Indian Handcrafts, "Starcraft"
Hooray for rock duos! Major riffage here, you almost don't notice the absence of a bass player.
Stevie Wonder, "Another Star"
Stevie Wonder allowed himself some space to stretch out on the second album of Songs In The Keys Of Life. That sort of thing can dissolve into self-indulgence, but of course Stevie is one of the best ever, so it's really just more of his stuff. It's great!
Nickel Creek, "This Side"
While I think Why Should The Fire Die? is my favorite Nickel Creek (and just a tremendous artistic achievement), their second album (This Side) is also great. There's not quite as much experimentation with the forms of bluegrass on it, but it's definitely not traditional either. I mean, just listen to this, this is beautiful work.
The Valadiers, "I Found A Girl"
Talking about contrasts is easily the hackiest thing I do on this blog, a blog made entirely out of hackery. The crimes perpetrated against the noble art of writing are exceeded only by the crimes against good taste. But, it's not like I'm going to stop being hacky! Anyway, one of the things that always gets me kind of astounded is that we got from the music industry being this to something like Indian Handcrafts just through little incremental steps. It's neat!
The Safety Fire, "Yellowism"
I picked this up after hearing it described as math rock at some point, and sure enough, there's a lot of math rock in this. I'm not actually sure the vocals quite work for me though. They kind of clash a bit with the music.