Listen to the Music

As you might have noticed, there is a wealth of new music down and to the right. I quite suggest that you look well into it. After braving the rain-happy concrete oceans of West Knoxville, I finally came to a last-ditch effort to find an album, any album by The Blue Nile, whose listenership includes Over the Rhine, Annie Lennox, and Peter Gabriel, among others. The UK-based trio taunted me with their MySpace page full of therapeutic musical liqueurs, and I was forced to search high and low for an album. After seeking out The Disc Exchange, Cats, and even Borders, I finally came crawling to McKay's, hoping against hope that some treasure would lurk within the vulture-picked bones of the cd racks. And lo, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but the three albums you see below. Three jewels missed by the hungry hordes of ecstatic listeners (of course, including The Blue Nile). I was suddenly every kid with a Christmas present...

But that's not what I'm writing to tell you. What I mean to say goes something like this:

I played a show recently with my dear friend and fellow pilgrim Arthur Alligood. It was the opening show for a new venue called The V Cafe, run by a Vineyard Church in north Knox County. In the midst of the fun, we exchanged cds. I got his new full-length album "Under the Gray" and he got my cd. I told him I thought I came out with the better end of the deal, and I stick by it.



Arthur has created an album that will take you into his closet to realize that you're not alone in these doubting crucibles of the journey of Christian faith. He joyfully lifts the burden of self-salvation with the addictive chorus of "All the While," cutting through your defenses with Eric Peters' haunting harmonies. He lets us glimpse the world of being enamored with the awful picture of Christ in "Not Like Us," then rocks out two songs later with "Broken," to which I will probably end up shamelessly dancing to when no one else is around. The whole album, furthermore is undercut with a babbling brook of Andrew Osenga's whispering electric guitar. Ben Nolen rounds out perfectly on drums, and the guest list includes great songwriters like the aforementioned Eric Peters, Greg Adkins, and Jason Feller. I haven't even finished listening to the whole cd yet. It's probably going to play over and over until I know every line by heart...

"Linger long
Let it all set it.
Life is living once,
Life is living once again."
        -Arthur Alligood, Under the Gray




Oh, and because I'm a geek, the new Harry Potter movie comes out next July 13th.