before february is all gone -- don't forget David

http://www.davidbyrne.com/radio/index.php

Icicles

It's winter here in the Northern Hemisphere and our thoughts turn to Scandinavia. I'm kinda crazy getting ready for the Carnegie shows, but here's a quickly pulled together selection of Northern European artists — almost all of them female vocalists! (Hmmm, what's that about? Even the voice of the Sigur Rós singer often gets mistaken for being a girl's.) Don't know if they see any similarity amongst themselves; probably not, but others no doubt will. Here goes: The mixing of grand cosmic sentiments and the extremely personal — I'd hazard that the land, the extraordinary light and the cultural history all play a part in the sensibilities of these composers and singers. Think of the Northern "classical" composers: Sibelius, Grieg and more contemporaries like Per Nørgård and Part, and many others — well, I sense a cosmic mythic connection and tendency among many of them.

The North is also known for other music. Perfect pop, Abba and their descendents. And for Metal subgenres, which I would say are in sensibility not that different from some of this dreamy stuff here, though the metal genres — Nature Metal and others — evoke the same sky looked at as an ominous weight, a frightening portent. But the transcendent feeling is there in both cases.

— DB