Corey Dargel is joined by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), pianist Kathleen Supové, and drummer David T. Little on the art-pop double-CD album Someone Will Take Care of Me. The album contains unconventional love songs from Dargel’s two acclaimed music-theater pieces about hypochondria and voluntary amputation — Thirteen Near-Death Experiences and Removable Parts. Dargel uses a mix of witty lyrics, humor and compassion to create quirky love songs that earnestly celebrate the ways in which abnormal behavior leads to more diverse interactions with the world, new approaches to creativity, and unconventional definitions of sanity.

Here are places to preview and purchase the album:

• New Amsterdam Records (physical CDs & high-quality Lossless download.  Ordering physical CDs gives you immediate access to downloads, but you can also purchase only the downloads.)
• The album is distributed by Naxos of America and is in stock at many record stores in the U.S.. Check with your local independent record store.
• Naxos Direct (physical CDs only)
• eMusic.com (download only)
• (download only, includes an exclusive bonus remix by Seth Gordon and an exclusive iTunes digital booklet)
• Amazon (physical CDs only)

Here’s what the critics are saying:

Corey Dargel

Download all three songs in one zip file

Corey Dargel’s Every Day Is the Same Day — scored for voice, violin, and digital looping, and performed by Dargel and Cornelius Dufallo — presents worst-case scenarios as possible solutions for boredom and loneliness. This free EP represents the beginning of what will eventually be an evening-length song cycle about clinical depression (yay! & cue drum machines!).

01. On This Date Every Year (3’16″)
02. You Can Say a Prayer (2’53″)
03. The Opposite of Love (3’01″)

Here’s a stream of “The Opposite of Love:”

“a bite-sized work of art that will get lodged in your brain for the next year” -Daniel Stephen Johnson, Daniel Stephen Johnson dot com.

“Dargel’s fierce ruminations on death are accompanied by the ecstatic violin loops of Cornelius Dufallo, a truly wonderful eight minutes of music. It’s Kafka Fragments for the SoHo crowd.” -Will Robin, Seated Ovation

Download all three songs in one zip file (MP3 files @320 kbps)

Listen/Purchase

• Naxos Direct (physical)
• Amazon (physical/virtual)
• eMusic (virtual)
• iTunes (virtual)

Press Coverage

Listen to NPR’s Weekend Edition segment on Other People’s Love Songs.

Time Out New York interview (issue 682, october 23-29, 2008)

Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane interview (mp3)

“Dargel play[s] the role of a sardonic-hipster Cyrano, translating his patrons’ tangled and intense feelings into artful, sophisticated pop songs… merg[ing] the dreamy synth-pop of The Postal Service – cooing female background vocals and quietly sputtering percussion and all – with Dargel’s slyly romantic lyrics.” – 17 dots

“invigorating, innovative but immediately approachable… [with] an unguarded quirkiness and a sense of accidental poetry.” – Philadelphia Inquirer

“…the most transparently personal, elusive, charming songs this side of The Magnetic Fields. Every song seems to capture a different facet of a complex, adult, human emotion, that particular combination of regret for how things could have been yet satisfaction with how they came to be that is so much like the stimulating, comforting pain of pressing against a loose tooth with your tongue” – the big city

“Lyrically astute, and often very funny, Corey Dargel manages to give each of his subjects their own individual eccentricity” – Music Musings and Miscellany

“Dargel sings in a modest, sweet-toned, conversational way, and writes songs whose lyrics and melodies are at once wistful and wry, tender and irreverent… giving voice to the lives and relationships of his subjects.” – new york times

“ingenious nouveau art songs” – New Yorker

Track Listing

1. My Voice Is in Your Head (for Katie from Teresa)
2. Berkeley California (for Honor from Da)
3. Your Secret’s Safe (for Ansel from Eve)
4. Had I Jumped (for Anne from Kurt)
5. All Other Sounds (for Brian from Molly)
6. The Men We Used to Be (for Paul from Jack)
7. Magnetically Elusive (for Moe from Eric)
8. Hurry Up and Settle Down (for Damon from Jenn)
9. Seagulls (for CJ from Karen)
10. Lullaby (for 45x from Rachel)
11. Five of a Kind (for Carl from Kristin)
12. Summer of Love (for Maile from Jeff)
13. Six Point Five Billion People (for Catherine from Phil)

Credits

• Words and Music: Corey Dargel
• Instruments and Vocals: Corey Dargel
• Recording and mixing: Corey Dargel
• Mastering: Tom Rogers at Atomix, Los Angeles
• Artwork: Marisol Limon Martinez

]]> http://automaticheartbreak.com/2008/10/other-peoples-love-songs/feed/ 0 http://automaticheartbreak.com/2008/10/less-famous-than-you/ http://automaticheartbreak.com/2008/10/less-famous-than-you/#comments Thu, 02 Oct 2008 05:55:01 +0000 admin http://automaticheartbreak.com/newsite/?p=82 Corey’s debut solo album released in May, 2006, on Use Your Teeth records (London).

Listen/Purchase:

• iTunes (virtual)
• MSN Music (virtual)
• Darla (physical)

New York based composer/performer Corey Dargel releases Less Famous Than You, a collection of songs about falling in love with famous (or semi-famous) people.

Trained at the renowned Oberlin Conservatory, Dargel creates deceptively simple and achingly vulnerable art-pop. Even though it’s not new for a classical musician to embrace the use of a laptop, drum machines, and synthesizers, it is rare for one to embrace the pop song with such unabashed intensity.

Dargel’s gentle assault on the pop idiom creates a tension which pervades the music: Deadpan and detached vocals reveal heartbreaking intimacies, awkward and obtrusive drum patterns struggle against fragile harmonies, vocals and music uneasily opposing each other as songs stumble to their ends.

Emotional and intelligent, Less Famous Than You evokes the fragility of Antony & The Johnsons and The Hidden Cameras, the electronic works of the late Macon Sumerlin, and the avant-pop approaches of Mark Amerika and Arthur Russell.

Voted one of Time Out New York’s ‘Top 25 People To Watch In 2006,’ Dargel’s live performances have received glowing reviews in the New York Times and the Village Voice. He visits the UK in May for live performances and to record a radio session for John Kennedy’s Xposure show on XFM.

Live Dates

• May 7, 2006 w/Young People, Drowsy at THE LUMINAIRE London, England
• May 10, 2006 w/Final Fantasy, Grizzly Bear, Simon Bookish at THE LUMINAIRE London, England
• May 11, 2006 w/Final Fantasy at THE SOCIAL Nottingham, England
• May 13, 2006 w/Final Fantasy at THE CIRCLE CLUB Manchester, England
• May 22, 2006 at CORNELIA STREET CAFÉ, New York, NY

Track Listing:

1. Glasses
2. I’ll Drown
3. Gay Cowboys
4. I Don’t Remember
5. Withdrawal
6. The News
7. How Much You’re Worth
8. Boy Detective
9. Global World View
10. Change the World
11. Like a Ghost
12. Every Word Means So Much to Me

Credits:

• Words and Music by Corey Dargel
• All instruments and vocals by Corey Dargel
• Mastering by Shawn Hatfield at Audible Oddities, San Francisco, CA
• Album Artwork by Yvan Greenberg