MAE – Singularity
Tuesdays are such good days. At least when good new music comes out. Today, MAE released their 3rd studio album, "Singularity", which I am now listening to on my iPod as I get prepped for writing tonight’s talk for the INN.
I saw MAE perform live at the Viking Union at Western last spring as a part of a co-benefit concert the INN helped sponsor. I’d been a fan since their "Destination: Beautiful" debut release, way back at the beginning of school. They played a couple of the new songs that I’m hearing now and I was definitely excited for this new album.
So far (I’m only a few tracks in), the album is more lively than their previous release "The Everglow" with some poppy anthems which could garner them some radio play. Their last album was a concept album and was very well tied together as it told a story through the different movements (tracks). I haven’t heard a ton about this album, but so far it seems as if they’ve honed some of their bigger sounds into a little more "friendly" presentation for their Capitol/EMI records listeners. But, no complaints, it’s good music.
This album is also my first crack at the new iTunes Plus. My good buddy Sean gave me an iTunes gift card for being in his wedding a couple weeks ago, so I had a little cash to play with. A couple weeks ago I bought the new Common album, "Finding Forever" and then I was holding out for this album to spend some of the rest. The new iTunes Plus offers rights-management free files, with unlimited burning, as well as something like a twice the sound encoding (from 128 kbps to 256), which means "better" sounding music. So, since the albums were both $9.99, plus or not, I opted for the plus version. I’m still waiting to hear the magnificent difference….we’ll see…
Anyways, since the start of this post, I’ve gotten further into the album and I’m still very happy. That’s kind of what MAE does, it makes me happy. This is "driving through Whatcom County in the middle of fall" or "packing my bag for the first week back to work in September" kind of music.
Listen to a couple tracks on Pure Volume.
