review: David Rosenfield- Son of Ojito

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on July 13, 2011.

To start, David Rosenfield’s Son of Ojito promises an interesting mix, a veritable gumbo, of poetry, folk, blues, punk-rock storytelling. The fourteen tracks seethe with pledges of unorthodox hippy ditties in the vane of mewithoutYou or Edward Sharpe, but ultimately fail to deliver the goods on that oath. The result is an album of busky, suitcase songs, tinged with open-mic emoting and Shel Silverstein jejunery.

This album was incredibly approachable and, for me, initially appealing. Lest you think I’m being too hard on this one, let me try to explain. I wanted to love it; I wanted to sink my teeth into the zanily imaginative snapshots. To put it culinarily: I wasn’t expecting fine dining. I wasn’t hungry for fillet or lobster. I didn’t expect silverware or cloth napkins. I was okay with that. It seemed Rosenfield’s album was to be some sort of fused streetfood, served in a corn tortilla out of the side of an old plumbing truck, alloying cultures and sensibilities. I readied my taste-(ear)buds, and prepared a makeshift bib out of a single-ply napkin, but when I took my first bite, it lacked the basics, the salt and the pepper, and the chicken was a bit on the pink side.

Underdeveloped, most tunes lacked the passion and believability they warranted. Sing It exudes some of the Danielsonian charm, laced with dormy acoustics and a campy chorus, that this artist and album are capable of. “Streetlights Playing Dixie” sounds like a song begun in one of John Darnielle’s old notebooks, while “The Cat’s Meowing” too bears some of the marks of playful potential.

Rosenfield will undoubtedly continue to cook. My hope is not only that these tunes continue to marinate and develop, but also that he hones his unique recipes into something even more square and satisfying.

Rating: 2.5/10

review: Skylar Gudasz & The Ugly Girls- Two Headed Monster

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on June 7, 2011.

After the bizarre announcement earlier this year that Rufus Wainwright would father the resulting offspring of himself and Leonard Cohen’s daughter, the mere metaphor of musical love-childhood largely pales. Skylar Gudasz may not be the real or imagined kin of such folk giants as a Cohen, a Wainwright, or, say Joni Mitchell, but her and her compatriots’ debut forces such family resemblances.

Two Headed Monster, while clocking in at a all-too-brief twenty nine minutes, weaves tales of midnight-lovers and dream-believers, while painting airy, tranced, sonic landscapes. From the opener, which sits you on the steps of a house in Nowheresville (which simultaneously doubles as Anytown, USA), there is both a fantastic unfamiliarity and a comforting mundanity to the scenery that only happens while you dream.

The warm, trademarked organ whir of producer Jeff Crawford continues on the second track, Killing, perhaps the most accessible and infectious of the album. Gudasz leaves behind the mystery and mystique of Hotel Chelsea lobby muzak for a just a moment to surprisingly channel the absolute best of a nineties coffeehouse Sheryl Crow.

Bison re-injects the kind of tension and drama that can only lead to the extrication of someone who “ain’t taking your words as roots no more.” The freedom of her characters’ newfound “fast sets of legs” sprint throughout the remainder of the album amid the Ugly Girls’ (spoiler alert: they’re really boys!) poppy “badda bahs” and William Taylor’s precise tone on his diligent solos. Skylar’s voice only gets deeper and richer as the album winds to the end of its breathless half hour.

The shape-noted O West closes by employing a gifted choir of some of Triangle NC’s finest young guns. As the choristers’ voices rise Casey Toll’s gravitational double bass tethers the ghoulish party to the studio floor. Keep your eye and ears on this young band, such a mature debut can only lead to yet unexplored, dreamier, more expansive vistas.

Rating: 8/10

review: Arthur Alligood- I Have Not Seen The Wind

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on March 15, 2011.

Who has seen the wind?

Neither I nor you:

But when the leaves hang trembling,

The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I:

But when the trees bow down their heads,

The wind is passing by.

-Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

I know nobody wants to be preached at. I know no one wants to be made aware of where they’ve come up short. Where they could do better. Where their vision is blurry, their faith shaky, their knowledge incomplete. Where they took what wasn’t theirs or thought better or worse than was the case. But maybe our best friends are those that know how to preach to us without coming off as self-righteous. They tell us the kind of truth that make us want to be the kind of person that believes it. Maybe the most intimate conversations are just really good sermons. Maybe confessing your own crap is the best homeletical move: vulnerability over fire and/or brimstone. And maybe good sermons can be better poems. Maybe they can even be woven into an album of great songs.

