So I've been on somewhat of a new music surge (at least compared to the normal for me) as of late. I think it started when I downloaded several songs on Neil Peart's house music set list (the one they play before the shows) from Itunes. Among the groups I was newly exposed or gained a new appreciation for were: Porcupine Tree, The Mars Volta, The Tragically Hip, Jeff Buckley, King Crimson and early Genesis. Porcupine Tree especially hit a nerve with me and I subsequently have bought four albums by them. I especially like "Fear of a Blank Planet", "In Absentia" and "Deadwing". For reasons I'm not quite sure of, I also finally bought "Hunky Dory" by Bowie. I always liked the tunes from that album (Mick Ronson was a key player/producer) and I'm not sure why it took this long. I had been listening to "Life on Mars" repeatedly after hearing it a recent movie ("Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou?"), and decided to get the album.
I also recently bought albums by Amy Winehouse (Back to Black), Sheryl Crow (Detours) and Robert Plant/Alison Krauss (Raising Sand) but have only really got into the RP/AK effort. In my explorations I also got to checking out Itunes mixes by other users. These are basically just mix tape made by other Itunes users, but the nice thing is you can search them by keyword. So, in my typical music preference vein I searched for sad or melancholy mixes and actually found a really good one that has several tunes that I have grown quite fond of. Some of the artists on the mix were: "The Weepies", "State Radio", "City and Colour", "Jason Reeves", "Gregory and the Hawk", and "Cocunut Records". It's a really great mix tape and I'll be checking out the other stuff from these guys in the near future.