Posts Tagged ‘Singer-Songwriter’

Popular Posts Tagged ‘Singer-Songwriter’

John Wonderling – Day Breaks
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Mixtape: Some Cowboy You Turned Out To Be
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Matthew Melton on John Denver – Farewell Andromeda
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James Jackson Toth on Japan – Tin Drum
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Scott Hirsch
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Kevin Morby on Paul Westerberg – Stereo
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Will Johnson – “Cornelius”
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Martin Frawley on Maurice Frawley and Working Class Ringos – Triple Skin Marquee
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Ben Seretan – “Power Zone”

by on ·Bits & Pieces, Tracks

There’s a soft lilt to “Power Zone,” the fist peek into Ben Seretan’s upcoming LP, Youth Pastoral. The song is baked by the sun – a yielding Autumn sun, not an unforgiving mid-summer swelter – and the aura around the track grows tight with a bittersweet comfort. There is breeze in the song too, and it washes away the ache of the sun with a chill that soothes. There’s almost a feeling of rolling waves crashing through the courses, not surf, but the lament of proximal water that’s too cold to enter. That ache and yearning is wrapped in a a touch of tender country swoon – slide guitar and ombré harmonies that slip into one another. Dusky sax leads the way out of the song like the aforementioned afternoon sun trailing into the horizon, holding onto every inch of sky before letting go. Rambled plucks saunter through the song with an unhurried grace and it all frames Seretan’s voice with a humble charm. It’s a wonderfully shaded song that begs to hear the rest of the record, which arrives February 28th on Ben’s own Whatever’s Clever Records. As an added bonus, the record was recorded at Black Dirt with Jason Meagher so you know it sounds crisp.




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Richard Youngs and Raül Refree

by on ·New Albums, Reviews

Soft Abuse’s slide out of 2019 leaves the world with some great offerings and this tender, hypnotic collaboration from Richard Youngs and Raül Refree is a gorgeously undersung gem from the latter half of the year. The record is built around just four-pieces, but they stretch the bounds of the singer-songwriter format, each clocking in well past the eight-minute mark. With brushes of Shearwater, Talk Talk, and recently reissued Jansch gem Avocet in its veins, the record is wounded, broken, but not beyond repair. The songs swirl around repeated phrases and figures until the pieces become mantras and meditations on loss and the lacerations of the past.

Youngs’ guitars are as languorous as ever, feeling lived in yet lucid. Refree adds a twist of heartbreak to the mix, his orchestrations drape All Hands Around the Moment in grey streaks of rain that tumble down the panes of its pain and seep into each and every groove of the record. Youngs is at his height of humility here, and the listener can feel the weight on his heart begin to pull them under as the record locks into the whirlpool of melancholy. Mercifully the album pulls out of its peril in the second half. There’s hope and relief in the verdant rebirth of “Another Language.” The song is a parting of the clouds and a calming of the hairshirt sighs of the opening two numbers. The record winds up hopeful, though still tempered by hurt with another quivering number to close out the collection. Youngs’ catalog is a dense garden to enter, but if you’re looking for a rather essential inroads, this right here isn’t a bad place to start, nor a bad place to linger.




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Mixtape: Some Cowboy You Turned Out To Be

by on ·Bits & Pieces, Mixtape

While this doesn’t really fall under the year-end banner, I’m going to place it in alongside the rest of this wrap up. It’s actually been a year since the site’s last mixtape and I think these have fallen by the wayside too long. For this one, I’m shifting focus on the mixtape series to contemporary over archival releases to wrap up some of the excellent strains of alt-country, country-folk, and dusted singer-songwriter tracks that have come out in the last few years. The creep of country into indie has had a nice push lately, bringing forth some of the most affecting and aching tracks of years past. While I’d wager to say that Cosmic Americana has had the strongest resurgence in years past, I’m making the case for alt-country as a close second. The lay lines on this sort of genre are shifty and mercurial, so feel free to disagree, but I’d wager this mix has some strong contenders in its ranks.

These songs are full of heavy hearts, failed marriages, missed connections, youthful melancholy, and maturing reflections. There’s joy, but it’s between the somber sway of pedal steel and the bittersweet twang of guitar strings. I offer this mix as a companion to solo drives as the sun dips low and endless stretches of road lie ahead, or rainy evenings on the porch alone. It’s a solitary set of songs, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no hope in its heart.

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Grace Cummings

by on ·New Albums, Reviews

The debut LP from Australian songwriter Grace Cummings snuck out last month and maybe it’s the end of year crush of content, but this one should be kicking up more dust. Cummings’ voice is raw, rankled, and electric – packed full with notes of stripped pine, floral gin, defiance and defeat. It’s no surprise that she’s come to the attention of her label with a cover of Bob Dylan. Her voice falls into that same ineffable, indefinable valley as his own, the kind of voice that divides a room but brings a community together in the right corners of culture. Now, if she were just to possess a voice on par with past idols like Dylan, Buckley, and Van Ronk, that would be notable but not necessarily transformative. Good thing then that she’s also a songwriter of the highest order and that makes Refuge Cove one of the year’s secret gems.

