Following Rabbits Blog — hear it

I was first introduced to Civil Twilight's music this past November at the Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom where they opened for label mates Evanescence. I had never heard of them prior, and was absolutely blown away. Live music takes such a hold of me... Ray thinks it's weird that I can always remember which songs bands play at shows, how they were moving on stage during that song, the lighting... it just gets embedded in me somehow. The dark ballroom fell silent while they starting playing the long, haunting intro of Perfect Stranger... and the lights would blaze on during the parts where the song goes from quiet to bursts of volume ("MY PERFECT stranger... don't sail away..."). It was such an amazing show! Other favorite songs of mine are Letters from the Sky and Human. Their entire album (which I downloaded from iTunes the next day) is awesome! I rocked it on my iPod for a good three weeks straight before finally letting other artists back onto my playlists, and created a Pandora station based on them.

I've been waiting (ever so impatiently) for them to do another show in NYC, and was super excited to see that they're playing this Monday at the Bowery Ballroom with Company of Thieves. I got my tickets ages ago, but you can still get them at Ticketmaster ($13 is a steal for what will be an amazing show!).

P.S. Rich takes some pretty great iPhone photos from the road and posts them here: lettersfromthesky.com.

As you might suspect, I'm officially in countdown-mode... Alice in Wonderland comes out Friday! Almost Alice was released today- a compilation of music inspired by the film. There is a great mix of artists that you wouldn't expect to find together on one album- not surprising since it's Alice in Wonderland. Most of the artists are on my iPod already: Kerli, Avril, Grace Potter, Wolfmother, 3OH!3, Plain White T's, Metro Station, Shinedown, The All-American Rejects... The fact that Franz Ferdinand sings a track titled The Lobster Quadrille is really enough reason to download it. Carroll's stories are a mind-altering mixed bag of twisted nursery rhymes, bright colors, loud noises, confusion, and madness... and this soundtrack managed to capture that pretty well. Everything from old trippy classics redone (Grace Potter and the Nocturnals - White Rabbit) to Carroll's poetry recited line by line (Very Good Advice - Robert Smith), to more mainstream Alice-inspired songs (Welcome to Mystery - Plain White T's) this album has a bit of something for everyone.