Artist Review: Jonathan Coulton

This week's artist review is on Jonathan Coulton.

Coulton's music falls within the very broad genre of rock; sometimes he is closer to pop, folk, or indie, but this is more or less where he is centered. Songs feature Coulton's singing, as well as Coulton on the guitar, bass, and drums. More rarely, he also plays the harmonica, banjo, accordion, mandolin, ukulele, or glockenspiel.

While this might seem like a lot of variety, Coulton's singing and background bits are often very similar from song to song. It definitely moves around some, and he often includes some interesting background bits, but most of his well-known songs sound like variations on the mellowness of the same sort of stuff.

(Mellowness is totally a word. Chrome seems to think so, at least. Did not know.)

So, why is Coulton's music good, and why am I writing a blog post about him?

Because Coulton is probably my favorite songwriter of all time. His lyrics are witty, strange, humorous, and deal with things that I can relate to or enjoy - mostly technology and fantasy topics. To put it in a way that some people might understand if they are not picking up what I am laying down, Coulton is the Tom Lehrer or Weird Al of geekdom.

(Geekdom is, apparently, not a word. Did not know. For those of you who are not aware, geekdom basically refers to everything within a certain sphere, including fantasy, science fiction, programming, and other technology stuff. Also, other things.)

Some of my favorite songs by Jonathan Coulton: Code Monkey, Re: Your Brains, Skullcrusher Mountain, The Future Soon, and I Feel Fantastic.

As per usual, I hope you enjoyed the read and the music. Comments and whatnot can be dumped below before you move on, and I hope to bother you with more text-based communiques in the future.