The Books

For those of us with somewhat particular tastes, it is a rare and special occasion to find an album that is engaging and stimulating yet entirely listenable from beginning to end, and The Books have demonstrated a knack for delivering that pleasure time and again.  I'll never forget the first time I listened to their debut album, Thought For Food - their playful string compositions, overlaid with a staggering array of where-did-they-find-that samples and sparse, etheral lyrics, offered a surprising sense of intimacy and comforting familiarity while remaining entirely unlike anything I had heard before.  Their next album, The Lemon of Pink, was a sublime refinement of their sound and remains one of my favorite albums to this day.  In the years that have followed, Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong's music has consistently and masterfully walked a fine line between cerebral innovation and nostalgic emotional appeal, managing to be endlessly full of surprises and yet as natural-sounding as can be.  Keep an ear to the ground for a new album out later this year.