Enter Arthur Alligood: a preacher disguised as a folk singer. At the get-go, Alligood hums the sparse tune “Show Some Heart,” pleading earnestly with the listener to let down some walls, unlock some doors, and follow some of those suppressed dreams. He might as well have written this tune with a busted guitar over late-night drinks with Bill Mallonee.

He hauls the next several songs over Wallflowers dirt roads, all chugging percussion and whining steel. Just as I Have Not Seen the Wind starts really moving with Nashvillian adroitness, Alligood crashes with the confessional “Piece Me Together.” And in so doing, he empties any pretention that he knows exactly where he’s going.

Alligood re-mounts his whistle-stop soapbox on “Gavel”: the sweetest, most Townes Van Zandt-ian polemic against hypocrisy and shallow judgmentalism I’ve ever heard. Instead of harping on the sodden now, or looking for a clean-slated future, he asks us to remember the past when we “were better as a criminal begging for a second chance.”

The title track, for me, actually surpasses Alligood’s own humbly-opinioned tune for best-written song on the album. Alligood grafts an image from the Bible into an allusive and illustrative prayer. The small, humble situatedness that Alligood shares with Christiana Rossetti and sings like Josh Ritter is a powerful centerpiece, a saw dust altar call, of sorts, to the type of meekness that shall inherit the earth.

Rating: 8.4/10

review: luz- Light Among Other Things

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on March 14, 2011.

In just under 32 minutes, Charlotte, NC’s luz (formatted that way) manages to bring you on a bumpy sonic ride of fear, faith, and vulnerability. The goal of this project, seemingly, from a band with such a name, is to illuminate via lyric and musical texture what it means to move from dark to light; despair and disrepair to hope and wholeness. Interspersed with screeching atmospheric guitar and affective ambient noise, the EP is an offering from an honest young artist to do just this.

Stephen Morrison strives to express and discover what it means to have “religion” and “try believing.” The record’s opener, “Nobody Knows My Name,” reads as a hopeful lament. The blues: frustrated with stuck-ness, fearful of the pain that change might involve, but hopeful for that better future. There’s always a tinge of hope in the blues.

“Try Believing” continues this narrative, starts to employing more of the light (than the “other things”) in order to dream of possibilities, and to struggle to find an apt “object for affection.“ The future again proves simultaneously hopeful and dreadful. Kids. Family. Fulfillment. Security. In the immediate present: none of this, and no way to get there. This is an achingly practical take on what it means to believe. To believe that these will come about, to not despair in how long they take to form, and to not force the issue in the meanwhile. The substance of the belief we’re being invited into being “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

The next few tracks shed but more glow on the danger of living this way, leaving behind. “What I Leave” and “Come On Honey” weave eerie vocal harmonies and aggressive guitar sections to form a tapestry of regret-tinged remembrance and forward-moving closure.

Finally, “Effect” (which could have come right off of For Emma, Forever Ago), uses Bon Iver’s sprawling falsetto to close the journey. This is perhaps the short album’s pinnacle, where the band most artfully combines all the threads its been pulling, with the effect of exposing the false and pursuing “new ways to get born.”

Rating: 6.7/10

jamming: Top Ten for 2010

Written for The Blue Indian, 22 December 2010.

10. Women and Country- Jakob Dylan

Wallflowers’ front and legendary folk offspring continued to tick off his list of Hall of Fame producers this year.  With the help of T Bone Burnett behind the board and Kelly Hogan and Neko Case in the background, he manages to craft a set typically textured and heart-rung ballads that would as easily soundtrack a John Steinbeck novel as they would a Nashville barroom.

9. Here’s to Taking It Easy- Phosphorescent

I caught onto this one pretty late, but am glad I did.  A cross between Bonny “Prince” Billy’s winsome folk and Band of Horses alt-whine, Matt Houck turns in an LP without any gloss or accoutrement, just the basics.  The pedal steel on tracks like “Heaven Sittin’ Down” complement his rambling vocals, and the sparse harmonious tracks like “Nothin Was Stolen” harken to Bon Iver at his de-Autotuned finest.

