Audio By Carbonatix
The well-known radio DJ Nic Harcourt’s daily Morning Becomes Eclectic show on Santa Monica, California’s KCRW is a good place to observe the effects of the Internet on popular alternative music. Harcourt gives lots of airtime to the types of bands that thrive on the word of mouth chat rooms and e-mail have bolstered immeasurably, and the program’s popular Webcast allows non-Californians to listen in on the intimate live sessions Harcourt often solicits from the artists he and producer Ariana Morgenstern dig. (Check out the parallels between the show’s playlists and Amazon.com’s best-seller tally for firmer evidence of the trend.) So it makes sense that Sounds Eclectic Too, the second collection of live recordings Harcourt’s assembled for Palm Pictures, features a dozen selections that, in another time, might’ve made for fine Napster quarry: Air turns in a version of “Radio #1” that captures the bizarre live-band charge they displayed on tour behind 10,000 Hz Legend, Dido brings a lightness of touch to “Here With Me” that belies her regular schmaltz, Norah Jones slinks through “Feeling the Same Way” even more gracefully than usual. Of course, the charm of Napster was that you didn’t have to download everything, a crucial feature that would’ve spared the dreadfully self-indulgent reading of “Yellow” Coldplay’s Chris Martin offers on solo piano and a “Jesus on a Greyhound” by Shelby Lynne that’s actually not any worse than the one on Love, Shelby. Point and click with care.
