New Music 2016 - Part 24 - Julianna Barwick - Will

I seem to have posted a large run of 'New Music' posts just recently. Here is yet another and a sneak preview. I've been listening to this on repeat this evening simply because I can and I wish to do so.

Will is released by Dead Oceans in North America and Europe on 6 May 2016.

It follows her 2013 LP Nepenthe, which I mentioned briefly, and is her third full length recording. I'm minded to think that is is also the one that I might come to like the best. I have seen her play live too, at End Of The Road Festival 2013, and that aspect certainly comes highly recommended. She is confirmed to play at Green Man Festival 2016 so that is an opportunity I intend to take. The other thing that I have been doing is listening to it some more, from start to finish and now several times. I'm not as a rule much inclined to pick a couple of stand-out tracks unless of course I feel them to be all that is of-note on offer and here that is not any concern of mine.
I suppose you might attribute this to my pre-digital roots when there were only two things available - the singles or the album purchased in its entirety.

Here is the track listing:

Julianna Barwick - Will:

• St. Apolonia
• Nebula
• Beached
• Same
• Wist
• Big Hollow
• Heading Home
• Someway
• See, Know

Beautiful, dreamy and led by keyboards, it's going to take a small and intimate stage setting to show this at its best live - unless of course she has a grand 'Plan B' to reveal, which is quite possible at least in principle.
At End of The Road 2013 she played the Tipi stage with just understated electric guitar, courtesy of Scott Powell, as accompaniment beyond her own keyboards.

Here she is back then at EOTR 2013. The Walled Garden stage at Green Man 2016 would work perfectly.

Whilst I have nothing live to offer from the new album here is an extended live set recorded at KEXP in Seattle a couple of months later:

Julianna Barwick live at KEXP, Seattle - November 22, 2013.

New Music 2013 - Part 23 - Karima Francis - Black

I received this in the post yesterday and I couldn't wait to give it a thorough listen or three. The word is that I'm liking it very much indeed.
It seems so long ago that I reviewed Karima Francis's first album 'The Author'. It was back in 2009; it was good and so, if maybe less original, was the follow-up 'The Remedy' in 2012. Beneath the surface lay a major career set back. Not very many would have the strength of character to overcome a rejection like that.

Four years later her third album 'Black' is the result of a successful crowd-funding venture. Karima is supported by an excellent band, the members of which apparently coalesced out of nowhere in the matter of a very few days by dint of good fortune and quick thinking on the part of Karima to get them on-board. It is a record just how the tight unit wanted it to sound, working free from outside interference.

Karima Francis - Black:

• Black
• City Walls
• H.W.T.M.C.
• Believe In Love
• Regrets
• It's Alright Now
• Shout
• Remember Me
• Waves
• Perfect Dream
• Blue Moon

I can find no official release date as yet. 140dB Records is managing this release. What I really want to do now is see Karima and the band play live!

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.

New Music 2016 - Part 21 - Ninebarrow - Releasing the Leaves

'Releasing the Leaves' is the second long-player from Dorset folk duo Ninebarrow, comprising John Whitley and Jay LaBouchardiere. It was released on 26 March 2016.

There has long been superstition around a malaise known as "difficult second album syndrome": these days even getting the first album out there and noticed is a huge hurdle. Without a doubt Ninebarrow achieved that, magnum cum laude, with 2014 release 'While The Blackthorn Burns' that I mentioned here.
Like its predecessor 'Releasing the Leaves' consists of a mix of original and traditional tunes and songs. The balance is approximately equal, but you would often be hard pressed to guess which fall into each category. That could be either a blessing or a curse. 
My inclination is much towards the former opinion - this record had a satisfying coherence and that is a very good thing. This is the track list.

• The Pinner
• For a Time
• Lord Exmouth
• To the Stones
• Weave Her a Garland
• Back & Sides
• Three Ravens
• Blood on the Hillside
• Silent Prayer
• Coming Home
• Dark Eyed Sailor

The original songs are for the main part inspired by places that the artists love and the associated stories  This anchors them to the chosen traditional songs. If there were to be a critical counterpoint it is that some of the stand-outs that punctuated 'While The Blackthorn Burns' such as  Mother, whilst all present and correct, need more seeking and attention this time out. That I even feel the need to mention this is a situation quite enviable.
One of my bugbears is LPs that don't contain lyric information. Ninebarrow have gone beyond that here by making a Songbook freely available on-line - this includes both the lyric and also information about the inspiration and stories behind the songs.

