Guitar and Voice: Good

The thing I like most about indie music, particularly of the guitar and voice variety, is that it is egalitarian. Sure, I know that it's overwhelmingly middle-class, white, twenty-something males singing about middle-class, white, twenty-something male things. But, for the sake of argument, lets just choose to ignore this one fact that pretty much defeats the premise of my whole argument. Okay? Alright, now here's what I mean by egalitarian: the guitar is a cheap, relatively easy to play, and beautiful sounding instrument. Guitars are everywhere and even a shitty one doesn't sound all that bad. And singing. Singing is free, there's plenty of interesting things people can do with their voice, and there's infinite room for lyrical creativity even within the confines of three or four of the same chords played over and over (and over) again. Basically, if someone wants to learn to write songs, they can do so pretty easily. And if someone wants to record a song, even the shittiest ghetto blaster can usually record voice and guitar pretty decently.

For all the reasons I've mentioned above, a very large number of people have chosen at one point or another to record songs and a good portion of these people have chosen to release it in some form or another. And, while most of it has been horrible, horrible garbage, the beauty of the whole process is that, occasionally, hidden gems of everyday creativity rise to the surface and prove once again that the whole guitar and voice thing is capable of something good. Below are two artists that basically self-recorded some guitar and voice songs that managed to find their way out of the wasteland that is the Internets and onto this blog because they are lovely.

Ivana C - Threads
Ivana C - Pet Sounds

You Ain't No Picasso was kind enough to introduce me to Ivana C's music, for which I am very grateful. Ivana C. plays guitar and voice songs precisely the way that they should be played: with plenty of silence, like they're being coaxed out of black space inside the instrument. Sure, they are songs about relationships and about not being all that happy - the standard fare of this kind of music. But sometimes a song is good enough that you believe that those things are actually pretty important and like you've felt the exact same way yourself.

You can find more of Ivana C's songs and some info and whatnot through her Myspace page here.

*****

The Golden Hours - White Sheets
The Golden Hours - Shallow Breath

From the infinite depths of the Popsheep comments comes one of my favourite discoveries of the past few months. The Golden Hours are people who know for a fact that tape hiss is in itself an instrument, and a beautiful one at that. They know that songs recorded in small rooms into tiny microphones allow the listener to feel like the song is coming through their thin apartment walls, as though the xylophone and guitar and singing is happening only a few feet away from where they're sitting. These songs are in the tradition of Shrimper records, early Mountain Goats, and that person in high school that had that band and put out all those awesome tapes that you still covet to this day.

The Golden Hours have a very awesome website here and a less awesome Myspace page here. At the website, you can download five songs and you can find four more at the Myspace page. You can also read an NPR bio of the band here.