award tour

The other day I pointed out Zunior.com, a toronto based digital music retailer. They have some reasonably popular stuff on their site like Bloc Party, the New Pornographers, and Final Fantasy. A large majority of the stuff is Canadian (not that that’s a bad thing). The site offers streaming samples of all the music on its site and only sells music as full albums (so no singles). What’s awesome is that the site sells DRM-free high-quality, 192kbps, MP3s for a mere $8.88CDN per album. And if you’re a huge music nerd you can even get the album in lossless FLAC format for $2 more.

So I took a peruse of the site and came across Jason Collett’s 2003 release Motor Motel Love Songs. I had recently been thinking that Collett really needs to hurry up a release a follow-up to his fantastic 2006 LP Idols of Exile (and if he can put out another song like Fire I’d be so grateful). So when I spotted Motor Motel, I gave the samples a quick listen, and said “why not?”. I created your standard web account and dropped my credit card number. Two seconds and $7.72USD later I was downloading a zip file containing 13 tracks and a PDF copy of the full CD artwork insert. The purchase lets you download the zip file for the next 14 days up to 1000 times. That means you’re responsible for backing up the music you download. None the less, I’m really impressed with the service and very happy with having more music by Jason Collett.

“Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies, and fortunately, when there aren’t any cookies we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or a subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys, and nose-plugs, and uneaten danish, and soft spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days are in fact here for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives.”

I just finished watching Stranger Than Fiction. What a wonderful fucking movie. It just nails a perfect mix of sweet, funny, and serious. It’s brilliantly acted and is technically gorgeous (and whoever did all the infographic overlays and closing credits deserves an Oscar or something). The film also features a couple songs from Spoon including a new song which is a real slaphappy pop rock tune called The Book I Write [MP3]. An interview over at IGN explains the odd connection that got Britt Daniel, Spoon’s frontman, involved with the project.