Free A Cappella

So I'm an admitted fan of A Cappella music. A lot of people think of church choirs when they hear the term "A Cappella" but as a genre there's really a lot more to it. You've got barbershop, churchy stuff, comedic groups and then college a cappella, to name a few. The latter is by far my favorite right now, along with a few post-grad/professional groups.

For Christmas I received three CD's from the UPenn Penny Loafers including some excellent covers of artists like Sia, Sufjan, Evanescence, Guster, The Strokes, Aimee Mann, Snow Patrol, Frou Frou, the list goes on. Most college a cappella consists of covers of pop/rock/country, but a fun thing about it is they often blend songs and add bridges from other songs. My favorites are actually the songs that I was primarily unfamiliar with prior just b/c I've found that covers always take awhile to warm up to if they're of a song you're already super familiar with in its original form. The neat thing about college groups are that they have a constant rotation as people graduate. You know a group's good when they can switch out members throughout the years and yet consistently produce great stuff. The Penny Loafers is like this for the most part. Their newest CD, Prophets and Pawns, is an excellent solid album through and through and they consistently make it onto the acapodcast I listen to.

Anyway, Duwende is a group that does a lot of original stuff. They're actually a pro-group full of people who all have "regular" day jobs and do this as a hobby on the side. Duwende just put out a new album called Collective for free on their website. It consists of 10 original tracks. I've only listened through it once, so it hasn't really had a chance to become a favorite or for me to give a full opinion yet (for me a cappella often takes a few listens to really get a feel for it and for the subtleties of the voices to come through). So I know it's not the best out there (originals aren't always), but Duwende's pretty solid and I suggest you give it a listen, especially if most of your a cappella experience is from "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" and church. Specific tracks are "Come Back" and "Someone You Don't Know."

I get worried when I suggest a cappella to people b/c I have a feeling it's an acquired taste, but like I said, it's free so if you don't like it, no loss to you other than some time. If you ever really want to get hooked on a song, ask me to let you listen to my version of Insomniac by the Clemson Impulse (I knew Phil, the soloist). I've heard a cappella covers of this song before, but this song blows 'em out of the water.