Myspace Reviews: Shtreiml and Khevre

One of my favorite time-wasters is going Jewish music social-networking on sites like myspace.com. What will happen is that I get a pointer to a band with a myspace page and then follow their "friends" links to other bands I might be interested in. Today the originating band was Shtreiml and the source was the Jewish music mailing list hosted by Shamash.org. Shtreiml was announcing a few upcoming shows all, sadly, MMFH (Many Miles From Here).

So, I was off and wandering. Like most bands, Shtreiml's myspace page let me listen to some of their songs and get an idea what they're about. And I was delighted. Shtreiml has a great sound, combining "klezmer, gypsy music and jazz" with a focus on the unusual combination of the oud and harmonica. I've never heard anything quite like it, but I was quite enchanted. Sadly for me, their albums are on cdbaby.com but not emusic.com. Cdbaby is one of my favorite online stores and deserves everyone's business, but I have a subscription to download albums from emusic and would have nabbed one of Shtreiml's on the spot if it had been there.

From Shtreiml I found Khevre. Khevre has an understated klezmer / jazz sound, with a fabulous upright base and a wonderful female lead singer. Khevre is based in my once home-town of Boston, MA, but I don't think they were active yet when I lived there. Now, Khevre does have their album on emusic and I grabbed it immediately and will listen to it on my commute home tonight.

That's all I had time for during today's wander. But I'll use both Shtreiml and Khevre as jumping off points for more myspace wandering sometime soon.