Musings From the Back 9: Music Edition X

There is no bigger scam than the “Deluxe Edition,” a phenomenon where record labels add a couple songs onto a new album a couple months after it was originally released to squeeze a couple more dollars out of their investment knowing the fanatics will grab both. Coldplay has been nice enough to release the bonus tracks added to Viva la Vida as an ad on to the disk or you can buy it separately as Prospekt’s March.

The addendum features four new songs recorded during the Viva la Vida sessions (not including the forty-five second piano laced Postcards from Far Away), adds lyrics to Life in Technicolor II, adds a Jay-Z rap to Lost+ (that detracts the song), and a remix for Lovers in Japan (that sounds none different from the original). As for those four new songs it is not surprisingly that they were left off the album proper because none would have added anything to it and would have been inexchangeable with some of the filler that did make the album.

The closest thing to a stand out is the album closer Now My Feet Won’t Touch the Ground. A stripped down song with just an acoustic guitar with some weird sound creeping in near the end that balloons into a brass band that is reminiscent of the hidden track off of X&Y, but doesn’t quite have the gravitas of ‘Til Kingdom Come.


iTunes and Amazon MP3 has made compilation albums obsolete. Why buy a whole album when you can just buy the one or two songs that you know you like? But you can look at Sounds Eclectic: The Next One as more of a sampler as unless you are an indie music fan you may not now any of the artist let alone any of the songs as Spoon and The Shins lead the album in name recognition.

And the album does live up to its name with an array of different style from the sweeping epic by The Swell Session (you may remember them from winning the most recent Oscar for Best Original Song), the synthetics of Architecture in Helsinki, the quirky pop of The Ting-Tings, the hipster rock of Sea Wolf, and the haunting vibe of Bat for Lashes. All the songs were performed live at radio station KCRW and there are untouched from their original performance. So if you are looking for some new music, this may be the place to look.