Your Verdict - Week Three!

[The Curmudgeon]

So last year you would think with Prince releasing two albums in one day I would already have a sure fire Best Album of 2014. Both albums were good (one very good) but nope. That award goes to an album I bought pretty much on a whim. I've now invested in their other two albums. It's that good.

History first; I downloaded a free MP3 from a website that I loved as soon as I heard it. It buzzed around my iPhone for a few months and then I changed computers so lost MP3 files that were downloaded onto the hard-drive. Something like that. I'm not technical. I didn't have the song anymore, put it that way.

A few years later, 2014 in fact, I found the album the song came from by accident. Oh, THOSE guys. I liked that song. Why not? And my album of 2014 was born.

So, Bishop Allen are an indie band from New York who specialize in quirky, catchy pop and rock songs, sometimes with a weird twist of dark lyrics disguised in jaunty pop melodies (the closing song on the album sounds like a kids TV theme but it's about loneliness and depression).

This song, "Rain", from the superb "Broken String" album, is what made me a fan in the first place. Try not letting this one burrow into your brain.

(No video, this is a fan made effort).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3cCF3jn6jw

[trashcanman]

I'm about halfway between "loved it" and "heard better", but I'm going with the latter since there's something really familiar about their sound; like I've heard it all before somewhere. Solid, mega-listenable music and something that could possibly grow on me, though.