I became aware of Ninebarrow not through recorded music and my biggest recommendation of all is to see the duo play live. Here is a slightly unusual slant on that taken from the hundreds of wonderful acoustic sessions that are most often recorded by Jon Earl in his remarkable garden shed in north Somerset - Songs From The Shed.

This is 'The Sea' and "The Shed on Tour" at its temporary home at Larmer Tree Festival, North Dorset, in 2014.

In the Songs From The Shed archive you may discover a cornucopia of music that you had not yet realised quite existed, or  existed but not quite in the form in which it appears here. 

New Music 2016 - Part 20 - Grant-Lee Phillips - The Narrows

After a straight run of UK artists in posts here I guess I ought to return to my other musical influences. This release captured my attention this week and it was an obvious choice after only a few listens.

The Narrows - Grant-Lee Phillips (Yep Roc Records, 18 March 2016).

Careworn and resigned maybe, but not bitter and never malicious, is how this comes across as I listen to it.  Another important thing is that he is certainly no newcomer and I'll leave it to you to explore that aspect should you wish to do so.

This is the track-list :

• Tennessee Rain
• Smoke And Sparks
• Moccasin Creek
• Cry Cry
• Holy Irons
• Yellow Weeds
• Loaded Gun
• Rolling Pin
• Taking On Weight In Hot Springs
• Just Another River Town
• No Mercy In July

An early stand-out is Smoke And Sparks. Yellow Weeds too, but to be honest there is nothing notably weak here in my opinion. I could listen to this whilst holed-up in the depths of winter or, equally, outdoors whilst watching the fire burn down with friends late on a warm summer night.

Here is 'Smoke and Sparks' live:

New Music 2016 - Part 19 - Sam Green and The Midnight Heist - Factory Studio Sessions EP

One of the things that frequently appears at or near the top of the side-bar of this blog is a poster under the title "Musicians to see live in 2016...". This poster will appear there too in a few days time but in the meanwhile here is a thought.
You could see Sam Green and The Midnight Heist at The Isle Of Wight Festival in June. Failing that you can catch the same at Boomtown Festival, Hampshire in mid-August. Or you could see them, eight weeks before the former, without the need for a ferry to the Isle of Wight and with no camping involved either, at a venue that guarantees that you will be amongst a crowd that does not exceed a hundred persons!
Cast your eyes to the last date on this poster...

Marnhull Acoustic Sessions - Sunday, 17 April 2016. Tickets: £11 (inc. £1 booking fee).

Note added 11 April 2016:

The above performance has been postponed to a later date, to be announced. Tickets are valid for the rescheduled date or refunds can be obtained by contacting Marnhull Acoustic Sessions via the website.

Should you be wondering what the 'Factory Studio Sessions EP', released sometime in April, might sound like then worry not. You can wrap your ears around it right now. That will be as nothing when compared with seeing and hearing the band live.

Sam Green & The Midnight Heist - The Factory Studio Sessions EP.

Note added 11 May 2016:

Sam Green and The Midnight Heist is now confirmed to play Green Man Festival 2016, on the Chai Wallah's stage.

New Music 2016 - some things forthcoming...

It is true that I have not written here for a fortnight. What is not true is that things have stagnated hereabouts. Far from it indeed - I have been listening both recorded, and sometimes live, to all kinds of things. That includes artists playing at festivals that I am attending this summer as well as many others that I hope I might see live too.

This is the very latest that I have seen live, as in yesterday evening, and I'll be mentioning this tiny venue again very soon indeed!

Megson, Marnhull Acoustic Sessions, 20 March 2016.

Megson have a new LP 'The Good Times Will Come Again' that is released on 27 May 2016 and they played a few tracks from it in their extended set yesterday evening. It will not disappoint methinks.

That isn't however the forthcoming album to which I am listening as I write. I'm listening to one that I have already mentioned here. It is released 25 March 2016 and I'll say nothing more about it...  at least for now.

That is not even to mention all the artists added to festival lists in the last few weeks. Some I have seen before, some I never have, some I just can't wait to see once again. Then there is everything else.