8. Man of Few Words- Brett Harris

From the first few strums on opener “I Found Out” to the final bluish self-pity on “Over and Over,” Man of Few Words offers a plentitude of neo-Brit-pop nostalgia.  You only get this type of music when it seeps out of the pores of someone so reared on McCartney and Costello, that even “safer” alt-country breaks (“Unspoken”) bear the infectious melodies, showmanship, and profundity of such predecessors. 

7. Cut Loose- The Tomahawks

Born of a songwriting backlog, Cut Loose is no haphazard dustpan of songs.  Instead you find a complete and well-ordered mix of classic sounds and subjects repackaged by one of the most talented collectives (in every sense of the word) in one of the most overlooked music scenes (Raleigh-Durham-Carrboro).  Moments like the first few seconds on “Hearts” or the sweeping Wilco-esque solo on Reason or Rhyme speak of more and better to come for this posse.

6. All Alone in an Empty House- Lost in the Trees

Orchestral folk music: perhaps the sub-genre with the highest potential for pretension.  Instead, Ari Picker brilliantly conducts an album with so much emotion and vulnerability, anger, strife, memory, and hope that to patently discard it on those grounds discard it would be a huge mistake.  My favorite tracks “Song For The Painter,” “Love on My Side,” and “A Room Were Your Paintings Hang,” display a deft self-awareness without being self-absorbed.  What you get is a hybrid of Conor Oberst and Andrew Bird:  screamingly honest and urgent, though playful, complex, and artistic.

5. The Suburbs- Arcade Fire 

The “biggest indie album of the year” that got everyone questioning what that really means anymore anyway, got me wondering something else.  Just when exactly did Arcade Fire become the heir apparent to Radiohead and U2?  It wasn’t during Funeral.  Not quite during the darkly topical Neon Bible.  Surprisingly, it took a potentially painful concept album to get there.  I wasn’t too interested in a heavy-handed hipster dirge to all things suburban, but that’s not what I got.  Instead Butler and Co. put together a complex jeremiad of a spent and sometimes misspent youth. 

4. Up From Below- Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

The superlative for Weirdest Cult/Traveling Musical Gypsy Circus goes to these guys.  They also wrap up the companion superlative for Least Likely Band to Pull Down Constant Car and NFL Commercial Licensing.  From start to finish this album is my favorite kind of trip.

3. Wild Hunt/Sometimes the Blues is Just a Passing Bird- The Tallest Man on Earth

A powder-keg of lyrical intensity, Kristian Matsson chimes in with two solid albums.  The latter EP, shows no drop-off from the brilliant early year full-length.  Tracks like “Kids on the Run” or “Like a Wheel” jerk at your tear ducts, while anthemic “The Dreamer” and “King of Spain” buoy those blues. To date all of the cover art matches, and his songwriting is so strong that you get the feeling that these albums come easy, that he could do this output every year for the rest of his life and us listeners would be better for it.  

2. Libraries- The Love Language

Part of a powerful triumvirate of national albums put out this year by Merge Records (including She & Him and Arcade Fire).  Stu McLamb steps up his low-fi, soul-biting swagger from the eponymous debut on this crushing sophomore effort.  My faves include playful yet pensive “Summer Dust,” slide guitar licked “This Blood Is Our Own,” and the less-than-Violent Femmed “Heart To Tell.”

1. Sigh No More- Mumford & Sons

I don’t know of anyone that I’ve recommended this album to this year that hasn’t been wooed by the band’s earnest and powerful brit-grass tunes.  From the opening harmonies which harken Fleet Foxes at their best, to “The Cave’s” topsy-turvy image of reality, to the hopeful closer’s assurance of the “time with no more tears,” Marcus Mumford and Co. set out not only to make a brilliant and cohesive musical album, but to craft an inventive vision and definition of faith, hope, and love.  Oh, and there’s banjo too.

I dug these too (in alpha order):  The Black Keys; Broken Bells; Carolina Chocolate Drops; S. Carey; Johnny Cash; Justin Townes Earle; Gayngs; Ray LaMontagne; Luego; Mandolin Orange; Sandra McCracken; Megafaun; Josh Moore; Morning Benders; The Old Ceremony; Josh Ritter; She & Him; Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore; Spoon; Sufjan Stevens; Angus & Julia Stone; Sharon Van Etten; Derek Webb.

review: The Tomahawks- Cut Loose

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on November 2, 2010.

From the soil beneath your feet to the sky above your head, opening track "Dear Mary” sets the tone for the Tomahawks’ expansive debut full-length record. What follows reads like a vintage-rock Farmers’ Almanac, telling stories of changes in mind and season; twists of time and tumult of heart. Said best, “If time can tear the concrete apart, imagine what it does to your heart.”

