Tag Archive for 'greatest things ever'

Last night our furiends at FurAffinity hosted a live stream of a Matthew Ebel concert, where by “hosted” I mean they embedded the Ustream video, and by “concert” I mean Matthew standing in his living room with a camera pointed at his piano. Either way, I went to check it out, though I ended up watching it on the Ustream page instead because it had a chat channel. It turned me on to one of the most awesome singer/songwriters currently in the underground indietubes.

I’d heard of Mr. Ebel before, having encountered a song he did back in 2001 called “In the MUCK” (MP3). It’s about how the real world is annoying, so let’s all turn ourselves into furry animals because that’s more fun (specifically on FurryMUCK, but subtly enough so that people who have never heard of or joined it can relate to the song. I loved the song, but for some ridiculous reason I’d never bothered to do more research into him. Until now.

Despite being active in the furry community as an osprey (you see, even though ospreys have feathers, we still say they’re “furries” with “fursonas,” because “featheries” wouldn’t imply the same group, and “anthropomorphic animal enthusiasts” is too long, and oh whatever), most of Ebel’s music isn’t as overtly animalistic, but that’s probably a good thing because having to throw in an obligatory animal reference in every song would get old. All of it is just as catchy and awesome, with a style that’s like Jonathan Coulton meets Dangerous Kid and hints of Banooba; comparing him to a signed artist would be so corporate and anti-indie of me, as well as less accurate, but let’s say Jack’s Mannequin with some Ben Folds-y wit if you insist. And he’s awesome.

I got his latest album, Goodbye Planet Earth, which mixes in a good deal of electronic stuff and Hitchhiker’s Guide references. The second track, “I Just Want To Fall In Love” (MP3) is ridiculously catchy and will not get out of my head. Gahhhh. =D

He’s also taken a page from Jonathan Coulton and written a song based on one of Valve‘s games (although his effort wasn’t actually commissioned by Valve for use during their end credits), a Team Fortress 2-inspired song called “I Blame The Spy”. As of this writing, unfortunately, the full version of the song is only available to people who subscribe to his premium music. Kind of an odd decision given that he could get several zillion new fans if video game blogs pointed towards it, something they’d be more likely to do if the whole song were free. Matthew, I know you’ll read this eventually because you follow me on Twitter, so fix that.

But all in all, you want Matthew Ebel in your ears. He gives very good aural pleasure.