New Music 2018 - Part 22 - Eliza Gilkyson - Secularia

There is a total change of tack for this post. We head over to Austin, Texas and the realm of US folk and, in passing, something of a dynasty in that regard. This is the latest from Eliza Gilkyson.

Eliza Gilkyson - Secularia (Red House Records, 13 July 2018).

• Solitary Singer
• Lifelines
• Conservation
• In The Name Of The Lord
• Dreamtime
• Seculare
• Reunion
• Sanctuary
• Through The Looking Glass
• Emmanuelle
• Down By The Riverside
• Instrument

This has certainly caught my attention. It has also led me to investigate her extensive back catalogue too. I like the fact that it is about finding meaning but that the title suggests that it is, I guess essentially, about humanism.  I know that I will be returning to comment on this further in due course. It's steadfast tone but lack of dogma is very refreshing.

Her brother is guitarist Tony Gilkyson who played almost all the guitar parts for the biopic film 'Walk The Line'. Their father Terry Gilkyson was also a folk writer, singer and musician, being of the same generation as Woodie Guthrie, who wrote songs with and for many well known artists including, amongst others, Johnny Cash. He also widely entertained commissions for other artistic outlets including writing music for cinema.

That included this: one of the most widely recognised songs from animated film that there is:

 This is the original, slightly scratchy and static inflected, version. Just the bare necessities.

New Music 2018 - Part 4 - Julia Lucille - Chthonic

My next offering was actually released last year but for reasons that I might explain later it is totally new-year vibe for me.  It has, at least on the face of it, a very peculiar title indeed and also it just snuck up on me from somewhere!
This is certainly not the first music released by Texas-based artist Julia Lucille but it is a benchmark by any standards. If that all seems rather complicated and also awfully depressing for this time of year then please read/listen on. The title, Chthonic, a word derived from ancient Greek denotes things from, offered to, or happening below the surface of the earth and thus the Underworld of classical mythology, albeit not always to the Olympian standard. 

Julia Lucille - Chthonic:

• Eternally
• Darkening
• Plot of Ground
• Ariadne
• I Don't Think I Can
• Finery
• Lie and Wait
• Beneath the Spring
• Let's Climb Up on the Car

Julia Lucille's faintly Southern lilt drifts in and out of the nine mostly acoustic songs. Guitars, Julia and Paul Mitchell's both, are prominent and there is some pedal steel courtesy of Luke Dawson but in no way is this country of any kind and it most certainly is not bluegrass inspired. It's dream-indie with roots in pop and modern folk.
Charon making the rough crossing of the Styx memorable, and also one for which return tickets are totally invalid, may not be a true reflection of that other life. It is a soothing thought and welcome balm in the cold, mean days of winter.

Chthonic - Julia Lucille (Keeled Scales Records, 7 April 2017).

The cover illustration of the LP, by artist Aimee Lusty, suggests that this version of the underworld is at odds with how it was envisioned from above: Persephone - the undisputed queen of the underworld - skinny dipping.

So that's fine as regards mythology. What does Julia Lucille sound like live? Well I want to hear her live for real too, but this will have to suffice for now.

'Ariadne', recorded at a Sofar house concert in San Antonio, Texas.

New Music 2017 - Part 19 - Wrangled - Angaleena Presley

When 'The Pistol Annies' hit the world with a delightfully sardonic take on country, back in 2011, it would be fair to say that Angaleena Presley was the least well-known of the three and, perhaps actually rather importantly, the oldest. Miranda Lambert and Ashley Monroe were already better known.
She was also the last of the three to release a solo LP and that when it came was the brilliant, off-kilter 'American Middle Class' in 2014. It immediately caught my attention, in the time before Margo Price was known-about, for it's uncompromising take on the grubby underside of the American Dream.
The two have rather different takes on what at the end of the day is discrimination, inequality and sheer frustration. The thread is that they are both brilliant about putting them to words and then weaving those words into songs. Songs that people far away can still relate to. 
I'm not afraid to write this and not least because Britain has plenty of the same problems and I'm not one to try and deny that. It is a big issue and also a massively divisive one: Poverty be that of food or culture, history suggests, does not tend to bring people together.

