Save the Raccoons!

As usual I have a half-dozen unfinished things I've meant to say over these past couple weeks, but it's Friday and this humidity is looking at me like I'm a can-shaped pile of condensed cream of mushroom soup and I have this pounding headache and all those unfinished things seem so very involved, to me, right now.  So, this:

Shelby Sifers (myspace) is a lo-fi warbler who lives in Oregon, and her music's just the sort of thing you'd expect I'd never ever in a million yeeers recommend to you.  She uses a very limited musical palette, and her concepts are often (circle one)very well summed up at their outset/immediately exhausted.  Her voice gets compared to Joanna Newsom's, because it sounds pretty much exactly like Joanna Newsom's - hey, where you going? - only there's less pretension than there is gravity on the mooooooooon.

Her songs can be precious and corny ("You've got a chip on your shoulder, but I keep salsa in my lap" she sings in "Start Taking Naps"), but they also can be intimate, unassuming,  charming.

She works best in small doses.  Here's one.

Shelby Sifers - Things Are Beautiful (mp3) (buy)

It's not really a song.  It's the sort of thing you'd whisper to a friend after dragging them to a private corner in a crowded room.  Not an important secret, not something everyone shouldn't know, but the sort of thing you'd rather not let loose on a room full of people.  Because someone's bound to say, "What's so beautiful about wrestling?"  or, "I don't know, I don't much care for soup," or, "So what?"

I'm guessing Shelby's playing a keyboard, not a xylophone, but she may as well have stretched a thick blade of grass between her thumbs and gone tweeeeeet!  Her little brother is playing himself, and his fake retching at the outset goes a long way towards making this work.  As does Shelby's inability to get through with a straight face.  And, c'mon, you're not going to argue with anyone who sings, "Life's a little shitty, but I'm doing my best."

Soup, and wrestling, and this song, too.

This is from Sifers' 2005 CD Yeah, I'm in Love Too.  She has a new record called Run Around, Run Around.  You can buy either one or both through her myspace.

*

I strongly suggest you click over to Cable and Tweed and grab yourself a little something  called "I'm Not Going to Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You."  It's from a Floridian quartet called Black Kids, and it's a blast.  The Cure, now with PEP!  (hat tip)

tags: shelby sifers  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    reddit