New Music 2016 - Part 39 - Miss Tess - Baby, we all know

Here is the highlight of the week in newly released recorded music, at least for me. I don't expect this to find its way in to the UK charts anytime soon but I'd love to be wrong about that. It may well not bother the mainstream American charts but we needn't worry about that either. It's quite beyond that kind of label nonsense anyway. It is released on Rights Records, via CDbaby.

Miss Tess - Baby, we all know (Rights Records, 8 July 2016).

It is eleven original songs that, along with her band 'The Talkbacks', expound a take on the delta and swamp blues from another perspective --- that of a young, white female. This is not her first release and that is a line of inquiry well worth pursuing. In the meantime I'm going with this one from the latest LP, despite the fact that I think that it will not remain my favourite.

There is also *that* acoustic guitar sound. It sounds old, far older than its player however adept she may be, because it is:

It is a Weymann archtop that is fast approaching its centenary. It is still doing exactly what it was made for.

Here's a question for you all:
Why do American artists still write so many songs about catching trains (which they can't/don't) while UK artists writing in similar genres (who do/could) have never really done so to any great extent?
If frustration and anger is a source of songs, and it seems that it is, we should have an unimpeachable canon of railway songs - unfettered in prospect - from the mid-nineteenth century to today...
Tell me.

New Music 2014 - Part 28 - Deena - Rock River

For the most part I find new music for myself, one way or another, but this is one of the rare exceptions.
In keeping with my policy of not reviewing that which I don't care for, you never hear about many of them. I imagine that, had she not sent me a message, I might never have got to hear of Deena and her latest album 'Rock River', or not for some time at the very least. That would have been a shame, and for several different reasons.

The first reason is that I really like it. The second is, to me at least, more interesting. That is to do with what I would have thought, had I heard it for the very first time without any background or context whatsoever.
The answer to that is very simple: New York.

I can't pinpoint exactly what the combination of circumstances is but the album has this written through it in the manner of a stick of rock (a seaside candy, probably peculiar to Britain). Although  usually sold in length, typically 6 - 8 inches it can easily be made into slices...

Blackpool, a seaside resort in Lancashire became famous as an affordable vacation destination for the previously home-bound factory workers in the north west of England from the arrival of the railway in the mid-nineteenth century until cheap flights to Spain became available in the 1970s and then Florida some years later, is perhaps its true home. 

I used to listen to more music like this, or perhaps now I simply listen to more other music too, and it reminded me that I like it. I suspect however that this, to invoke another British food analogy, is something of a Marmite thing - that is to say adore or despise. I like Marmite too.
It is perhaps a consequence of a combination of the way it has with words, literate and self-referencing or reflective. The first feelings I had while listening were of Latitude Festival circa 2007 - 9. Then I tried to work out why. This, although done fitfully I have to admit, has taken a couple of weeks. Here are two LP points of reference that I have come up with and I did see both these artists live at Latitude in that period.

• Jaymay  ---  Autumn Fallin' (2008)
• Chairlift  ---   Does You Inspire You (2008)

It would be wrong of me not to mention Regina Spektor here and I her saw her live in this period too. You will suspect that I regard Deena Shoshkes as being in good company and if that means a few people buy some music that they might not otherwise have considered than that is all I can wish for.

I want to listen to her earlier albums now, particularly this one, and so can you: