Botany Bay: Soulful free rock

Cover art for Broken

I hear the word "soulful" being thrown around quite a lot when it comes to pop, rock, country, R&B, alternative, and just about every other sub-genre of modern popular music, but what does it really mean? To me, the term has always meant the ability to communicate emotion in rich and complex ways. Anyone can sing a sad song or a love song, but the rare artist brings dimension to such emotional content and paints a canvas of emotion from a pallet that is as rich as our own experience.

Such an artist is the Creative Commons veteran band, Botany Bay.

To be perfectly frank, there's quite a lot of junk on Jamendo and other free music sites. It takes me a long time to wade through it and find the gems, but when I do, I'm rewarded for the effort many-fold. Botany Bay was formed in 1995 with a lead singer whose name has since been changed on the band's Web site to protect her after falling prey to Scientology. The core of the current lineup is writer/keyboardist Stephan Kleinert, vocalist Stephanie Mühr, guitarist Wolfgang Springob, and Felix Klöckner. As gems go, the band is as lustrous as I could hope for. Their 2007 album, Grounded, is a 19-track opus whose contents are as varied as any collection I've seen on Jamendo. Some tracks harken to indie folk while others are driven pop-rock pieces. The common theme is that ineffable quality: soulfulness.

CBC Radio 3

CBC Radio 3 is an excellent Canadian radio station that's broadcast over the Internet and via Sirius Satellite Radio. They're also a curator on Free Music Archive where you can get access to reviews, concert recordings, and free music uploads from many artists featured on their station.

The service was originally modeled on BBC Radio One and similar efforts, and has been successful in reaching a wide audience and bringing attention to a number of performers. Pop and experimental pop hybrids are their primary focus, with more of the experimental work showing up on Free Music Archive and more of the mainstream on the Internet stream. The Web site is also a blog with its own reviews, artist interviews and promotional tracks.

I recommend that everyone explore the service, and thank my good neighbors, the Canadians, for supporting this sort of station!