This artist needs no introduction, as he's just won the coveted Mercury Prize and gotten a wonderful write-up in the New York Times Magazine. People are buying and downloading his recordings like crazy. His album I Am a Bird Now has jumped sixty-two places since yesterday and (as of this moment) stands now at #166 on Amazon.com's Top Sellers chart. If you've seen him and his band live, you know that he likes to cover other artists' tunes. Now that I've seen him twice, I've grown to love one in particular. This, Leonard Cohen's "The Guests."




This past weekend, I attended his Seattle show at the Triple Door and was pleasantly surprised (after having completely lost it when he sang his treatment of the Edgar Allan Poe poem "The Lake") when he pulled out this cover of the Nico song "Afraid."





*Both recordings taken from his live show in Seville on May 26, 2005.