His name is Joseph Arthur.  The album is Nuclear Daydream.  Go buy it right now.

Let me give you a little background about ol’ Joe Arthur and I.  My buddy Jeremy works in the music industry.  I have no idea what he does anymore, because he’s had literally five jobs in the five years that I’ve known him.  The benefit of having a friend in the music industry is that many times you hear of musicians before most everyone else does, even before the damned dirty hipsters do.  For example, Jeremy introduced me to Joss Stone was she was 15 and full o’ soul, Jet before they sold every song they wrote to every company that makes commercials, and of course Ray Lamontagne, who I basically made because I pimped him out so much on this site.

In one of his capacities at one of his old jobs, Jeremy worked with or for people who work with or for Joseph Arthur.  Jeremy became a big fan of his and continually pimped him to me, but I resisted.  I did so because I’m a dick; anytime someone raves about something being awesome, I think, "Well, it can’t be that awesome if I’m only hearing about it right now from you."  The more I resisted, the more persistent Jeremy became about Joseph Arthur, exclaiming that of all the artists he’d recommended to me, he thought JA was the one I’d like most.  Of course, this only made me more intent on not listening to his stuff.

And so not listen I did – for many years.  It wasn’t until about a year or so ago that I randomly heard "In Ohio" on my iPod that I thought, "That’s a pretty cool little song."  Long story short, this lead to a journey of Joseph Arthur discovery and now two of his songs are on my top ten most played on my iPod (#5 is "Echo Park" and #8 is "In Ohio").

I don’t have any problem, conscience-wise, with stealing music.  I justify the fact that I illegally download thousands of songs a year with the argument that if I like the song, I will recommend it to thousands of new listeners on this here site, possibly turning them into fans.  So my karma evens out. 

But the biggest negative of stealing songs – as opposed to buying whole albums – is that by not getting a whole album and listening to it in its entirety, one misses out on an experience; not just because you only get a handful of songs, but you miss out on the nuances and delights of listening to an album from start to finish.  

So recently I have been splurging on iTunes.  A recent example of said splurging is the Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs, which is a three-disc set containing, um, sixty-nine love songs.  I dropped the $30 for the whole album, even though I had already downloaded fifteen or so songs off it for free, because a) I loved those fifteen songs and felt I was missing out on some other gems and b) I admired the ballsiness of the concept – sixty-nine lil’ love songs, most of them pissed off.  It sounded pretty good to me. 

And it turns out it is pretty good.  Great, even.  I’ve been listening to that gargantuan album daily since I downloaded it, always finding new gems.  Inspired by this success, I started buying whole albums off iTunes - to varying degrees of success.  After falling in love with his song "Parties in the USA," I bought an album of Jonathan Richman’s and was on the whole rather disappointed.  Alternatively, even though I had a number of their songs, I bought some sort of best of the Ronettes and it blew my fucking brains out – even though it was a best of and so unnuanced, there were a ton of songs on there that I didn’t hear yet immediately dug and dug a lot.

Back to Joseph Arthur: a few weeks ago, my buddy Jeremy called me and told me that JA’s new album would rock my world.  He had an advanced copy and was listening to it constantly, etc.  Now warm to Joseph Arthur, I made a mental note to pick up the album when it came out.  It came out this week. I got it.  And, well, holy fucking shit.

This may not make such sense, but there are some artists whose music lends itself to "total" listening.  Artists like these typically don’t write songs for radio-friendly play, and thus often produce whole albums of music that is atmospheric, engaging, and, for lack of a better word, deep.  In order to appreciate what they’ve created, they require their albums to be listened to cover to cover, start to finish. 

Joseph Arthur is one such artist.  While there are certain tracks on this album that stand out and could even be considered radio-friendly, the sum of his music is greater than its parts.  Nowhere does this hold true as it does in Nuclear Daydream, an album that, when I listened to it for the first time straight through last night, has kept me erect ever since (this is where I start to lose any grasp of language or writing I have and start writing "It’s awesome" and the like).

Frankly, the album is awesome – the whole fucking thing.  Like I said, some tracks stand out – my two current favorites are the first song, piano-pumping, foot-tapping "Too Much to Hide" and the last song, the heart-breaking title track ("If there’s a plan then tell me/If you know who you are/A princess or a mummy/A flower or a scar") – but it is the general song after song quality that has truly blown me away (I’d tempted to list more examples, but I can’t, since every song fucking works – every one).  I don’t know – I can’t explain it anymore.  You just have to listen to it.

So do yourself a favor and buy this fucking album.  You can listen to it by going to his website (a pop-up will appear and start playing the album, starting with "Too Much to Hide," and you can listen to the whole thing) and can buy it here.  And of course you can find out all sorts of info on his MySpace page.  

I know I sound like a salesman, but I don’t care.  You all know it’s rare for me to dedicate an entire post to music, but people – specifically, you – need to hear this album.  I can’t recommend it any more highly.  The world and your life will be much better because of it.  Trust me on this.        

Now go get it and have a good weekend.  And remember, I love you.  

(Most of you, at least.)