I'm getting my music recommendations from really weird places these days. I don't listen to the radio or watch TV and rarely check in with music blogs or music magazines. The promotional CD fairy has flown away since I'm not actively writing about music. And when I listen to music, it's usually from my own collection or from something I've intentionally sought out on Rhapsody.
So where am I hearing about new stuff? One source is (non-music) blogs.
I already told you how Alyssa Milano inadvertently alerted me to the new Chad VanGaalen album coming out. That was unexpected.
I've recently, and extraordinarily late in the game, started regularly reading Dooce's very famous blog. (For my friends who read this blog who are not SF Web 2.0 know-it-alls, Dooce got fired from her job for blogging years ago and now basically feeds her entire family from her blog empire. The woman's a true pioneer and a phenomenal writer to boot.) Turns out she's got pretty great taste in music too, even though music is hardly the focus of her blogging.
Dooce tipped me off to Kings of Leon's new single "Sex on Fire" in this post. Now, I tried to like the toothsome brothers in Kings of Leon when they first came out, but something put such a bad taste in my mouth for them that I have written them off ever since. Then Dooce's description of the song piqued my curiosity: "Holy God, this song is so good. One morning last week it came on the satellite radio when I was taking Leta to school, just as we were pulling into the parking lot, and I totally made her sit there in the backseat so I could listen to the whole thing. And she kept rolling her eyes at me AS IF SHE COULD JUST SIT THERE AND IGNORE ITS BRILLIANCE. WHATEVER." and (via her Twitter) "'Sex on Fire' is on the radio in the car right now, and yeah, I'm actually humping the dashboard."
After that recommendation, I had to listen to determine whether I disagreed with Dooce's taste in music or whether KOL had actually recorded a song I could like. Turns out they recorded a pretty amazing song; it's not going to change my life, but it is phenomenally catchy and passionate, and those brothers sure are growing up to be fine specimens. Caleb's voice breaks and squeaks in just the right ways, like he's giving you all he's got.
The official video for the song exploits the brothers' attractiveness in a very satisfying way, and is worth watching for that reason, but their ignorant record company has disabled embedding the video (and you know how I feel about that). But here's a great live version:
There's something kind of retro about this song - it's exuberant and not ironic. It's straightforward, not trying to be clever. Reminds me of the sincere delivery and giant choruses of old Pearl Jam. The chorus - "your sex is on fire" - is dumb as a rock; but isn't that the point sometimes?
In all those ways, this song - from Only By The Night which was released this week - is a perfect specimen.