New Music 2016 - Part 18 - Moulettes - Preternatural

Brighton-based, Moulettes return soon with their fourth long-player. The band's core remains, with Hannah Miller and Ruth Skipper providing most lead vocals in the past as well as a variety of instruments less commonly seen, including bassoon and autoharp.  There is a new band member for this project and that is Raevennan Husbandes (vocals and electric guitar).
What I strongly suspect is that the Moulettes' universe of unpredictable alt-folk-prog-rock is going to expand again.
Whereas a loose theme of their last LP, Constellations (2014) was the unknown boundaries presented by cosmology this one is taking a journey into the last unknown frontiers of planet earth --- from a tiny nematode worm (Halicephalobus mephisto and the title of track 4) to all the strange creatures, both newly discovered and those yet unknown to humankind, that inhabit dark and cold (or otherwise the very hot volcanic vents) of the ocean depths and similar inhospitable environments. What I am quite certain about is that the musical vision that accompanies such esoteric subject material will not disappoint.

Moulettes - Preternatural (27 May 2016).
It can be pre-ordered here (at a discount) in many formats and also bundled with related merchandise.

Moulettes - Preternatural:

• Behemooth
• UnderWaterPainter
• Coral
• Hidden World (Halicephalobus mephisto)
• Pufferfish Love
• Patterns
• Rite Of Passage
• Medusa
• Parasite
• Bird Of Paradise (Part II)
• Silk

Moulettes tour the UK in April/May and internationally thereafter.

New Music 2016 - Part 17 - Låpsley - Long Way Home

After a few posts rather defined by their predominantly acoustic outlook here is a change of emphasis. I return to things most decidedly electronic, and also to these shores, with Long Way Home, the first full LP from Låpsley. She hails from Formby, which is a town on the coast of north-west England.
She was the UK Blog Sound 2015 poll winner and, despite a number of short format releases including one that I mentioned then, the wait has seemed a long one. A couple of songs from those releases also appear here but to be fair it was worth it. It should also be borne in mind that the artist behind all of this doesn't turn twenty for almost six months. 

Låpsley - Long Way Home (XL Recordings, 4 March 2016).

I have given the record a couple of plays and I like it. It is much too early to say what I might regard as album highlights, however. It is perhaps at its best on contemplative tracks such as 'Love is Blind'.

There is also a growing body of evidence that indicates Låpsley is an artist I wish to see play live.

New Music 2016 - Part 16 - Half Deaf Clatch - The Life and Death of A.J Rail

I was sure that I had mentioned this before but it seems not. If I have then I'm simply going to do it again.
Sometimes it takes a really shit and needlessly frustrating day to make one realise just how important music is. And how healing it might prove to be. I had some ideas earlier this week about writing another "virtual trip in music" as the first amused me in the making and I now have several itineraries in mind.

Tonight however is the time for this, and simply this...

Half Deaf Clatch - The Life and Death of A.J Rail (2015, self-released).

I saw Half Deaf Clatch play live in Frome at an intimate gig last year and it rates amongst the best performances I saw all year. Great clawhammer banjo blues and slide guitar, without any ornamentation, combined with his gritty vocals and earthy songs.

I'm too frazzled to write a detailed review just now. On the other hand I'm delighted to see that I wasn't the only one to be so impressed. This (in English) is one such from across the water courtesy of Blues Magazine in the Netherlands.

Here, with archive video from the US Signal Corps that will be familiar in essence to some in the UK during the winter now ending, is the song '1927 Flood' taken from the above-mentioned album.

Half Deaf Clatch is very much on my list of artists to see live again and his other recordings are well worth searching out too. It just so happens that the artist comes from Hull, UK.

Note added 11 May 2016:
The Life and Death of A.J Rail is now one of the British Blues Awards 2016 finalists in the category 'Blues Album'.

New Music 2016 - Part 15 - Margo Price - Midwest Farmer's Daughter

The first I heard about what is to follow was just a song.  Three things struck me about it all at once:

• The vocals - my first thoughts were Melanie and Lindi Ortega.
• The lyric and attitude - reminiscent of those of Loretta Lynn, not to mention the above.
• The falling-scale slide guitar arpeggio.

'Desperate and Depressed', for that was clearly its title, is not perhaps the most welcoming of introductions but that wasn't going to evince anything other than an immediate need to find who was singing and what is going on here.  A fourth thing and an assumption, which turned out to be correct, was that it wasn't a cover of a song that I simply hadn't heard before.  If it had been such then it was certainly due some time in the sun anyway...

Let us start with the lyric, if only because I haven't featured them so much of late.

Desperate and Depressed

I'm pissed off at the number of people that I meet

Who go to shake my hand with a viper up their sleeve.

They freeze me out in winter, burn me up all summer.