What I will say is that, of the most recent solo albums from each of the Annies, this is (and the others both guest on it, so its very clear they are still in touch) the the point when 'Holler Annie' finally becomes Angaleena the outlaw Annie.

Angaleena Presley - Wrangled (Mining Light Music/Thirty Tigers, 21 April 2017).

Pretty much nothing that she turns her lyric to, and therefore her voice also, comes out smelling of roses. That is telling it nicely; she often doesn't.
I don't even need to include the track-list because, in true old-school fashion, it is on the cover of the record. This release has multiple issues and one of them is that it may turn out to be amongst the best albums of 2017.
Yes, of course I would like to see Angaleena play live again. Not least because I know that she is astonishing. She is far better than my photography.

Stage 1, Cambridge Folk Festival, 31 July 2015.

New Music 2017 - Part 6 - Scott H. Biram - The Bad Testament

Thus far my series of 'New Music 2017' posts has taken a predominantly acoustic path. This is where it takes a turn towards electric squalls...  well almost certainly it does, for this album has not yet been released. It could turn out to be an album of lullabies and  gentle ballads but neither artist nor label history make that seem anything other than extremely improbable!
The title of the LP tends to reinforce that idea too...

'The Bad Testament' - Scott H. Biram (Bloodshot Records, 24 February 2017).

It seems that the often-solo Texas bluesman will be taking us down the rutted dirt roads, rusting rails and haunted backwaters once again. Should you be wondering what I thought about his 2014 LP 'Nothin' But Blood' than that is here and it was my first introduction to the world of his music.

This is the track list:

Scott H. Biram - The Bad Testament

• Set Me Free
• Still Around
• Red Wine
• TrainWrecker
• Long Old Time
• Swift Driftin'
• Righteous Ways
• Crippled & Crazy
• Feel So Wrong
• True Religion

If you buy CD or d/l versions then you get the three tracks from his 'Lost on the River EP' too. I have a certain feeling that I will head for this option.

Here is a taster from the new record:

New Music 2016 - Part 41 - Rachel Laven - Love & Luccheses

Yesterday morning I returned from Truck Festival, a fairly small festival held on a farm in Oxfordshire, that has as its smallest stage (there were seven stages this year) The Saloon Bar. I have mentioned it many times; to be quite honest it is pretty well the reason that I go to Truck Festival. Here is an artist, new solo album in tow, that I saw play there on Sunday afternoon with family members The Lavens (mentioned here).
I don't normally buy albums immediately after hearing an artist or act live for the first time. There are exceptions and this was destined to be one of them.

Rachel Laven - Love & Luccheses (self released, 16 May 2016 in the US).

• Finish Line
• Each Other's Shoes
• Do You Dare
• Love & Luccheses
• Only Thing Familiar
• The Moon (Rachel Laven & Jana Laven)
• Don't Put Me In A Town
• Something Like Heaven (Walt Wilkins)
• Someone Like You
• Wrong Time
• Song For Mary (Rachel Laven & Mary Cooper)

Eleven songs, all by Rachel Laven except as noted above, on which she sings lead vocals and plays guitar. 

Rachel Laven - live at Truck Festival. Sunday 17 July 2016.

I don't have the equipment to do live video. Indeed I think that I if I had I really wouldn't bother because I'm there to listen to the music. Still photography doesn't impinge on my enjoyment but I think that trying to record video certainly would. This therefore is not my work. It is the title track of the album and also explains 'Luccheses'. I didn't have the faintest idea either but at least I could ask there and then!

Rachel Laven is currently on tour in the UK. Dates and venues are here.
Note added 14 June 2017:
Rachel is touring England and Scotland in July and early August 2017, including a gig on The Saloon Bar Stage, at the sold-out Truck Festival 2017 on 22 July. The full list of dates and ticketing information is here.