Second track, “Sunrise,” continues the theses, and serves as a disarmament. Frontman Nick Jaeger empties a suitcase of influences and allusions on the table: Son of a Preacher Man, Fortunate Sons and with Silver Spoon in tow, only missing a cat and a cradle. From the omnipresent ghosts of rock past, Neil Young and Creedance, to current landscapers, Wilco and My Morning Jacket, these unabashed nods allow the band to push onward, to “cut loose” from the company their sound keeps. So Jaeger continues to tell a hopeful story of a dimestore prodigal and like the rest of the album, his honest writing offers the reader faded snapshots, textured and as clear as they need to be. These “mid-fi” rhapsodies echo the album’s smooth but sometimes slurred production.

“Hearts” is a pounding, adventurous rollick. Jaeger’s grouped vocals allow him to wear his heart on his sleeve with the swagger of the kerchief that adorns his neck at the band’s live shows. Beyond the great writing though, this is in a lot of ways a guitar record. Jaeger comes off less as the son of a preacherman and more the son of a luthier.  "A Moment to be Free’s” second half is my favorite portion of the whole album: part sweet harmony, part A Ghost is Born ax battle, building tension, tearing it down and then bleeding into the Comment-styled (Kicking Television) "Reason And Rhyme" to follow.

Benefiting from the indefinite hiatus of Chapel Hill mainstay Max Indian (which featured many of the album talented players), the Tomahawks seem poised to continue to develop their bouncy piano, infectious neon-soaked sing-a-longs, howling organ, and controlled shreds.  Cut Loose is certainly one of my very favorite releases of a year that is rapidly coming to a close.

Rating: 9/10

review: Griffin House- The Learner

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on October 20, 2010.

Griffin, you had me with the first three tracks.  In fact, this record is almost completely about these three.  If You Want To hooked me with a sort of re-packed Tweedy likeability and reeled me in with the line: “So maybe when you’re ready/ and if I’m ever steady enough/ If I’m ever Tom Petty enough/ then I’ll write you a song.”  I went to school in Gainesville; I spent several hours of my most recent summer in rock-umentary training learning just how to run down my dreams.  Petty was the key to getting me on board early.  Petty is the standard of likeable pop-Americana to which artists like Griffin House aspires, and rightfully so.

House continues to cull from a palate of pleasing alt-country on the second track.  It’s hard to ignore the similarities between River City Lights and any track you might like to access off of Ryan Adams and Co.’s Follow The Lights EP.  I’ll even concede House comes off with a sensitivity and a sincerity that I’m not sure Adams is capable of.

The final track of this triumvirate, Standing At The Station, does a pretty fair Bruce Springsteen impression.  If the cover art suggests Darkness-era Boss, the howling squeals demonstrate Nebraska’s rambling swagger; though the chugging tune’s outlaw persona quickly gets dashed as the album spins on.

Beyond these three (perhaps barring the spare Adam-esque Rule the World), the rest of the album falls flat.  It seems that once House veers from these well-known and proved influences, there’s just not the same intensity.  Here’s to hoping that this “learner” continues to sit at the feet of some of the great performers he emulates at the beginning.  He has definitely chosen some of the best of his genre.  But, the remainder of the album makes it painfully obvious that the student has yet to surpass his mentors.

Rating: 4/10

review: The Old Ceremony- Tender Age

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on October 12, 2010.

The Old Ceremony’s vocal leader, Django Haskins, playfully acknowledges that his Chapel Hill band’s fifth LP was originally conceived as a double-EP. He reasons that half of the material is acoustic, the other half the thoroughly textured “pop noir” the band has been cultivating for the better part of a decade. The gimmick never quite came to fruition, and thankfully so. Not that EP’s are bad, but an EP (or two, for that matter) just can’t match the lasting power of a well-made Long Play. The result, the Tender Age LP, gives seasoned fans a worthy continuation of the last two records (Our One Mistake, 2006 and Walk On Thin Air, 2009) and new listeners an apt primer into the homespun drama of this brilliant bunch.

