Jonathan Coultor - Artificial Heart - Printable Version +- Music Discussion (https://www.music-discussion.com) +-- Forum: Music Discussion (https://www.music-discussion.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=4) +--- Forum: Alternative (https://www.music-discussion.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=11) +--- Thread: Jonathan Coultor - Artificial Heart (/showthread.php?tid=6198)

Jonathan Coultor - Artificial Heart - Music Head - 08-11-2011 online listen narrow miss and a tough call quirky nerd rock as in TMBG Ben Folds voice and lyrics almost as smart 18 tracks was too much, although the songs got better at the end 1.6 from the album - The Stache http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xamM4FwqNAU released Nov 8th, 2011 from all music Bio When They Might Be Giants were first starting out they experimented with an answering machine service named Dial-A -Song, by means of which listeners could call them in Brooklyn and listen to a random taped song. The service was popular enough that it broke down frequently, but not before it helped them get signed to an indie label, Bar/None. Jonathan Coulton, standing on the shoulders of the Giants both musically and spiritually, found fame by the 21st century equivalent of Dial-A-Song through "Thing A Week," a podcast that delivered a new song he had recorded every week for a year. His talent as a pop architect, appealingly offbeat subjects, and propensity for combining them in bittersweet but humorous songs -- imagine Pluto's moon singing melancholy consolation to help it get over not being officially classified a planet any more -- earned him a dedicated and cultish following. At Yale Coulton met and befriended writer and comedian John Hodgman, who would become a collaborator of his on several projects. At graduation, the two moved to Manhattan where Coulton found work as a software engineer, self- releasing CDs of quirky folk-rock like Smoking Monkey (2003) and the EP Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow (2004) on the side. At the same time, Hodgman was embarking on a series of lectures called the Little Gray Books, for which he enlisted Coulton as musical director, performing songs that related to the subject of each talk. The September 2005 issue of Popular Science magazine was accompanied by Coulton's downloadable EP covering scientific subjects called Our Bodies, Ourselves, Our Cybernetic Arms. He was listed in the magazine's masthead as "Contributing Troubadour." That month he simultaneously quit his day job at the software company and announced his intent to make a living solely from the profits of his musical endeavors, despite not being signed to a label. He achieved this with the debut of his "Thing A Week" project, giving himself the motivational deadline of one week to record each song; he spent the next year recording 52 tracks and posting them one by one on jonathancoulton.com He let people listen to the songs for free as well as selling MP3s and CDs, discovering that the fans would still pay for them as he slowly built a devoted audience. He was helped when several of his songs -- especially a slow, acoustic cover of "Baby Got Back" and songs with especially geeky subjects like the mad scientist love song "Skullcrusher Mountain" and the office zombie memo "Re: Your Brains" -- gained Internet popularity. These songs were released under the terms of a Creative Commons License that not only allowed listeners to legally copy them and pass them on to their friends, but to use them in projects of their own. Videos of his songs made with footage from computer games and cartoons became popular on YouTube, spreading his popularity by word-of-blog until he became something of a geek-rock phenomenon by the time he concluded the series with triumphant covers of Queen's We Are the Champions and We Will Rock You. After polling the fans the "Thing A Week" had brought him, he was able to play live concerts targeting the areas where enough of them lived to sell out a venue, performing short and focused out of the way tours that were profitable enough, along with his digital sales and merchandise, to earn him more money than his old day job had. In 2007 his song "Code Monkey," inspired by his time working as a software engineer, was chosen to be the theme song of G4's cartoon Code Monkeys and "Still Alive," written for the computer game Portal, won the Game Audio Network's Song of the Year award. He also performed on The Daily Show and contributed guest appearances to nerdcore albums like MC Frontalot's Final Boss and MC Lars' This Gigantic Robot Kills. In 2010, Coulton began opening shows for They Might Be Giants, and later that year announced that he would be working with John Flansburgh on a new album. The result was his eighth album, Artificial Heart, which was Coulton's first album to be produced by someone other than the singer/songwriter himself. Album Review On his first album after returning from his self-imposed hiatus on recording new material, singer/songwriter Jonathan Coulton draws upon the lessons of the Johns and Jonathans who have come before him on Artificial Heart. The first John is They Might Be Giants’ John Flansburgh, who has the distinction of being the first person, other than Coulton himself, to handle the production on one of his albums. Right out of the blocks, the album opener, “Sticking It to Myself,” makes the hand of Flansburgh immediately apparent with a song that has that perfect mix of eclecticism and solid pop songcraft upon which the TMBG man has made his name. Despite this, the album doesn’t come off like Coulton’s audition reel for a spot in They Might Be Giants, as the songwriter deftly injects a lot of his own personality into the songs through his lyrics. This brings us to the influential Jonathan, Jonathan Richman, who Coulton -- with his ability to see the wonder, humor, and sadness in the mundane world -- feels like a spiritual successor to. This quality allows Coulton to create songs that are more like little poignant slices of life than pop constructions, breathing that spark of life into songs like “Glasses.” As an album, Artificial Heart is like a panopticon that gives the listener the opportunity to observe an array of different lives, and offers them the chance to feel a little something different while peering into each window. And even though it’s a more emotionally heavy album than a lot of his previous work, Coulton still knows how to leave people with a smile, ending the album with two new versions of his famous Portal and Portal 2 theme songs “Still Alive” (featuring a guest spot from Tegan and Sara’s Sara Quin) and “Want You Gone” (which features JoCo himself on vocals) as well as “The Stache,” a touching tribute to mustaches and the men who proudly wear them. With this kind of effortless versatility and easy charm, it’s no wonder Jonathan Coulton has managed to find a special place in people's hearts, artificial or otherwise. Track Listing 1. Sticking It to Myself 2. Artificial Heart 3. Nemeses Feat. John Roderick 4. The World Belongs to You 5. Today With Your Wife 6. Sucker Punch 7. Glasses 8. Je Suis Rick Springfield 9. Alone at Home 10. Fraud 11. Good Morning Tucson 12. Now I Am an Arsonist Feat. Suzanne Vega 13. Down Today 14. Dissolve 15. Nobody Love You Like Me 16. Still Alive Feat. Sara Quin 17. Want You Gone (Elegant Too Remix) 18. The Stache