Try to take my money when I'm desperate and depressed.

Ain't it a mess.

I've played for free and paid for the miles on my truck.

Got no sleep in motels cause the worry keeps me up.

It almost drives me crazy thinking about my baby

And how he's gonna love me if I'm desperate and depressed

Can't get no rest.

Momma never told me that things would be this way.

Daddy tried to warn me that there'd be hell to pay.

If I can't find the money then I can't buy the time.

I'm stuck here making someone else's dime.

We busked in Sarasota. I made twenty-seven bucks.

I wept for Richard Manuel thinking I might have his luck.

You talked behind my back but only stabbed me in the front.

But don't think you can hurt me cause I'm desperate and depressed.

Ain't it a mess.

Please, somebody tell me how to make it stop

This world feels like a roller coaster I just can't get off

Tried rehab and probation, tried self-medication

But none of that can cure you when you're desperate and depressed

Ain't it a mess

Momma never told me that things would be this way.

Daddy tried to warn me that there'd be hell to pay.

But if I can't find the money then I can't buy the lie.

Oh, ten percent of nothing ain't a dime.

So don't you try to sell me back what's mine

I'll be desperate and depressed until I die

This song is the b-side of a vinyl 7".

You can give it a virtual spin here...

...but this track didn't make it on to the LP.*

The a-side is Hurtin' On The Bottle (a co-write with Caitlin Rose and others) and the single was released in late 2015 to promote the soon-to-be-released début LP, Midwest Farmer's Daughter, by East Nashville's Margo Price.

Midwest Farmer's Daughter - Margo Price (Third Man Records, 25 March 2016).

A point that is worthy of note is that this LP was recorded, mixed and mastered before it was presented, fait accompli, to would-be labels. Most of them simply said "no" or, if not exactly that, wished to mould it to the sensibility of their perceived market; in other words suck all the originality out it.
This is the track-listing:

Margo Price - Midwest Farmer's Daughter

1. Hands of Time
2. About to Find Out
3. Tennessee Song
4. Since You Put Me Down
5. Four Years of Chances
6. This Town Gets Around
7. How the Mighty Have Fallen
8. Weekender
9. Hurtin' On the Bottle
10. World's Greatest Loser

Taken from it is this, recorded live:

Since You Put Me Down

Note added 8 March 2016:

Margo Price was today confirmed as appearing at End The Road Festival 2016.

Writing in The New Yorker last month, this is what Sarah Larson had to say about Midwest Farmer's Daughter:
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/sarah-larson/listen-to-margo-price

Note added 15 April 2016:
* Desperate and Depressed was, in the event, added to the UK release of Midwest Farmer's Daughter. At least on Spotify about five minutes after it's release there.

New Music 2016 - Part 14 - Paula Ryan - Let Me Fly

New releases and artist confirmations of festival dates are both starting to warm up now, even if the weather isn't. There are certainly exciting things on the horizon but today I've decided to go with a very recently released album.

Paula Ryan - Let Me Fly (self-released, 19 February 2016).

This is certainly an album with strong elements of folk, and Irish folk too for a couple of tracks are sung either in whole or part in Gaelic and some of the instrumentation flows from that. This includes bouzouki so file that influence under 'Planxty' but only for now; it is a subtle indication of the need to look much further than that here.

A number of songs here have distinctly African influences and instrumentation [A Thousand Smiling Faces, Lion In A Cage - in particular] and I have to say that I am drawn as much to these as the more, um, traditionally traditional songs. So what?
It is true that I have fallen for specific examples, particularly when seen and heard live, a few times before... I'm beginning to think that I might need to pay the panopoly that is 'World Music' more attention. One thing that I don't like too much, and it has nothing the do with any of the music itself, is the semantic associated with that term itself. There seems something rather dismissive, indeed disparaging, about lumping the vast proportion of all worldwide musical tradition together under a catch-all couplet.

After that serious interlude, for in large part the album is playful (not least the silliness of Honest John), here is the track listing:

• A Thousand Smiling Faces
• Let Me Fly
• Suantraí Donnacha
• Honest John
• Lion in a Cage
• Havin' the Craic!
• Black Swan
• Don't Cry
• Castaway
• The Funny One
• Song for Conor
• Donnacha's Lullaby

The modern side of English folk is here too. The title track is a song-biography of aviatrix Amy Johnson.

Donnacha's Lullaby is Suantraí Donnacha in English.