The polyphony and varied influences arrayed on this disc belie its cohesiveness. The best way that I can think to describe Tender Age is as a well thought mix tape, culling voices, moments, and snapshots that, while strange and varied only make sense next to one another. This is the type of album that you can listen to a couple of times and remember which song comes next. Memory fills the pregnant, muted pauses between tracks with the opening bar of the next. These, despite the band’s penchant for writing great melodies and hooks (Haskins furnishes the instrumental play-in music for some local NPR programming), are not singles, but acts of a play; facets of a whole musical digest.

Haskins and co-conspirators craft kick the album off with the title track, pulling in some eastern influences that bespeak of a nagging Harrisonian affinity. The relational lyrics of the opener crack the lid on a gumbo of love, suspicion, loneliness, regret, and vulnerability to follow. Ruined My Plans continues to pour on the dark charm and moody wonderment that the band has patented. Just when the Cohen-esque, minor-chorded melancholy seems to dictate the record’s mood, they change it up with a bouncy pop number, not differing so much in content, but rather style. Within TOC’s own canon, this resembles the delightful Papers In Order of OOM.

The rest, a panoply of diverse yet convergent tunes. All At Once might have been lifted straight from a Frank Black and the Catholics’ record. Good Time has all the crunchy swag of any one of the songs from Spoon’s Gimme Fiction. Rufus Wainwright or Andrew Bird couldn’t have matched Haskins’ theatrics on Wasted Chemistry. My personal favorites are the stripped down and truly Carolinian Wither on the Vine and the pre-Rubin Avett Brothers’ dead-ringer, Never Felt Better. The album closer subtlety chronicles the NC Triangle’s best current attribute: collaboration. Gone Go the Memories bids us a fond farewell amid a buoyant piecemeal chorus featuring a bouquet of local indie rockers (from the The Love Language, Schooner, and Annuals).

Ironically, Tender Age tells a tale not of novelty, youth, or immaturity, but of sly security, adroitness, and versatility. Tune your ear to The Old Ceremony’s best offering to date.

Rating: 8/10

review: Megafaun/Fight the Big Bull/Sharon van Etten/Justin Vernon live @ Hayti Heritage Center

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on September 27, 2010.

We settled into the back pew of Saint Joseph’s AME Zion on a Friday night quite aware that we were in what used to be used as explicitly sacred space.  What I’m not sure we immediately realized, but understood soon enough was that we were there for some sort of revival.

Walking into an empty sanctuary, my eyes sweepingly moved from the elaborate crown molding and ceiling installation to the old balcony hanging close and low enough for the preacher to receive some of the overflow: either rote, fanned air or spontaneous, dripping Hallelujahs! They panned down to the anachronistic contraptions cluttering the stage and the wires pouring into each and every of the 46 channels of the house soundboard.  Then they wandered around what, on this occasion, is  a congregation made up of hipsters, no more or less distracting than the usual Sunday gang, though with get-up constituted of rimmed glasses, beards, and half-sleeve tats rather than pin-striped suits and ornate hats.  An odd “Who’s Who.” Notably, but not exhaustively, filled with Mountain Goats and Rosebuds.  A vast array of the NC Triangle’s best, looking oddly out of place, not because of the ecclesial surroundings, but rather because of their bizarre idleness.  A Friday-night sabbatical.

Finally, hosts/cogs/chief kids-in-the-candy-store, members of avante-folk group Megafaun, took the stage to an anticipatory applause and then sheer, holy silence.  The intro song was a fitting tone-setter for the night.  Armed with a washboard and empty hands made for clapping, the Cook brothers and Joe Westerlund interpreted the old Green Sally Up for new ears.  That was to be a theme for the night: interpretation.  Alluded to and matched only by the other pervading theme: collaboration.  Mumbling, self-deprecating, and assuredly sober, de facto emcee Brad Cook mentioned of the set of songs taken from the box set of Americana standards and obscurities compiled by Alan Lomax, “We found these songs together.  We want to share them with you together.  Here’s how we interpret them.”

As the night wound on, the backing band, Fight The Big Bull, from Richmond VA, not only textured what the Cooks had in mind, but created an entirely new world.  And praise the Lord that they did, because this realm featured some truly special moments and characters.  We saw Bon Iver front man, Justin Vernon (just “Vern” that night…) transfigured before our eyes: from brooding cabin-fevered freak-folker to bolo-tied, Most-Reverend-Al-Green, tambourine man in numbers like Calvary and I Want Jesus to Walk With Me.  We witnessed guest Sharon Van Etten offering her sweetly eerie take on the onomatopoetic nursery rhymes of Almeda Riddle, reminiscent of Natalie Merchant's handling of Woody Guthrie’s set on the Mermaid Avenue discs.  She pulled and tugged at her black slip dress until the bawdy Coll Water Blues slid throughout the late summer evening.  The two combined for a Book of Revelation recounting in Tribulations that yowled truthful tales of dragons and blood baths in a familiar David Rawlings/Gillian Welch idiom.

The climax of the night was one the cool crowd seemed not ready or fully equipped to embrace.  What grew to a critical mass of thirteen musicians on stage at one time lead the “congregation” in shape-note singing and evoked claps, stomps, hallelujahs, and aisle-dancing.  Between the band’s extensive brass section, lead by a spectacular muted-trumpet and the singular percussive madness of Westerlund’s seemingly bottomless box of noisemaking accoutrements, unwarned, Mardi Gras (or maybe Pentecost) fell upon Durham, North Carolina.

But, just when our tongues were loosed, it was over.  They were gone.  Or so it seemed, until a last-gasp encore yielded a choired reprise of another group of “Northerners attempting a song about the South”: Robbie Robertson’s The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.

Though, perhaps the most touching moments of the night weren’t the ethereal or transportive performance moments (which were bestowed in spades), but rather the also abundant, candidly earnest glances and smirks between the players; telling in their incredulity and unadulterated joy.  They spoke of a certain danger (“is this happening?”), but more so of surging delight (“this is really happening!”).

I am thankful to have taken all of this in: the sacred intimacy furnished by the hardwood pews to the blessed verity of the sounds that swept through the aisles and filtered up to the balcony.

jamming: Megafaun, Justin Vernon, Sharon Van Etten, & Fight the Big Bull live @ Hayti Heritage Center

As part of Duke Performances' Sanctified series, these acts will perform shape note tunes over 3 nights this weekend at Hayti (formerly known as St. Joseph's AME Church) in Durham.  Rach and I are going out Friday night.  If you can get a hold of a ticket, especially a $5 Duke ticket, I'd try to be there.

Megafaun Daytrotter Session.

Bon Iver Daytrotter Session.

SVE Daytrotter Session.

interview: Sharon Van Etten

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on September 9, 2010.

CEB: Thanks for taking some time to chat with us. You’ve got to be busy tying up loose ends before heading out for a couple weeks. You’ll head down South to play this stretch. A few dates in particular stand out this month. You’re set to play three nights in Durham, NC with a slew of insanely talented musicians, in an old church, doing shape note hymns. First, how’d you get to know all these guys (Megafaun, Bon Iver, Fight the Big Bull)?

Sharon Van Etten: I got to open up for Megafaun earlier this year. It was one of the most fun tours I have ever been on. They made me realize how much I miss the south. By the 2nd show they were like “we want to be your backing band!” They ended up being my backing band for 3 shows and learned 3 part harmonies for my songs. I wanted to cry – it was so amazing.

CEB: And how’d this project come together?

SVE: Those guys work really hard. We had a really good connection, and on top of that we share a love for harmonies, so when they said they were working on this project I wanted to be a part of it as soon as they asked me. Of course! They have such a natural ear for vocals and are amazing musicians. I feel so lucky. That’s all I can say.

CEB: It seems like these days Sacred Harp singing and gospel music has begun to enter into the mainstream consciousness in an interesting way and in interesting places. What’s your personal experience (past and present) with church music?

SVE: I was in choir all of my life. My mother, my sisters and I sang harmonies with each other constantly. The only reason I WENT to church was to sing. I love that feeling of people all singing together. It is something so much bigger than I will ever be able to understand. A group of people getting together to feel better and make something beautiful – together.

CEB: Alan Lomax (who compiled Sounds of the South) has been widely championed in the folk community for his extensive work with world music and various historical and cultural expressions. How important is it for young artists these days to know these sounds?

SVE: I think it helps to know where music has come from to understand where it is going and how it influences everything around us. All music is an oral history, whether or not “it’s cool” or whether or not we like it. It is forever stamped in time as “that moment.” I love that.

CEB: When you’re writing, how much do you try to balance revisiting the past with blazing new musical trails?


SVE: I don’t know. I explore my heart, my head, and try to have realizations. Who knows the depths they explore? I know not what I do. Not usually until after the fact do I realize it was a musician that influenced me or a moment that created the lyric…

CEB: Tell us a bit about your album, Epic, set to come out October 5. If your previous album came “Because You Were in Love,” what would you say “caused” this album?


