For the love of music
Having beguiled many new followers with last year’s slowly-intoxicating Blood Rushing, it’s inevitable that urges to explore Josephine Foster’s back catalogue are strong amongst some late-comers. Yet it’s not an easy journey to navigate; with Foster’s past wares scattered between multiple labels (Locust Music, Bo’Weavil, Fire Records … [Read more...]
Throughout their career, Grizzly Bear has always ensured a sound that is both aesthetically ominous and darkly atmospheric. In many ways, their Yellow House album was as much about the spectrum of sound they explored, as it was about honest, sincere songwriting. Before and after that album it’s always been a superb spectral sound behind their … [Read more...]
I spent an inordinate amount of my time in 2011 listening to music by – and reviewing records for – artists who found themselves tangled up in the media frenzy of lo-fi and chillwave. Often a smeary but no less loveable pastiche of indecipherable vocals, willfully retro synthesizers, and staggering reverb, artists like Neon Indian and Washed … [Read more...]
Pigeonholing an album like Life Span of the Moth doesn’t come easily. Assembled from scraps of looped percussion samples, spoken word meditations, bedroom folk, and post-rock atmospheres, this tenth album from San Diego-by-way-of-Pittsburgh songwriter Justin Vellucci conspires to fuse the brittle introspections of Bill Callahan or Leonard Cohen … [Read more...]
There’s always a little bit of desire in the way one feels after taking an album in for the first time. On their self-titled debut Real Estate ensured that music could be both melodically-strong while still maintaining an air of dreamy escape. The desire left behind was the calling for a refined, muscular sound and with Days, the band delivers. … [Read more...]
The swaying nature of music is profuse in being able to control your passions and intentions with a delicate hand. For Long Beach’s The Damngivers, music finds an interesting equilibrium where leadman’s Gerry Gomez’ songwriting is able to fully digress around his band-mates country swoon. With the release of their self-titled five-song EP, … [Read more...]
So much of what music is about is the simple fact that one can testify their own trials and tribulations through the voice of their soaring music. As you hear Jared Mees & the Grown Children sing about how they wanna ‘shake shake shake all these blues away’ to the faint glimmer of tapping percussion and melting vocals in the background you … [Read more...]
For Toronto-based band The Rural Alberta Advantage, music has always been a work in progress. Perhaps it’s been something that they’ve worked through – starting off humbly and being selected as one of eMusic’s top rising bands before signing to Saddle Creek in 2009. The trio that consists of singer Nils Edenloff and musicians Amy Cole and … [Read more...]
Hardly a familiar name to many people, singer/songwriter Benjamin Durdle (whose main profession is that of architect) has placed his songbook into the care of his sometime collaborator (as one half of Avenging Unicorns), theatrical producer and music critic Evan Sawdey. Sawdey has persuaded a large number of other bands and musicians to record … [Read more...]
European folk is arguably the oldest style around today. Bands of the 1960s and 70s like Jethro Tull, Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention modernized the art, but their material was influenced by lore and poetry dating back centuries in the annals of UK history. Although you might expect such a band to have many members, in the case of Lehto & … [Read more...]