A Higher Ugliness

Everybody is getting anxious about the lists at the end of the year. Usually what happened in january has been long forgotten by now and recent releases benifit from that. This year will be no different, so I expect Joanna Newsom to end high this year. Really high, since really everybody on the internet and elsewhere is cheering it.

So am I. It is brilliant spending an extra hour in bed on a sunday morning with Ys in my new clock radio watching the storm shake the tree in the neighbour's garden. I've even spent 3 minutes filming it, in an "American Beauty" kind of way, so you can enjoy it if you want.

So is radio Klara. It is hard to find out about interesting music on radio stations here in Belgium these days, so when it comes down to finding out about new interesting music you're basically left to the internet. I first heard about the Ys-album through the mp3-blog called "The Rich Girls are Weeping", the only one I've found so far that is at least worth reading and is not just a series of posts of sometimes legal sometimes illegal mp3-files. It was long before the album was out that these girls had heard a song of it through a leak on the internet and were really enthousiastic about it.

But, here in Belgium, radio Klara played the album in it's entirety! At least if the website of the radio program is correct because I did not actually hear the transmission and it is unlike other episodes (understandably) not available online. Radio Klara is the only one still daring to do things like that, and I love it if only for that.

digg.be is a Flemish internet magazine that usually has quality reviews. Their review of Ys is worth reading if you know dutch.
pitchforkmedia.com, you should know them by now. Giving 9.4 is extremely rare.
humo.be is a weekly magazine with a very good music section.
I stumbled upon this review which really wins the best review award so far for me. Joanna Newsom also reminds me of Kate Bush, in a strange way.