SVE: Being more confident in who I am, the choices I’ve made, and where I am today.


CEB: What have you been listening to of late?

SVE: Autmelodi, Fanuelle, The Shivers, Lower Dens, OMD, Low, Die! Die! Die!, Skogar, Meg Baird, She Keeps Bees,… to name a few.

CEB: Besides playing and listening to music, do you have any other hobbies or past times?

SVE: I love eating, cooking food (when I have time) sitting on the deck in quiet, learning how to relax. I also just started writing more electronic music. I started calling it my after hours music cause it isn’t as loud as guitar, and with headphones on, I am learning to program beats and synths… but it’s slow still!

Either/or:
CEB: Sweet vs. Savory
SVE: Sweet

CEB: Beatles vs. Stones
SVE: Stones

CEB: Coffee vs. Tea
SVE: Coffee

CEB: Sunrises vs. Sunsets
SVE: Sunset

Free Association:
CEB: “epic.”
SVE: groundbreaking

CEB: “hope.”
SVE: optimsim

CEB: “Elvis.”
SVE: the king

CEB: “secular gospel.”
SVE: consoling

CEB: “home.”
SVE: comforting

CEB: Thanks for your time Sharon. Enjoy the tour, I look forward to seeing you all at Hayti!
SVE: Thank you so much, Chris! I can’t wait. You have no idea.

review: The Weepies- Be My Thrill

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on September 7, 2010.

Sweet.

The “bless her heart” of artistic descriptions.

But California duo, The Weepies’ new effort via Nettwerk Records, Be My Thrill, just might best fit this moniker.

From the first notes on opener “Please Speak Well of Me,” we are served an appetizer that hints at what’s to come.  As Deb Talan’s voice chimes in, visions of department store commercials and Starbucks’ lattes fill our heads.  Perhaps it is that commercial capitalization on mellifluous indie rock that forces such a visceral reaction in these post-Garden State days in which we live.

But you can’t fault this married duo for it.  They try to resist.  These songs are sweet in aesthetic, but their content speaks of the grit and uncertainty of “real” love.  Thus there are several times when their confection is liberated from being saccharine or merely sentimental.

From the plaintive “They’re in Love, Where Am I?” to the relationship-sustaining hard work of “Add My Effort,” the pure moon-spoon-june-ity of the vocal harmonies and instrumentals often overwhelms the band’s undeniable candor.

What can be said is that these folks know how to write a hook.  And perhaps this is the place for a little sugar.  The “kissing-booth youth”  and “sweet teeth” of the title track nail the blissful marital indie rock vibe that Mates of State and Ben & Vesper have made a (modest, but enjoyable) living at.

All this said, Be My Thrill only goes as far for me as surfing the crest of what I’m already feeling. It succeeds at supplementing my emotions; much like the doubtless slew of commercials and motion picture soundtracks its tunes will backdrop.  But, it fails to actually change my mood or mind, to brighten my lows or to at least interestingly narrate them.

For all its sweetness, I will save this album for the occasional road trip indulgence or dinner party hors d’oeuvre.  Enjoyable, but not enough of a main course in and of itself.

Rating: 6/10

review: Wye Oak- My Neighbor/My Creator EP

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on September 6, 2010.

On the heels of their stout sophomore release, The Knot (via Merge Records), Baltimore duo Wye Oak comes with a short set of holdovers and redos that might have made the original even stronger.  Sandwiched between the co-title tracks, Emmylou can be described as more of an anchor than just a “stroke mark.”  Its rollicking guitar from the initial click-in and fuzzed vocal harmonies soundtrack the odd territory the band inhabits (they get their name from the official Maryland state tree).  Such is the mid-Atlantic: hinting at the deep-fried drawl of the Carolinas, yet deeply related to the port-laden, bustling, caustic North.

This identity, not mistaken but certainly fitful, plays itself out in the finale, a remix of a track from the previous LP, That I Do.  The serenity of the original gets disrupted by bassy, police-siren bombast and chill rap verse.  Only the city like Baltimore, home of the mean streets shown on the Wire and the sullen fandom for basement-dwelling Orioles and jilted Unitas supporters, could produce such an ex-lover mash-up track.
This juxtaposition is fitting and the dischord finds perhaps its most clear lyrical home back in a verse from Emmylou.  Jenn Wasner whirs:

“I believe in commonsense

And meaningless coincidence.