Live - Life in the Great Western Saloon.

This is the promised sequel to my earlier post concerning the Great Western Saloon Bar stage at Truck Festival 2016. It took a bit longer to do than I had planned but ain't that just the way...  I intend to mention, if only with links, all the acts that I did not mention in the previous post. It's increasingly looking as though that ambition will require more than this post to achieve!
This looks like a particularly interesting prospect: The Lavens is a five-piece from St. Antonio, Texas and is a band that consists of members of the same extended family. It is certainly not very widely known in the UK:

The Lavens live at The Cove, San Antonio, TX.

Now things get really complicated.
Brighton-based The Raving Beauties does exist, it is signed to At The Helm Records, but started life as a wholly fictional band; the only reason that it exists is the result of the vivid imagination of a writer. Having published the story to some acclaim it seemed a logical step to create the act retrospectively, and so it happened.

Oh Lover - The Raving Beauties (2013/2015).

It's not my desire to retell the story of a story of a story. [I have deliberately kept the sources visible in such cases, in part to fully credit them].
The link below starts with the author explaining the reason for the origin of the written work of fiction:

http://sabotagetimes.com/music/raving-beauties-interviewed-undeniably-kind-tribute-certain-60s-bands

The final result was this recorded work of eleven songs packed into just 30 minutes of playing time. The reviews are solid too:
https://www.americana-uk.com/cdreviews/item/the-raving-beauties-the-raving-beauties


Now we shall get to see it played live.

The Raving Beauties - (At The Helm Records, 28 August 2015).

I intend to be there, inside the iron shed that is the Great Western Saloon Bar, on 16 July, to see how this plays out in an intimate live setting. It's quite clearly going to take several more posts to cover all of this! Will I even be able to tear myself away to visit the other stages?

New Music 2016 - Part 22 - Cale Tyson - Careless Soul

While this is about a forthcoming LP, Careless Soul is the first full-length by American artist Cale Tyson, it is also a very appropriate vehicle for the continuation of a number of themes concerning the music industry that I have espoused over a period of a few years.

Cale Tyson - Careless Soul (Clubhouse Records, 8 April 2016).

Cale Tyson, born and bought up in Texas, now calls Nashville his adopted home.  Both these facts, perhaps unsurprisingly, have had a considerable bearing on his music but in ways that are either not immediately apparent to the mainstream Nashville music industry of the major labels or not to its liking for artistic (and by implication audience) control...
There is a great deal of tradition involved here - this is country soul - but very little pastiche. It was recorded in Muscle Shoals, AL, at Fame Studios and with top-drawer acoustic musicians. This is part of a wider revival and indeed re-invention of traditional country subject material. Careless Soul comprises twelve songs:

• Staying Kind
• Somebody Save Me
• Careless Soul
• Easy
• Traveling Man
• Pain in My Heart
• Railroad Blues
• Dark Dark
• High Lonesome Hill
• Gonna Love a Woman
• Pain Reprise
• Ain't It Strange

A fact perhaps more surprising is that it will be released in the UK before its North American release. In the last decade the change in attitude in the UK towards this kind of music - let's group it under the broad church of folk, roots and Americana just for the purposes of the here and now - has been nothing short of seismic. The traffic in artists has been bi-directional. A look at festival line-ups either side of the Atlantic, for 2016 or in the previous few years, will soon show that to be true.

Why has this happened?
Well I certainly don't know that, but it appears not to be a result simply of a single generation. Both artists producing such music and the audiences attracted by them have been becoming younger without, unusual historically-speaking, alienating older listeners; it pains me to feel I ought to count myself amongst the older listeners. The most encouraging thing is the egalitarian nature of the younger ones and the everyone-has-something-to-bring attitude to all this.

