Song of the (previous) Day: Airline Living from Elephant Micah

I was thinking about all the “death of blogging” discussions (overblown), alongside the actual bloggers handing in their WordPress passwords (RIP Bryan at Herohill and Frank at Chromewaves specifically) and it made me want to do a blog post.  I mean, it has really turned into a zoo out there in the last couple of years with fewer actual blogs and more of these music magazine sites (for lack of a better description).  Let us not get started on this whole Tumblr situation either.  It is like I try to describe the style of some sites now and I have a hard time doing it because they are half news, half hottest new indie band, half links to other sites and half are a collection of 27 different ‘editors’.  I also know that there was four halves in the last sentence but I couldn’t change the sentence from all the way up here on this soapbox.

So, I thought I would remain true to my somewhat niche marketplace and what is left of my readers and post an older track that didn’t necessarily garner much attention originally.  I guess I am also not that up to date on a lot of music, so I find myself masquerading my lack of listening under the guise of indie credibility.  But once again, I digress…

This brings me to Elephant Micah (or Joe O’Connell) because for some reason I consider this guy under appreciated. He may not actually be under appreciated as maybe I just don’t run in circles that promote the awesome library of music from the genius that is EM.  I mean, I do have some internet buds that love the guy (and some that really really love him) so I may be way off here…but then that would throw off the vague purpose of this post, so I can’t have that.  Elephant Micah is sooo underrated and that is that, I guess.

Where does this rambling leave us?  Well, here we are with a song that appeared as the closer to his January 2012 release Louder Than Thou which was an album that was both accessible but in some ways had songs that might have been on another album all together.  There are some more straight forward indie-folk tracks like the the songs If I Were A Surfer, Tin Foil Continent and even the practically upbeat My Cousin’s King, but there were also more atmospheric performance pieces like Won These Wings and Rooster on the Loose.  Overall I give it a solid 8-8.5/10 and a must have because come on, that is a solid rating these days and after 2 years of listening this means it is a damn keeper!  The song I am playing here is Airline Living and it was one that I immediately loved and was drawn to. I actually have a hard time holding down the beast that is my musical taste in order to be able to describe why I like it so much.  The bass line, definitely…the 70s influenced keyboards, yup…O’Connell’s perfect vocals, it has gotta be…so I end up with an easy out and state that it must be the combination of all three.  Listen for yourself below and tell me this isn’t the best thing you are going to hear all day.

You can listen and purchase the prolific musician via Bandcamp here: Product of Palmyra (click on one of the albums and then you can see much more albums along the right hand discography).

Visit him already.

~Sandy