The Best Things In Life Are Free…
…and so is one of the very best records of the year. The album (pictured above) is called Mecca, and it is by a once-Chicago-now-suburban-Detroit band called Office. In just a second I’ll tell you how you can get it for free without having to don an eye-patch and put a parrot on your shoulder; Office main-man Scott Masson wants you to have it for free, y’see.
At any rate, let me first mention that if you’re a fan of tuneful music that is willing to take some chances and follow a melody line down blind alleys and make unexpected twists and turns (think Loud Family/Game Theory, or New Pornographers, or XTC) then I’m thinking you’re going to love Office. Masson writes wonderfully interesting songs that go all over the place without ever wandering blindly (ok, maybe “Trainwreck DJs” needed an editor). He can arrest you with an immediate hook (as on the double-entendred “Enter Me/Exit You”), or build one slowly and then deliver the goods in a glorious chorus (“Ridiculous Plans”).
There’s some “you don’t really want to see how sausages and laws are made” gruesome details to the tortured (and eventually free to the public) release of Mecca, but I’m not particularly interested in them (suffice to say that my fanboy-ism of Mitch Easter and Scott Miller should tell you all you need to know about the folly of joining a “learn the songs” band and expecting to someday wield input over important things like artistic and personnel decisions). What I am interested in is how wonderful this lovely, brilliant record sounds.
Enough of my yakkin’ as Marty DiBergi would say. Let’s get you to the Mecca download page, which can be found right here:
http://ordinaryoffices.com/?page_id=2
From there you can grab the record (and artwork) as 192 or 320k mp3 files, or as .wav files. Enjoy!
Popnarcotic 