A while back, I saw this most excellent ad for the Chevy Malibu. I mean, it didn't make me want to buy a car, but it was conceptually fun, visually well-executed, and had this fabulous song going in the background. Maybe you saw it? It was the one with the baby and the robots and the pasage of time.

After a couple weeks of seeing it go by during MythBusters, I couldn't get the tune out of my head. A little Googling and it turned out to be Oren Lavie's song "Her Morning Elegance," from his debut album, The Opposite Side of the Sea. And I found me an mp3 of it, and listened to it two or three times, and bought the disc.¹

I like the album a lot. It's dreamy and sweetly melancholy and pleasing to listen to, like the rain outside the window when you're at home on the couch in sheepskin slippers and, I dunno, maybe Sense and Sensibility cued up on the teevee. Some of the songs are more successful than others: his lyrics are sometimes clever and sometimes a little too much so. The instrumental arrangements -- and this is an album that relies heavily on strings and wind instruments and a real piano and a vibraphone, even -- are really good. "Her Morning Elegance" is the undeniable gem of the disc, a fast 3/4 tune that makes you want to dance down the sidewalk on your way to work. Or it does me, at any rate.

And then a little while ago Mason-Dixon Knitting posted the video, and it's superb. Here: enjoy.

¹ Note to the RIAA: Oren Lavie made money off that unauthorized mp3, and so did you.