Cale Tyson came to the wider attention of UK audiences in 2015 when Clubhouse records released Introducing Cale Tyson, which is a complete synthesis of his previous two EPs/mini-albums High On Lonesome (2013) and Cheater's Wine (2014) that had only had official US releases.
As a taster, because I like it and it displays some of the old-time flavour, I have chosen this original song:


'Old Time Blues', the song later appeared on the High On Lonesome EP, live in Nashville, 26 March 2013.

Should you be wondering who the backing vocalist is, on the left as viewed here, it is Erin Rae and she releases her début album Soon Enough together with her band, as Erin Rae and The Meanwhiles and again through Clubhouse Records in the UK on 3 June 2016. I mentioned it here a couple of months ago. The pedal steel player in the above video, Brett Resnick, is also one of 'The Meanwhiles'.
I think it important that music is starting to rediscover that there is real value to be found in simple links like this. Music as a space to be shared by all those involved, from musicians to audience, rather than dog-eat-dog, short-sighted exploitation. That is another reason why learning to trust artists, independent labels, festivals and one's own instinct is coming to the fore again as a community aspiration after far too many years under the patriarchal hegemony of the major label system.

Added April 7, 2016:


Cale Tyson and the making of Careless Soul.
Another example of the change that all this represents are the possibilities provided by crowd funding. My next post is likely to be about an album made possible that way.

2013 In Music - Albums - Part 2

Despite what I said I might do in the last part of this review series, this is not EPs and mini- albums of 2013. It is the second tranche of 'albums of 2013'. The former category is proving far more fascinating, and therefore complex, than I imagined even a couple of weeks ago. It will have to await my attention this coming weekend. The first part afforded you one album that was largely sung in a foreign language. This will include another but the comfort is that at least both of them are sung in the same foreign language. I make no excuses about this, the links, or indeed the variety of music included. You won't catch me adding a link to NME very often but here I chose to do so:

• Danni Nicholls - A Little Redemption
• Deap Vally - Sistrionix
• Emily Barker and The Red Clay Halo - Dear River
• Ethan Johns - If Not Now Then When?
• Joanna Gruesome - Weird Sister
• Joanne Shaw Taylor - Songs From The Road
• Lanterns on the Lake - Until The Colours Run
• Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin - Mynd
• Siddi - Un Tro
• Texas - The Conversation
• Troubadour Rose - Find An Arrow
• Wild Belle - Isles

I've seen seven of these acts live, four of them more than once, and the other five are well and truly on my list of 'ones to see'. Choose your own favourite, not from these, unless you really want to do that, because it is your turn. Write about it - somewhere, anywhere legal.

Stick No Bills! - a day for posting posters...

I just could not resist adding this one, the latest from a band that I first saw performing live at EOTR 2009 and who are currently in the US for their performances at SXSW 2011.

The best bit, apart from the music of course, is that in this space I can fly-post to my heart's content with near impunity and, yes, you do need the 'Fugitive EP'.

It is free and legal too (see link in poster)!
  
Staying with events taking place across the Atlantic...

Poster art is, happily, still alive and well in the 21st century.

 

No excuses...

If you think that I mostly like old, or new but less well known, albums then while is it true that I might mention them more often here that is not the whole story.
On my way home from work tomorrow I'm going to go to the nearest store and buy a copy of this album:

I can't pretend I don't want it and I'm not remotely ashamed about that. I'm soon going to be in places that might bring back mixed emotions and I'm going to take it with me. White on Blonde is excellent, more imaginative and surprising even, but it was not the one that I then wanted to listen to!
Late last August the album I really wished I had, but wasn't with me, was 'The Hush' by Texas and I'll take it with me this time.

This is another fine, but criminally under-rated, artist/album that is also well and truly on my current play list. I've had this since it was released in 2006 and it never fails to impress me more with every listen!

The music is truly special of course, but then so is the 'digipack' (MEGACD001). It consists of four illustrated sections that fold in on each other and also a lavishly illustrated full-colour booklet that contains all the lyrics.

Goodbye and Go, c/w Speeding Cars, on clear vinyl 7".

If I had made a list of 'My Top Ten Singles' in 2006 then this would certainly have been included...