
Alberta & The Dead Eyes – Bundled Up Blues
Similar artists: Billie Holiday, Skip James, Feist
Genre: Indie Rock, Alternative Rock, Alt Pop
It’s a wonderful thing to consider you might not be the starring character in your story but rather an episodic one in someone else’s tale. There’s a possibility that in the future, some South American author will take the most depressing aspects of your life and use them for a few snappy sentences in a novel. They’ll make it all sound rather humorous and unavoidable as if you were one cog in a giant machine that’s been kept spinning ever since the dawn of time.
You won’t be able to read it, of course. But if you had that chance, it might even make you smile and get the everlasting troubles that you’ve carried on your shoulders throughout your life to feel like small, unimportant details. It’s enough to make you want to sing the blues and do it out of joy rather than misery.
Alberta & The Dead Eyes’s “Bundled Up Blues” sounds like the story of terrible things that occurred so long ago that laughing about it is not only permitted but encouraged. It’s a joyful, playful sound built on the blues. It may get you tapping your feet and snapping your fingers. And, when you put it all this way, there’s no reason why anyone should carry a sob tale in their back pocket.
Mike B & the Universe – Sweet Black Bean
Similar artists: John Prine, John Craigie
Genre: Indie Folk, Americana, Alt Country
The things that people would do for a thrill are many and shockingly perilous. But ask any concerned citizen about them, and they’ll frown and ask for greater jail sentences.
Still, if there’s one chemical refreshment that we’ve all managed to agree on, it’s coffee. It gets our lights to come on, our car engines to start, and keeps the world turning. Well, sure, the coffee beans don’t do that themselves, but they sure do pour those ideas into our heads. I know; I’m drinking one as we speak.
Shockingly, there are few songs about the world’s favourite drug. Could it be that for many people, this addiction is something for which they feel shame? Or is it just a matter of the fact that few songwriters have managed to find the right words?
Mike B & the Universe’s jokey “Sweet Black Bean” is just the coffee-drinking anthem that the world needs. Unlike beer anthems, wine anthems, or songs written about hard drugs, this doesn’t mince words. The folk-country tune raises a glass of the black ol’ stuff to the thing that makes you rise from your bed in the morning and crash back into it at night. It contains the kind of observations that might’ve come from John Prine’s pen and could turn Mike B & the Universe into folk heroes of the common, coffee-drinking man.