That's a six.

I’ve been asking Chippewa Valley musicians to send me a list of six music recommendations. I left it really open-ended – they could recommend individual songs, artists, albums, past, present, local, non-local, anything. Not their “top” six, just six. They didn’t even need to explain their choices.

Why? I’m really not too sure. It sounds like a cool idea to me, but I find it hard to articulate why. I guess there’s a voyeuristic satisfaction in knowing what these artists have in their CD players. These people are actively making music and staging shows around the Chippewa Valley, and all of them make very different kinds of music. So at the very least, by reading this, you might find some new music to listen to. So, here’s the first installment ... oh, and why only six recommendations? Eh. Why not?

Jim Pullman,
The Jim Pullman Band

 

 

Jim

The New Pornographers, Together (A.C. Newman and his merry lil' gang’s latest contribution of perfectly written pop songs.)

Neko Case, The Tigers Have Spoken (One of my favorite live albums ever! Here Neko proves that her hauntingly Patsy Cline-esque crooning isn’t made up of studio gadgets and pitch correction – it’s all her baby!)

Sean Lennon, Friendly Fire (Complicated chord structures and sing-along melodies rarely mesh like this.)

The Hold Steady, Boys & Girls In America (The greatest guitar tone ever recorded! And many of the songs mention Minneapolis, The Mississippi River, and Hennepin Avenue ... so there’s that.

The National, High Violet (Singer Matt Berninger's melodramatic vocals rain down in an anthemic display.)

Deerhunter, Halcyon Digest (Skewed underground noises ... not just for the sake of being noisy and artsy, it actually helps the melodies float.)

Sue Orfield,
The Sue Orfield Band

 

 

Sue

Sonny Landreth (link) 

Michael Perry (link)

Bulgarian Women's Choir (link)

Tonic Sol-Fa (link)

Mumford & Sons (link)

John Coltrane (link)

 

 

Peter Phippen,
solo world flute artist, Sassy Magoo 

 

 

Peter

The Tony Williams Lifetime, Believe It (raw fusion jazz) 

Keith Jarrett, Spirits (primal improvisations, lots of flute, recorder, drum sounds, the liner notes are my musical Bible)  

Heidi Berry [Import] (amazing voice, songs, and production)

Djivan Gasparyan, I Will Not Be Sad In This World (deep, pure, trance music) 

Queen Of The Damned Soundtrack (powerful, heavy, dark)    

Janine Stoll, Melancholia (Canadian singer/songwriter, highly intelligent lyrics)