The April Hamildrops was released earlier this week, and this time it’s an early version of Eliza’s simmering “Burn,” in which she reacts to her husband’s sharing his infidelity publicly and of his own free will, sung by five of the women who’ve portrayed her. Not only does the song contain some amazing female harmonies (the sort that make the hairs on my arm stand up), but it is interesting to see how the song evolved during the course of the songwriting process. That’s something I find fascinating. For instance, the difference between Dar Williams’ early demo of “The Christians and the Pagans” and the album version isn’t significant, but the changes make the Christmas song memorable, rather than something that fades into the background noise of mediocre holiday music as a whole. (I am less interested in the things Rudi finds interesting: the variation between recordings of a song. He has several bootlegs of various recordings of a single Beatles song, “Strawberry Fields,” maybe, and listening to an entire cd of just that song set my teeth on edge.)<\/p>\n
Anyway, have a listen if you haven’t yet had the chance:<\/p>\n