Cat's Meow

I'm starting to listen to a compilation called Mews Too: An Asthmatic Kitty Compilation, which could be said to be "artists that sound like Sufjan Stevens", which is not that surprising since Asthmatic Kitty is the the record label started by Sufjan Stevens and his stepdad. I suppose you could call this alt-folk. Sufjan's own music can be said to be a kind of religious folk, occasionally drawing from his Christian faith, but the music isn't the kind of unbearable stuff that plays on Sunday mornings in the Bible Belt.

The album's filled with simple guitars and passionate (or sometimes not) singing, but it's well worth listening to if you like Sufjan. So far, my favorite song on the album is Jim Guthrie's Evil Thoughts, whose voice has been likened to Sufjan. Guthrie is Canadian, though (but then, Sufjan's practically Canadian, as he grew up in northern Michigan). His album, Now, More Than Ever, has been called a kind of folk Radiohead.

I didn't much follow Radiohead when they first became big. The most notable song I knew from them was Creep, which I thought was a interesting topic for a song that resonates, I suspect, with many an introspective geek. Even as this tune played on the now defunct WHFS 99.1 (which mysteriously went off the air unannounced to, if memory serves, a Spanish medium station) over and over and over (99.1 must have had only 3 songs they played in constant rotation--I used to listen to 99.1 as it blared at the school gym, and even in my short workout, I felt the songs were being played again), I couldn't have told you that, yes, that's Radiohead.

At the time, I wouldn't have been able to tell about Radiohead's influence on music through the 90s. A British band formed in 1986, consisting of Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Ed O'Brien, Colin Greenwood, and Phil Selway (I've only ever heard of Thom Yorke, the singer), their best regarded album, so I'm told is, OK Computer with Kid A a close second.

Comparisons made to influential groups or singers are often unfair, especially since it attempts to confer greatness by analogy. If the group is truly worthy of comparison, then it should stand up on its own, unique in its own right, which often means it doesn't sound a great deal like the band it's being compared against.

Of course, I have to again, give credit to NPR's All Songs Considered for cluing me in to this album.