I got a $100 certificate for iTunes. I already spent my first $50 on:
Lisa Gerrard - The Silver Tree
Black Tape for a Blue Girl - Mesmerized by the Sirens
BTFABG - Ashes in the Brittle Air
Slowdive - Souvlaki
Mira - There I Go Daydreamer
The 2 Black Tape albums are there for completionism, mostly.
I do have a full shopping cart with:
Chapterhouse
Lovesliescrushing
Lush
Slowdive
Soul Whirling Somewhere
Ulrich Snauss
Les Nouvelles Polyphonies Corses
Arvo Part
Delerium
Bel Canto
for way more than my budget. Still, those are all maybes and I am really wanting to hear something new and interesting. So shoot this way, shoegazers and goths. What should I listen and buy?
Look up Happy Rhodes, especially Many Worlds Are Born Tonight. If you want to hear full songs before buying the album, go to http://www.wretchawry.com/happy/samples and you’ll find several (authorized by her) full length songs from that album. The other two albums on iTunes are older. RhodeSongs is a compilation which gives a pretty good overview from her first 5 albums (she has 11 total). Rhodes II is her 2nd album, released in 1986 (and yeah, she did paint that cover…I own the original…it scares the cat). She has a new album called Find Me, her first in 9 years, but it won’t be on iTunes for several weeks, since she just sent the original 5 CDs to CD Baby, which will put the songs from it on iTunes, last week.
I mention her because lots of her fans are also fans of Lisa Gerrard (and Dead Can Dance), BTfaBG (and other Projekt music), Delerium and Bel Canto, and others that you named.
Interesting. Closer to Bel Canto than anything else on my list, I would say. Definitely worth the listen. Thanks for the tip. I am probably more in a Cocteau Twinish kinda mood right now, though (although I am blown away by The Silver Tree).
Velvet Belly has only one song on iTunes and it sounded promising.
Life Without Buildings. Are you kidding me? That’s somewhere between Rita Mitsouko, Punk Siouxsie and the Banshees and Tony Basil. All of which I like, btw, just not what I am looking for right now.
Mary Margaret O’Hara, Rosie Thomas, Jane Siberry. They are all around the “girl with a guitar” genre. Some of those are marked for future consideration.
All in all, interesting finds that I wasn’t reaching on my aimless clicking starting from the bands I already knew.
You might find some music you like in my podcast. On each show page I have short clips of each song in that particular podcast so you can sample before downloading the entire hour-long show.