Free legal albums!

Download Speak Slowly now! (Couldn’t get album art for this one, I’m afraid.)

This is one of my most surprising little finds for a while. Stars Of Heaven were from Dublin and played sort of…folk/pop/new wave music. I can’t assign them to one genre, but it’s a familiar sound and one that works very well.

I used the past tense here because the band is no-more. They were about in the 80s and were very short-lived. It seems they didn’t enjoy the complexities of the recording industry. It’s a shame, but they have two albums available for free download on the record label’s website. If you like this, I suggest you check it out.

The sound is kind of REM-ish. I prefer this to REM, however! I guess you could describe it an REM done by Irishmen. The music is relaxing but very far from boring. It’s all very professional and smooth sounding. Everything on this record works so well, and I honestly am going to be listening to it for years to come.

Far From Chicago is an EP from Cavanaugh, a Swedish band that would probably squeeze itself into one of the Rock/pop genres. It is difficult to say where exactly though, as this EP has a nice mix of sounds. Rock/pop will have to do; music with enough “pop” to appeal to those who aren’t generally fans of the harder music, but also enough on the “rock” side of things to distinguish themselves from other bands in the genre.

Anywho, now that we’ve established that I suck at putting things into genres, lets take a quick rundown of the six tracks:
Come Look For Me – A nice solid start to the EP.
Long Gone – A pleasant piano pop-rock song. Kind of sounds like something The Fray might do (except unlike The Fray, Cavanaugh have songs that don’t all sound the same!)
Get It Right – Switching from softer piano rock right back into stronger stuff. Again very pleasant.
Little Things- Much like Come Look For Me and Get It Right, more on the rock side, with dashes of ear-friendly characteristics. (God, that made absolutely no sense)
Far From Chicago – The title track from this EP is a simple acoustic-y one, with a catchy and powerful chorus.
Fade Away – Personal favourite song of the EP

All in all, Far From Chicago provides with a very enjoyable 20-or-so minutes of music. Oh, and did I mention that it is available for FREE AND LEGAL downloading? No? Well it’s in the web address. GOD, DO I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING? >:(
But anyway, feel free to download the EP here.
Also, don’t forget to check out their website to learn more about them or find out how to stalk them on social networking sites and such.

This record is barely even an EP, but I don’t get the feeling Mr Khalid has a whole lot more to offer, and it’d be a shame to just bypass him because of it, so I’m posting anyway, even if 4 songs (with 2 remixes) doesn’t exactly make this valid for the “albums” part of the blog title.

Mr Khalid is a bit of an enigma…more of an enigma than any other artist I’ve had trouble finding info about. I don’t even know where he is from! I’m not sure which language the music is even in. I could risk a guess and say Arabic, but that is nothing more than a guess, and an assumption based on some of the comments on one of his songs on Youtube.

Alas, let’s not get caught up in background info. Mr Khalid does peaceful, pretty (modern “pop”) R&B music with very strong…Eastern influences throughout. If you’re into pop/the modern definition of R&B, this is a definite must-have for you. If it was in English I’d expect to be hearing it on the radio. I don’t imagine a lot of people browsing free legal music are going to be big chart-music fans, but y’know, sometimes giving this stuff a listen can be a good thing…don’t miss out on it due to snobbery!

Download it here.

Beautiful, that’s what this is. Allison Crowe is a 27 year old singer/songwriter from Canada. She’s pretty well known and has received a good deal of critical acclaim, which makes the fact she lets us download her music for free all the more impressive!

She has a good deal of albums filled with pretty as hell original tracks (like this one), and has covered a wide variety of well-known tracks too…and after listening to this one album I cannot wait to get my teeth into the rest (and if you feel like me, check out her other stuff on her webpage – http://www.allisoncrowe.com/music.html).

Paper Tiger are a duo from the Netherlands playing insanely cheery indie-pop. They currently have one album, and this is it! It’s a joy to listen to, from start to finish. It’s instantly captivating with the happy-as-hell intro track and continues with the joyous prettiness all the way through.

I’m not a big fan of the indie-pop genre, and very few acts within it really catch my attention, but I honestly find this to be one of the few that really made me smile. So what I’m trying to say is that whether or not you are big on indie-pop, you should check this record out. You will not regret it!