Vermeer?
Music recommendation: Jose Gonzalez. Despite the name, he’s of Swedish extraction. His style resembles “quiet is the new loud” artists like Sufjan Stevens and Kings of Convenience. Most of the songs on his album Veneer are pensive, intimate songs played in a minor key. The musical structures are simple but on repeated listens reveal nuggets like odd time signatures and carefully placed strums. Highlights include “Heartbeats” (an excellent cover of a The Knife song) and “Stay in the Shade.”
I first heard Gonzalez about a year ago on Radio Paradise, which I used to listen to far more frequently before they cracked down on audio streaming here at work (bandwidth issues), then a few months ago I heard him do an excellent cover of Massive Attack’s “Teardrop.” The funny thing about all these artists I recommend is that I have absolutely no idea how popular they are. I haven’t listened to mainstream radio in several years–I have no idea what the stations are here in Winston-Salem–and we don’t watch television, so I could be unknowingly recommending the it-band or artist. It would be like if I lived in the mid-’60s and told everyone, “Hey, there’s this great new band you should listen to! They’re called the Beatles and they’re really good.” But… As I say that I’m reminded that talent transcends popularity to a certain degree, and just because they’re popular doesn’t mean they’re not good; quite the reverse in the case of many, but not all, and recently not even most, bands and artists.