I haven’t been listening to new music lately. Apart from browsing the rather slim IDM vaults of 15megsoffame.com, I’ve been dedicating myself to Terry Pratchett most of the time. That, or recorded lectures (the teaching company is a favourite) on topics I can’t even recall at the moment, although I’m sure I’ve become a better and more confused person as a result.
As it turns out, my hampstering has lead me to have more music on my computer & iPod than I’ve had time to listen to, cause I found thunder road by Tortoise, sung by Will Oldham (aka bonnie ‘prince’ billy), and I really liked it. like, I am almost certain that there was a hint of a tear poking it’s head out of one of my eyes at some point. And that’s quite a lot.
Today I looked for the lyrics to the song, and was only slightly pertubed when it turns out that the song was originally written by Bruce Springsteen of all people. (Wikipedia article on the song here, and the lyrics to it are on this here fan-page.) I’ve always branded myself as someone who doesn’t like Bruce Springsteen, but this sounds false when compared to another statement I tend to do, which is that it’s content, not form that’s important. Since the song was written thirty years ago, I must’ve heard it somewhere before. The only reason I don’t recall it must be cause it sucked.
Then will oldham sings it, and it makes perfect sense. Form over content, indeed.
[audio:Thunder_Road.mp3]Another brilliant track from the same album is another cover: Love is love by Lungfish. That’s about it from the album though – just get those two. The rest is rather bleak, if not outright crappy (the album is The Brave and the Bold, btw)