Discovering David Berkeley

As I have said before, no matter how many albums you get, there is still an essentially infinite ocean of music out there; sometimes, this can fill you with the kind of existential dispair that you can get sometimes when you think about how really really really big the universe actually is, and how bloody small we and our small ball of rapidly rotating wet dirt are. There are undoubetdly all these bands out there you would love, and how you find them can often be part of life's great game of chance.

As a means of helping to introduce you to music you may like but have not randomly tripped over already, one of the great things about compilation albums like 'Ciao my shining star' (the collection of Mark Mulcahy cover versions released last week and which I reviewed in a previous post here) is getting introduced to new artists you have not heard of before.

In the post above, I commented about the cover of 'Love's the only thing that shuts me up' by David Berkeley, and got a very nice e-mail later from his management (one of the unexpected and really cool outcomes of my joining the world of blogging) inviting me to check out more of his stuff, which I did, and I really like tracks like 'Miss maybe' shown below: I like his voice and his style and my initial impressions from the Mark Mulcahy cover were only reinforced by finding tracks like this on Youtube.

I was then kindly sent a link to download his almub 'Strange light' and I have been listening to it all week and I really really like it. It may well in fact become one of my favourites of the year so far. His voice is the best thing; despite annoying me in terms of who it keeps reminding me of (I will get it eventually) it is still very unusual and uuniques and warm and expressive, and the songs he has are somehow familiar yet different. This is not the most different or unusual album I have ever heard, but yet it has a certain lovely feel and warmth. I guess my closest comparison is Bright Eyes (particularly of 'Wide awake it's morning' or 'When the brakeman turns my way' from 'Cassadaga').

One of my favourite tracks from the album is 'Oh lord, please come down', which is the kind of name that instinctively puts me off, but the song is just gorgeous and uplifting. There is a live in-store performance of it below:

My other favourite is 'Wilwaukee road', which has a driving pulse and roll to it which makes it stand out from many of the other tracks, but which I can't find a clip of to show here. One I did find is the first track, 'Hurricane', which can be seen here:

Another track from the same album and show as above is 'High heels and all':

I started this blog in part to try and maybe spout on about my favourite artists to others who may be interested in following up. I love the idea that that can sometimes work in reverse, with artists like David being brought to my attenion instead. I hope this happens more!

His myspace page is here, a Wikipedia article here and all Allmusic Guide section here.