New music, Canada and forthcoming festivals...

Only yesterday I was thinking that I hadn't written about new Welsh music for sometime and so I did something about that. I used to write about music from Canada rather often too, indeed it was Arcade Fire that were in large part responsible for my conversion to festival-going, and therefore Latitude Festival, back in 2007.

Here are two Canadian acts that I have never seen live before but are appearing at festivals to which I'm going this coming summer. One thing I am confident about is that nobody could claim that both fall into a single genre. Both have new records to bring to the party, however.

Basia Bulat - Good Advice (Secret City Records, 12 February 2016).

This release is rather more pop-oriented than her earlier acoustic and folk-oriented material that regularly featured hammered dulcimer and autoharp. She is playing End Of The Road Festival, Dorset, UK, and hopefully we will get the best of both worlds.

The Besnard Lakes - A Coliseum Complex Museum (Jagjaguwar Records, 22 January 2016).

The Besnard Lakes is, more or less, the project of  husband-and-wife team Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas. One thing that that they do very well is psych-rock. I have all the earlier LPs too but this is the latest and in any case my liking for this is hardly breaking news. One accusation levelled against the band is that it sticks to the theme too much...  another is that the album is too short; earlier ones were criticised for being too long.
You just can't win!
Any which way, The Besnard Lakes play Green Man Festival 2016.  See what you think. See you there?

New Music 2016 - Part 13 - Cowbois Rhos Botwnnog IV

It's been a while since I mentioned any new music from Wales. It has been far longer since I mentioned seeing Cowbois Rhos Botwnnog play live at the only edition of No Direction Home Festival back in June 2012. That was around the time of the release of their album 'Draw Dros Y Mynydd', which I've just been listening to once again. Here is the briefest of summaries - country-inflected rock sung entirely in Welsh.

It's been a while in the making but the new LP - Cowbois Rhos Botwnnog IV - is due 25 March.

Beyond that I know almost nothing at all. I'd love to see the band live at a festival again. Maybe Green Man (away across the mountains but still in their native Wales) or End Of The Road?

Note added June 2016:
Cowbois Rhos Botwnnog is now confirmed to appear at Green Man 2016.

A virtual Sunday roots - Americana - bluegrass road trip.

This was sparked by a comment from a US friend about a band recently seen live (twice) and how good it was. Today I have listened on rotation to these three LPs whilst doing routine jobs around the house. I haven't had the good fortune to see any of these artists live, yet.

It prompted me to think about an artist whose début LP I happened across a couple months back and then never got around to mentioning.  Of the three that is the one that I shall start with and it is the only one that consists largely of traditional tunes and songs; they were both collected and arranged by the artist, Jake Xerxes Fussell. That is indeed his name from birth and splendid it most certainly is. Much of the music here is acoustic singer-with-guitar material but lap-steel and fiddle feature too. 

Released: 26 January 2015 (Paradise of Bachelors)

I could have chosen almost anything here. Not a single song showcases the diversity that is sampled from the original sources. In the end I chose 'Star Girl' as it displays more of the instruments on offer here than some other tracks.

The next that I shall mention is the one recommended to me this morning and therefore the seed from which this conceptual road trip grew. Originally hailing from a slew of places across the US the five members, none were known one to another before they found themselves in Portland, OR in 2014.  In a matter of months they became Crow and The Canyon. From that point on they toured solidly, mostly in the Pacific Northwest, writing what would become their first LP 'Leaving Soon'.

It was released 9 June 2015 (CD Baby).

To a great extent this is their own material and it covers, indeed fuses a wide variety of styles across the folk, country and bluegrass spectrum. As Crow and the Canyon had been recommended to me this was actually where I started this 'road trip' but in terms of story-telling it seems to fit best in the midst of the three. It is invidious to attempt to choose just one track to illustrate this, but I'm going to try anyway.

The final piece in this trilogy is The Lil Smokies from Montana. This is very much led by modern bluegrass.

It was released 28 June 2013 (CD Baby).

'Mending The Fence' live in Missoula, MT, 2013.

New Music 2016 - Part 12 - Sunflower Bean - Human Ceremony

I have both an ear open for and an eye on artists that are playing festivals that I'm planning on attending in 2016.
Therefore this three-piece from Brooklyn, NY comes to my attention sooner rather than later. While their neighbourhood is famous for much musically, when thinking about recent years indie-rock possibly isn't the first thing that might have come to mind.
That, however, is what Jacob Faber (drums), Julia Cumming (bass and vocals) and Nick Kivlen (guitar and vocals) do. The last mentioned (front-centre below) looks so like 'Blonde on Blonde' era Dylan that it simply can't be a coincidence.

