New Music 2015 - Part 16 - Eilen Jewell - Sundown Over Ghosttown

I don't keep statistics of my posts to quite the level of either Wisden or the NFL (select region as appropriate) but I suspect that this is my most lengthy succession of posts on new music.
My view of this is that if there is music that captures my attention there is no reason to ignore it. I will miss plenty for sure but I can't help that.
This is a double-bill, more than that really, by the same artist - Eilen Jewell. At the end of 2014 I posted about live albums. I deliberately held this one back because I had a suspicion that a new studio album was in the offing and I felt that they belonged in a post together. The live album is self released. Here it is.

Eilen Jewell and band was recorded live at The Narrows, Fall River, MA, in February 2014.

The new studio album will be released by Signature Sounds as always and, in North America at least, on 26 May 2015. It is 'Sundown Over Ghost Town.' No idea of the artwork yet but trust me, when I have I'll be on the case and ordering the LP on vinyl (and I strongly suspect that this will be possible).
I still haven't seen her live and I was lamenting that as long ago as 2011. This needs fixing, particularly given the class of the live album mentioned above. I recommend a listen to the four LPs that the songs are taken from.
'Live at The Narrows' comprises twenty-nine tracks over a pair of CDs and was recorded over two successive nights at the venue. It is epic in any reasonable sense of the word.

New Music 2011 - Part 13 - Queen of the Minor Key

Some artists and acts take many years between album releases but Eilen Jewell is not one of them. This is the new album, due for release worldwide on June 28, 2011.

In addition to an intensive and extensive touring schedule this is her fifth full length release in as many years.  The first three albums were a mixture of self-written material and judicious covers some rather surprising and, unless you already knew otherwise, telling them apart would sometimes have been difficult:

• Boundary Country (2006)
• Letters from Sinners and Strangers (2008)
• Sea of Tears (2009)

In 2010 she released 'Butcher Holler', a tribute to Loretta Lynn, and now comes 'Queen of the Minor Key' which, as far as I am aware, consists entirely of new songs that she has written for it.  

She and her band come with a fearsome reputation for live performance too. Another that, while I have failed to do so yet, I would absolutely love to hear live in 2011.

Sea of Tears - new music I want in 2009 - part 5½

It was perhaps obvious that my last post was left unfinished and so it was...

That was a problem, entirely of my own making, and I apologize for it. April is a good time, so here are some new albums, scattered across genres, that I now want. I don't care if they are popular now: some are, some will be so in the future, and others simply will not.
That is the long term view and I'm disinclined to take it.
If I want an album, and although it is true that I have many that are decades old, when I want a new one the buying choice is wider but so, quite alarmingly, is my taste in music! If that were a surprise then this a very surprising selection, one based on Americana again, but I just can't help it.
You can tell me what you think (either e-mail or comment) but I still think that you should simply listen to whatever it is that you want to so feel free to tell me about whatever music you have found.

The selected ones are already on order, many from the US, something that was not really possible twenty years ago, but this one actually takes its reference points from Americana and also the British 'pop-rock' of the sixties and Jewell does it well - back then you simply couldn't have done it this way. The covered songs are excellent again but the originals are even better.
They have an air of total authenticity and are often narrative, songs that are tales of being fu**ed over, but they do it without appearing self-consciously traditional or, on the other hand, overtly bitter or modern. It certainly isn't nu folk, anti folk or whatever, and I like most of that too, even though this album is much more electric-oriented than LfS&S. The result is engaging, more 1960s than obviously influenced by anything that came later, and really quite special.

Amongst the others are...

Love, Save The Empty - Erin McCarley

There are just so many good things around - this is merely another interim post.