For a debut this hits incredibly hard, a record wrought with rifts as Cummings’ world seemingly dissolves around her in strands of celluloid. Feelings don’t slide in subtly on the record, rather they tear recklessly at Grace’s soul and in turn she exhumes the ghost of grief and glory and sets it to tape. There have been great records that gutted lately, but it’s been a while since one has set the humors on fire like this has. Grace’s songs can be felt traveling through the nerves, alchemically transmuting sorrow and sin to exhaustion in an incredible act of catharsis. The only sad capper on this is that the label (Flightless) only pressed this in an edition of 500 and they’re seemingly gone in a snap. Hopefully this one will return to the fold, though digitally it still delivers. Still some of the year’s best coming out, so don’t let the lists fool ya.




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Will Johnson – “Cornelius”

by on ·Videos

Another one that’s slipped between the cracks this year, the latest album from Will Johnson (Centro-Matic, South San Gabriel) is a weathered and worn take on country, folk, and Americana that shows the long-running songwriter in top form. Johnson’s been a part of the American songbook for years, playing alongside Jason Molina and Jay Farrar finding those moments of truth that lie between the dust of genres. Wire Mountain should find purchase with those who’ve been digging deep on that latest Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy LP and want another album to help heal the cracks and creases of age and shoulder the weight of heartache through the night. The video features Will in the studio alongside Britton Beisnherz (who also recorded the album at his studio Ramble Creek outside Austin), Jon Dee Graham, Thor Harris (of Shearwater and Swans), and Lindsey Verrill (of Little Mazarn) who all contributed to “Cornelius.” There’s an intimate vibe to the clip, a humble beginning to a heavy song. Johnson’s about to embark on a West Coast tour alongside the likes of Bob Mould and John Moreland. Definitely worth seeking this out in the live setting.

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Eric Osbourne – “Long Way From Home”

by on ·Bits & Pieces, Tracks

A sweet and soft spot from Fort Worth’s Eric Osburne prefaces his album out in January of next year. “Long Way From Home” is an airy folk wander that stops to linger a moment on the small details. Bolstered by a crack backing band that includes plaintive strings and features Angel Olsen on backing vocals, the song is sweet and could almost come off twee if Osbourne’s voice wasn’t lacqured in so much unspoken hurt. The track is packed with enough ennui to pin the listener to the floor – swooning and staring at the ceiling fain, letting the repetition of the blades blur the edges of the melancholy moorings that knocked the feet out from under you in the first place. I’m eager to hear where the rest of this goes, but for now, “Long Way From Home” seems perfect to keep on repeat until sleep takes away the sting of sadness.




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Gabriel Birnbaum – “Not Alone”

by on ·Bits & Pieces, Tracks

Taking a solo tangent after years spent with the likes of Wilder Maker (Northern Spy), Violence Jazz and Debo Band, Gabriel Birnbaum sets himself up in the vein of road weary troubadour and it looks good on him. The title track from his upcoming LP Not Alone is a loose, untucked and heart-heavy song that spins in lyrical circles. The track plays Gabe’s sandpapered vocals to great effect. Over a loping guitar line, he turns the rather modern medium of texting into something more timeless, soaking the song in a Townes / Fred Neil grit that grounds itself in the idea of connecting with long distance love through small moments.

Inspired by albums like Jim Sullivan’s UFO and some of the more immediate entries to the Neil Young catalog, the song has a looseness to it while remaining clear that the crew behind the record is on the highest order. No stranger to session work himself, having appeared on records from Lady Lamb to Eli “Paperboy” Reed over the years, Birnbaum gathered a group culled from members of Okkervill River, Sam Evian, and avant jazz circles for his own recording and they give the song a live in the room quality that’s buoyed by Birnbaum’s intimate delivery. The record is out 11/22 on Arrowhawk Records.


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Vetiver

by on ·New Albums, Reviews

While Vetiver has always had a preternaturally calm demeanor, there’s something inherently broken-in, yet endearingly comfortable about Andy Cabic’s latest LP under the name. Vetiver captures the worn and weathered valley between ennui and ease and the album is marked by a familiarity that’s hard to shake, but mostly because Cabic’s able to synthesize his influences into a faded denim delivery that couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than Vetiver. His past catalog obviously speaks to the same feelings, but there seems to be a particular abundance of warm amber waves and cool blue ripples that slip off of the ends of Up On High. He’s dug into a secret stash of country touches and folk flecks that coalesce into an album built on hurt, but also built to heal.

