“Roy Orbison as a chick, fronting a band of elves”
I was terribly late discovering the great Nicole Atkins & The Sea music, but as I’ve just learned their CD wasn’t available until this week anyway. This music more than makes up for what I think is not OK about America and some Americans. You can have Bush for a leader, maybe even cause such beautiful soulful art as a result from all the shame and guilt it impregnates Either way, the music on Neptune City is cool. The first thoughts that came to my mind (when I heard the melodies, songs and vocals on this album) were motion picture soundtracks of movies by David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti. This clearly comes from a Twin Peaks-loving generation of musicians. And so I wasn’t surprised to see this on Nicole’s MySpace page:
Influences: Patsy Cline, Lou Reed … the Shangri La’s … Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch, John Waters, Tim Burton … Roy Orbison …
All this music might just as well have been pulled straight out of a trippy dark but brilliant movie featuring Dennis Hopper, Chris Isaak and Kyle McLachlan in some small village. And I mean that as a huge compliment, because the albums related to Julee Cruise, Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch are among my favorites of all time. Nicole was actually born in Neptune City, New Jersey, which explains a lot about their music. She talks about it on YouTube.
Speaking of which, did you know YouTube is going high bandwidth soon? They probably found out about some of us hacking their 350 kbit/s limit (see video above) …