3 new albums

Yesterday I had a chance to have a morning hike near camp, up to Balanced Rocks and over the Pitchoff cliff area with my iPod on. I listened to 3 new albums and developed a few thoughts to share as the sun rose over the Adirondacks and the rain moved in.

Tom Petty's new Highway Companion lives up to a title. With an iPod, it's like walking with Tom and having a conversation with him, since the voice sounds like he's right next to you. This album seems excellent at first blush. Time will tell whether it's as good or better than Wildflowers, which is the real standard. Like Ray Davies, Petty is very consistent, and rather than get experimental and different, he just gets better and better at what he does best, as opposed to people like Paul Simon and Paul McCartney, who have really lost the plot.

The Raconteurs are Jack White's new band. They have all the things I like about the White Stripes, and less of the things I don't like. It's poppy and catchy and rough on the edges. I enjoyed the way the 4 piece band worked off each other. I hope he sticks with this and ditches the White Stripes, actually. This is fun stuff, like a swampy garage band white album version of Led Zep.

Lullaby Baxter's Garden Cities of To-Morrow came on like the antidote to Jack White's evil poison. Sweet and soaring, her voice is a wonderful companion in the morning. I had read her bio on MySpace, so I new there were going to be a lot of mellotrons and things. I had to smile when they quoted Phenomenal Cat with it at the start of one song. Only the coolest of the cool will get that connection. Her lyrical ideas are fun and clever and inventive, and this album is clearly a big step forward from the excellent Capable Egg.


aloha,

Jim
http://www.myspace.jimsmartsongs/

new CD

JIM SMART: Seven Fathoms His string tinged rock music lets your brain wander the fine line balance between the pain of old timey musicals and the foolish pleasures of acoustic punk rock, with power pop nods to artists like the Kinks, the Decemberists, Wilco, and Nick Drake.

New CD and MySpace page

Hey folks,

After a year of productive thrills and tribulations, my new CD is ready! Check it out:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/smart2

I am also developing a MySpace page:

http://myspace.com/jimsmartsongs

Looking to rock Sherwins Folly this Thursday,

Jim

Seven Fathoms

Here are the cover and the title for my new album. I started off wondering why I read so many fantasy books, and then wondering why dragons appeared in many cultures that had no contact with each other. Then I started to equate certain challenges (like the aforementioned printer) with dragons that pop up in modern life. Almost every song is about an aspect of fantasy. And the more I thought about that, the more types of fantasies I kept thinking up, like looking at different sides of a globe. So I started out with all these questions, which lead to a gaggle of songs with fail miserably to answer any of them.

Then I got to thinking about the word fathom, and what a cool sounding and meaning word it is, and I knew it had to be in the title somehow. Each song tries to fathom one fantasy or another. Then I got into a bit of hokey numerology, since a fathom is six feet (my height). I noticed that six times seven is 42, which is the age I'll be when this CD is ready to unleash.

Then I thought, well, if there's 14 songs, there could be seven pairs. So the songs are paired, sort of. Ridiculous, I know! "Fred" is a much better title, but it's been done!

Jim

Mammoth gig