Antony & José

Right, in response to all electronics that are being pushed here, I’d like to point out two bands that recently caught my attention without using any synthesizer or drum computer at all. (At least not as far as this casual listener can hear!)

First of all, the very laid-back, chilled-out and actually ‘simple’ José González. As you would have guessed already, José comes from Sweden. A beautiful song of his, Heartbeats, was used last year in a commercial for the new Sony Bravia. (Apparently and to my surprise, not one ball was computer generated!)

By the way: Heartbeats is a cover from a Scandinavian electronic duo called The Knife... Allmusic.com has a preview of the original. I hope this links works. If not, I'm sure you'll know your way around Allmusic to get a little taste.)

Get a sampling of his easylistening Latin (Easy Latin or Latin Listening?), created with nothing more than a voice and acoustic guitar, on MySpace, or read more about him on his website. A little warning though: don’t listen to his debut album, Veneer, too often. Although his style and songs are very accessible, Veneer tends to bore when listened to too often.

Another artist that got me interested last year is Antony and the Johsons. A little excerpt from Allmusic:

"Growing up in California, Antony felt himself to be the consummate outsider until he came face to face with the image of Boy George on the cover of the Culture Club's 1982 debut album, Kissing to Be Clever. He relocated to New York City in 1990, where he found a world more accepting of his avant-garde sensibilities and sexually ambiguous nature."

Amazingly enough, he now made a song with Boy George. One in which Mr(s) George sings exceptionally beautiful and even 'adult' as well.

Antony self has a unique voice that's heartwarmingly touching and outright kitsch at the same time. You either love it or loathe it - I don't think there’s anything in between. Try and listen three times to the duet with Boy George, You Are My Sister from his (her?) latest album I Am A Bird Now. If you don't like it after those three times: forget it. If you do like it, you now know what I mean.

Finally, since I know at least some of you are frequent users of allmusic.com, here are a couple of nice little plug-in search-engines to be used in Firefox.

Next time, I might share the wonderful world of my favourite cover artist Richard Chees [sic] with you. For now, I hope you'll enjoy Antony & José!

P.S. I heard Tom Vek, and me likey and will likey more! And as Joseph mentioned before: if you like Tom Vek, there's a reasonable chance you'll enjoy !!! as well. Also, I just finished listening to Junior Senior's 2005 album, and... well... I can't tell you yet what I think!