Themes of wanderlust, lost love and new beginnings have (rightly) earned the album comparisons to Tom Petty’s mid-life high water mark Wildflowers. Shades of R.E.M. jangle up and there’s a rootsy honesty that knocks at Crazy Horse’s door, but it’s Petty’s ode to the dissolution of routine that hangs its head over the album the heaviest. Cabic similarly seems to embody a sense of loss and loneliness and packs the record with an ideal of finding oneself beyond the horizon no matter how many times you have to cross it. The record is one of his best since 2009’s Tight Knit, reinvigorating Vetiver even while technically mellowing. The record is a comfort for the soul in troubled times, and honestly that’s something we could all use time and again.



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Simon Joyner

by on ·New Albums, Reviews

Omaha’s Simon Joyner has a painter’s tongue and his way with words lays out a landscape caked with the dust of an American promise gone to seed. He’s carving out simple truths that lie ignored on the shelves of corner shops and gas stations next to quarter juices barrels and car parts – dreams deferred, expired, or squandered. There’s something small in Joyner’s songs, and that’s not a slight, he’s a man who not only notices the minutia, but finds the poetry that radiates through it. Between the grease of diner eggs, borrowed prescriptions, and beers beset by nagging end of season bees, Joyner finds a humanity that seems to have been obscured by the constant clip that life acquired when it got wired up. Joyner snips the sizzle and slows it down to just the tangibles. He drains out the seep of over-saturation and lets things snap back into their naturally rusted hues once more.

There’s been a tendency to compare Joyner to Townes Van Zandt over the years, and that’s apt. I won’t fight it. Both artists share an innate ability to paint a picture that focuses on the cracked hinges and weathered wood rather than the crowd pushing through the door. He trades in vignettes of normalcy giving the slightest details the weight and worth they deserve. The details are small, but the scars they leave run deep. Like Townes, Joyner’s got a wry wit that’s in a constant tug ‘o war with his realist’s melancholy. He’s able to devastate the heart but slip in a grin at the end to stem the tears, or at least sop them up a bit.

Underneath Pocket Moon drips a subtle country cavalcade that wraps his words in heavy sighs and deep set hues. Joyner’s been working with a consistent crew of locals who’ve been seasoned in his soul for years. Yet for Pocket Moon he steps away and throws himself into the unknown, relocating to Phoenix and set adrift into the hands of a crew of players assembled by his longtime collaborator Michael Krassner. The trust is warranted, to say the least, as the players shape this into one of Joyner’s finest offerings. The album is tender, polished by his standards, but not overly so. The players step back and let Joyner shine, but like true seasoned session troupes they shade in the edges with a sound that elevates the songs. It’s been said that Joyner is your favorite songwriter’s favorite songwriter, and that’s largely true, but if he hasn’t found his way into your own repertoire until now, this is a fantastic starting point. Wade deep, and then swim backwards into his vast revue. In the meantime, Pocket Moon is working its way the essentials list for 2019 and getting hard to beat.



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Dylan Moon

by on ·New Albums, Reviews

LA via Boston songwriter Dylan Moon draws a line directly to the private press gems that haunt forgotten dollar bins. Picking at some of the same sores that fellow folk shut-in Dylan Shearer wore clean on his two quiet gems, Moon is likewise a bastion of bittersweet sighs. More than just Shearer, though, there’s also a good dose of the boarded bedroom hush that haunts the likes of Bobb Trimble, Carl Simmons, or Danny Graham. The slight mustiness of claustrophobia that hangs on certain tracks is more comforting than suffocating, but where Moon differs most from these peers is that while his recording itself feels sequestered, it’s clear that he spends his off time (and likely some of the songwriting time) out in the air, soaking in the pale afternoon sun or drying in the salted sea air.

There’s an undeniable lonesome quality to the album, but that lonesomeness brushes against humanity rather than hides from it. Moon is a parkbench observer, a coffee shop lingerer. His junkshop drum machines shuffle with a worn mockasin slipper softness, but his guitars sparkle like the sun off the sea. Perhaps that’s what makes Only The Blues so affecting, it’s full of yearning from the edges, a feeling that most find themselves projecting at one time or another. It’s a folk-pop album at heart but the dust and scuffed veneer that Moon applies make the songs solidify into a sepia-toned sizzle.

At times the record feels like tossing faded poloroids out the window of a borrowed car, letting them fall where they may to inspire the finders to craft their own story from the baked-on vingettes. This is a great LP for the last gasp of summer since it’s ingrained with just the right amount of lament, a pang that speaks to the soul. It’s a Sunday depression that’s eased with each passing minute by the Tecate and lime used to mark the passage of afternoon hours, and Moon is right there with the listener at the other end of the bar, watching the patrons work through their own small sadnesses — islands adrift in the same sea.



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