New Times,
New Thinking.

6 July 2011updated 17 Jan 2012 8:51am

Why do I listen to so many sad songs?

Tom Ravenscroft's music blog.

By Tom Ravenscroft

Lots of sadness, this week, and it would appear most weeks — it turns out that I like sad. I clicked the button on my computer that tells me, in order, which records I listen to the most and the results were a little forlorn.

Despite my computer being armed with a function capable of minor character assassinations, I dont feel particularly sad; I think that, musically, I am maybe just better at unearthing a bit of sorrow.

The New Zealand songwriter Tiny Ruins has a new album called Some Were Meant for the Sea, which has almost buried me this week. Hollie Fullbrook, as her friends call her, manages to avoid the applied angst that so often ruins the work of British female singer-songwriters and created a debut album of vast beauty. It isn’t out in the UK yet but, hopefully, it should be soon. If not, I’ll spend the rest of the year making you all copies; everybody should have one.

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Terrors is a man who seemingly has spent his life drifting across the US, dropping grubby, washed-out and distantly recorded cassette tapes of his occasionally almost tragic-sounding music as he went. Thankfully, a record label called Weird Forest was close behind to pick them up and put them somewhere safe. They have now compiled them into an album called Lagan Qord, which I love.

Listen to songs from Lagan Qord here.

Tom Ravenscroft’s radio show is on BBC 6 Music every Friday at 9pm

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