I’ve been listening to Iron and Wine, Fleet Foxes, Devandra Barnhart, etc. just like everyone else (who doesn’t listen to the radio) for the last six months (or more).  Only today did I notice when watching this video how much these bands are a complete throwback to the 70s hippy singer songwriters. Obviously they have long hair and plaid and all that. And when you put it all together they’re all “aping” Nick Drake. But the beautiful thing is that unlike people like Jack Johnson they’re taking the best parts of Nick Drake and adding something to it (usually a folksy “mountain people” feel). Being that the music is a throwback to a time without synthesizers, autotune, etc. it is a welcome change from overproduced completely digitized music. JayZ thinks he brought on the “death of autotune,” but it was really these guys who are taking acoustic songwriting rock and roll back to basics, perhaps infusing even more emotion into the music than Paul Simon or Cat Stevens Mr. I Hate My Name.  The sad or poignant songs that Paul Simon wrote were great, but they were about 1/10 of every album.  Here we have a new crop of musicians (all about my age… which makes me think I’m wasting my life again) who “bring the pain” with every song.   Of course it isn’t real pain.  This isn’t acoustic emo.  To some pain simply means crying for how beautiful the world is to behold.

or…. you could turn on KROQ and listen to this shitpile: