Ol' Spirituals.

So, I've been checking out some new music lately. I've discovered two artists that, on their own, probably wouldn't rate an entry, but together have enough coincidence that I think, "Hey, I should blog about this."

Functionally, musically, the two artists have little in common. But they do have two notable similarities: First, they both use the word "Spirit" in their band names. The first, out of the UK, is "The Duke Spirit". The second, out of (I think) California, is called "Delta Spirit" -- but that's as indicative of their sound as it is of their location. ... I don't really get what they were going for.

Anyway, the second thing they have in common is that I checked them out because they sound like music I already listen to, or, at least, their front-persons do.

The lead singer of The Duke Spirit sounds just like Milla Jovovich. Even though she isn't. I checked. The lead singer of Delta Spirit sounds just like Alex Greenwald, lead singer of Phantom Planet. I mean, with the voice breaks and everything. He's not, though. I checked.

The Duke Spirit is old-school moody rock. You know the kind that manages to sound angry and anesthetized at the same time? It works for them sometimes, but their big problem is one of my top musical peeves: many of their songs sound exactly the same. Ugh. Still, I granted 5 songs from their album "Neptune" for iPod status. I liked "The Step And The Walk" enough that I corrected the shoddy lyrics floating around the internet; that and "Wooden Heart" are my favorites.

Delta Spirit doesn't have that problem. All their songs on "Ode To Sunshine" sound pretty different, which is awesome, because apparently that's harder to accomplish than I thought. Their problem, though is in their lyrics. They seem to like singing about The State Of Things and unfortunately they aren't as poignant and affecting as they probably think they are. It's like they're trying to mix earnest 60s idealism with self-aware hipsterism, and it's just annoying. You'll hear them start going on about "this world" in pretty much every song. It's okay when they're laying down some solid rock to back it up, which they do on several songs (one such being "People C'mon"). But generally, just ... no. I also synched 5 of their songs up to the pod, though I was probably being generous, because three of those are really great. One of them is a song called "Trashcan," in which the percussion is provided by - wait for it - a trashcan.

And that's it for this episode.