics are just on a different plane, looking down on the experiences they write about with an eerie insight. That, and the music is awful pretty.