Endless Flowers has been out for a while now, but I’ve only just gotten around to listening to it in the last week or so. The main reason for my delay is that it isn’t streaming on Rdio in my country (New Zealand). It’s interesting how this factor really influences my listening habits these days – if it’s not available for streaming, I am a lot less likely to give it a spin. It seems so silly in 2012 that regional restrictions are still applied to a fully digital medium – why would you not want every possible person listening to your music?…

It’s impossible to pin down any one album by the great Sam Cooke, and to be honest, the studio albums he released while he was alive did him little justice. His LPs tended to be collections of covers, usually of the showtune or big band variety, and rarely showcased his unique voice and superb songwriting. Nope, he was a singles man through and through, was Sam Cooke.

And boy, what singles they were.

From his first hit single, the beautiful “You Send Me” (consisting of little more than the same three word phrase repeated over and over – the second word swapped out for “thrill” in the second verse) right through the the sublime, posthumously released “A Change Is Gonna Come” (below), Cooke wrote some of the most powerful songs of his generation.…

I knew nothing of Echo Lake before discovering them on Rdio this week. I was initially drawn to the beautiful cover – I’m a sucker for brightly colored, psychedelically themed album sleeves: see Tame Impala, or Hot Chip’s new one. It’s a pretty good representation of the music contained within too: ultra shoegazey, with heavy psychedelic elements and just enough pop hooks to keep it interesting. For fans of: A Sunny Day In Glasgow, Slowdive, School Of Seven Bells.