Hem - "Leave Me Here"

How do I introduce you to Hem? Well, I hand you a copy of their first album "Rabbit Songs" and call it good. But what if I can only choose one song? Tough. Very tough. You've probably already heard "Half Acre" without knowing it, because it was in a few Liberty Mutual commercials, so that seems like a waste (though a solid song choice). I could go with "Idle (The Rabbit Song)", which puts a little more emphasis on the band and has some great string interplay in the final third of the song.

But I really love Sally Ellyson's vocals. I've heard it suggested that one of the reasons her vocals sound so pure is because she was a completely unknown talent at the time Hem found her, so she never had to deal with years of cigarette smoke by playing in dive bars. When people are taking time to speculate about such a thing, you've probably got a pretty good voice. Hem put out an advertisement looking for a singer, and Sally's demo tape showed up with her singing some old lullabyes a capella. It must have been pretty good, because the band chose to use the undoctored version one of those lullabyes ("Lord, Blow Out the Moon Please") as the first track on "Rabbit Songs". Straight from the demo tape to the debut album. Not bad.

I've chosen to use the song "Leave Me Here" as your introduction to the band (that is, if you haven't heard them before) because the instrumentation is great, and representative of the "Rabbit Songs" album. By the way, they recorded this album with the 18-piece Radio Slovak Orchestra...so, there's that. But also, I think this song does as good of a job as any of showcasing Sally's vocals. Great song, great album. Enjoy!