The Beauty of Last.fm, Leading Us to the Beauty of An Horse

As you can tell, I'm quite the music fan. One of the greatest discoveries I've made as a music lover is Last.fm. Last.fm is a UK-based Internet radio and music community website. It has over 30 million active users based in more than 200 countries. Any musician can make his/her own last.fm to get their music out to the masses, giving music fans millions of artists to sample. It also creates a medium in which artists and fans can communicate directly. I'll never forget when Jonas Jonsson of Bedroom Eyes [the most quality and most treasured gift Last.fm has given/will ever give me] wrote on my page saying thanks for eagerly supporting his music.

Free downloads are also available on Last.fm. Although it can be a pain to sort through the innumberable options, it's well worth it when you discover gems such as Dylan Mondegreen's "Girl In Grass".

Last.fm also connects to your iTunes lubrary and "scrobbles", or records all of the songs that you listen to, which are shown on your profile. It tabulates and orders the artists and songs you listen to, which aids the site itself in suggest new music/events to you. My favorite feature, and the most useful to me, is the pop-up info for each band. As you listen to songs on your computer, you can read biographies and discographies of the band you're listening to, as well as check out a list of similar artists. This similar artists list has opened more doors for me than you can imagine.

...Which leads me to An Horse. One day, I was listening to "Speak Slow" by Tegan and Sara for the 3rd time in a row [that song is my #1 most listened to song on my last.fm...surpise!] and I looked at the info page. There I found under similar artists...another gem...An Horse!

An Horse and Tegan and Sara sound unbelieveably similar; and if they both weren't so darn good I'd criticize them for it. But alas, they are great so I refuse to comment negatively. Ironically, Tegan and Sara met Kate Cooper of An Horse in Australia after playing a show in the record store where she worked. Tegan and Sara and An Horse played together at several Australian shows, and thereafter An Horse was invited along for Tegan and Sara's US tour. An Horse began as a side project of Kate Cooper and Damon Cox, both who were in bands at the time of An Horse's conception [Iron On and Intercooler, respectively], however, it has sprouted into something much more than that. Following their tour in the United States, An Horse has gained quite a bit of popularity in the indie folk/pop scene.

"Camp Out" is definetly one of my favorite songs of theirs. It's catchy and fun, but has actual meaning and relevance towards their audience. It's being confused about love, whether you want to settle down or not, and finding out in the process exactly what love isn't. It's about being twentysomething and not feeling guilty about just wanting to fool around. It's not regretting all of them, because we'd "do it all again, just to get where I am". It's about being experienced in love and loss: "Cause it's okay to fall down, It's okay to crumble, I've seen this before." But the song also acknowledges the speakers need/underlying desire to move on from this and become adults; realizing that last year's fun ("...at this point of the last year I am happy to just be alive"), although it brought initial happiness, is empty, and we all need to find true happiness. This is one of the big reasons I love An Horse. Their lyrics have meaning. Their songs aren't just catchy melodies to sing along with; although they could be if that's what you're looking for. It's when you really listen to it that you realize all of the information tucked into the short, sweet lyrics. Where artists such as Bright Eyes slow/strip things down to make you pay attention to Oberst's message, An Horse makes you want to delve deeper and find out what's going on in the mind of Kate Cooper.

And you probably thought from reading the title that this post would make no sense. But you see, I'm quite good at tangents. They're my specialty.