Human Ceremony is the début LP. Fat Possum Records, 5 February 2016.

To pigeon-hole their music in place or time is tricky but it might be dreamy rock to assuage worrying thoughts and, be that as it may, their reputation for live performance is growing rapidly.  Sunflower Bean is playing End Of The Road Festival 2016.

This is the official video for 'Wallwatcher'.

New Music 2016 - Part 11 - Freakwater - Scheherazade

When an LP takes its title from a Persian queen-consort, she was also the storyteller for One Thousand and One Nights, one might conclude that things are not going to be exactly straightforward. You are right but I'll try to keep this post concise.

It is also an example of two points I feel that I often make:
The first is that trying to fit music into little 'genre-boxes' is at best a waste of time that is far better spent finding and listening to music. At worst it is misguided and distracts from the investigation of "new" music by others simply because they may perceive it to be beyond their habitual comfort-zone.
Tied in to this is the second; there is so much music available to find that keeping an open mind and setting out on a voyage simply to find whatever may be out there seems a pretty good option to me. The few useful navigation aids en route are those things the judgement of which one has learned to respect. That could be applied to a festival of which the line-up is as yet unknown when one books a ticket or, as in this case, a record label - Bloodshot Records.  This post also adheres to one of the few founding principles of this blog and it is that I don't waste my energy on writing about things that I don't like.

Scheherazade is the first new Freakwater record in over a decade.
It was released in North America 5 February 2016 and will be so in Europe 12 February 2016 on LP, CD and d/l.

The LP cover screams 1970s to me - the interlocked and curvy typeface, the colors and optical-illusory carpet of the motel room both - but that is not what it sounds like.
Not. At. All. The vocals are handled, as they always have been for this is Freakwater album #8, by Janet Bean and Caroline Irwin who both hail from Louisville, Kentucky.

This is the track list:

Freakwater - Scheherazade

• What the People Want
• The Asp and the Albatross
• Bolshevik and Bollweevil
• Down Will Come Baby
• Falls of Sleep
• Take Me With You
• Velveteen Matador
• Skinny Knee Bone
• Number One With a Bullet
• Memory Vendor
• Missionfield
• Ghost Song

I reckon that you best go figure what else, if anything, it reminds you of. I haven't decided that myself but I like the whatever-that-it-is and I that's quite good enough for me, at least for now.

What's next?

With this season's festival attendances now more-or-less decided there are a few months in which to consider things other than, as well as, the waves of new and not-so-new music that wash over us.
Maybe a few clues can be found in the side bar of this blog and I'm thinking that it is perhaps time to have a look at songs that have been covered...
That might be the original version (quite impossible in the case of many traditional songs), the most well known version and maybe others too.
I know that there are several songs that I thought were 'original' to a certain artist (if not necessarily composed by that artist, which is another issue) but that I have since discovered most certainly were not.
Quite how I might actually achieve this is something of a mystery right now but I like the idea of attempting it.

New Music 2016 - Part 10 - Erin Rae and The Meanwhiles - Soon Enough

More music from across the Atlantic...

The good people at Clubhouse Records here in the UK have announced that their latest signing is Erin Rae and The Meanwhiles and that the début LP 'Soon Enough' will be released in the UK on 3 June.
Having been told this I felt it incumbent on me to see what I could find out about the artist, band and music. One of the first reviews that I read opined that it was perfect listening for a Sunday afternoon. I also discovered that as it was self-released as a download, as well as vinyl and CD, in the US in September 2015 I was able to listen to it.
I am inclined to agree with that review, which is why I am writing this one grey and windy Sunday afternoon here in southern England.
The first thing that struck me is that Erin Rae has a soothing voice; she doesn't push its boundaries or resort to the histrionic, but that is not to say that it lacks weight or purpose. The songs talk of a variety of themes both dark and light and, while instrumentation associated with "country" such as pedal-steel loom large, it is hard to categorize the music.

The whole LP was recorded live over two days in West Tennessee and it maintains that essence of existing in its own three-dimensional space --- where modern folk, roots and country mingle and in so-doing may become beyond place and time.
That is possibly the greatest achievement of all, and some of the songs do just this.

From that LP this is 'Clean Slate', live in Nashville, August 2015.