But I don’t believe in heaven

So I have to have you now.”

Such honesty and urgency can be both blessing and curse.  This set of neatly organized B-sides spends its nearly 18 minutes trying to figure out which is which.  It is no wonder these songs provide neither tidy love swoons nor direct “screw you’s,” but rather more complicated ruminations on relationships and rupture, fight and flight, certainty and insecurity, devotion and distance.

Rating: 8.5/10

review: Brad Laner- Natural Selections

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on August 22, 2010.

The album art says it all, the rest is but commentary.


Maybe it’s judgmental or simplistic to evaluate a book by its cover, or in this case an album, but Brad Laner’s new, self-produced solo effort, Natural Selections, communicates with sonic fuzz and feedback the same furrowed brow of its cover boy.

An industry vet, Laner continues to explore and experiment.  With a child-like resourcefulness he samples and overdubs, picking up drum sounds and textures like walking-stick scepters from the side of the road.  The trail he winds up blazing is but the result of his self-described exercise of translating his dreams into reality.  The record communicates this pastiche:  restless but adventurous; raucous but somehow softened and tamed by a familial presence.  Its vocabulary is fluently avante, and evokes the scheming knob-twiddling innovation such as Brian Eno, or current clamorous fellow journeymen like Animal Collective.

The first three tracks robustly break in, starting this wandering trek.  The stand-out opener, Eyes Close, transports us into Laner’s twisted nocturne where we are simultaneously lulled with picked guitar loops and harmonious vocals and woken by rousing percussion.  Throat continues the disorienting momentum with an undomesticated Death Cab-rhythm, and a synth-laden bridge.  The final part of this trilogy, features the tortured Lancaster, asking for an admission of sorrow, but mostly just begging for some understanding.

Crawl Back In hints at Of Montreal’s swagger while Why Did I Do It and Dirty Bugs each display moments of grandiosity and sheer brilliance found nowhere else on the album.  With all the wizened adroitness Laner holds up behind the façade of youthful whimsy, there are moments of weakness.  Perhaps against his better judgment, the impromptu pre-school jam session throwaway, Vicky, misses much more than it hits in the nine-slot. I suggest it is a sloppy moment of sentimental weakness in an otherwise strong and whole piece.  It reminds us that grown men are as likely to veer from the cut path as any undisciplined youth.

Overall, Laner’s wanderings remain engrossing and surprising all the way through. Natural Selections delivers as an able companion to the complicated but capricious cover it explicates.

Rating: 7/10

review: Bradley Hathaway- A Thousand Angry Panthers

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on August 16, 2010.

Perhaps I betray a bit of East Coast bias, or at least a supreme ignorance when it comes to Midwestern geography, when I wonder just how far Goshen, AR is from Omaha, NE?

439 miles.

More than a whimsical daytrip, to be sure.  Bradley Hathaway howlingly traverses this space between his own hometown and that epicenter of Midwestern folk discontent (care of Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst) in the mere span of 4 songs.  But it is here, in the space between his adolescent spoken-word ramblings and his burgeoning folk-stylings that Hathaway has made his home.  The same disturbance and sincerity that allowed him to pen self-searching poetry about his “manliness” enables him to speak of matters of love, death, Jesus, sickness, war & rescue with more precision than Conor’s crazed apocalyptic.  Though She Was Raised By A Man With A Sickness does share Casadega’s penchant for duality and drama (and Oberst’s general proclivity for lengthy song titles).

Track two reminds us of the consequence of distance and geography.  Carolina acts as a circuitous interstitial between heart (KY) and dreams (AR).  This middle ground, Hathaway proves, can be a fruitful place to look both back and forward; inching closer to something (or someone) only to leave behind what you’ve known and where you’ve been.  It’s no wonder that a spoken-word poet might be firmly in his conceptual and lyrical wheelhouse.  Like Oberst, such sustained interiority sometimes yields moments of eye-rolling indulgence.  But for every “my heart breaks into a thousand pieces like glass” (Would You Think…) we get several earnest revelations like, “There is love, there is beauty, and then there is pain, and at the moment I can’t help but feel they’re all the same.”

But perhaps what impressed me most was his tasteful and complementary instrumentation.  He textures earnest contemplations with fittingly delicate electric guitar scales and mandolin (Carolina).  And on Would You Think Less of Me, we are served an appetizing dose of ghostly piano trickle.

Finally, The World is Screaming harkens to a late mewithoutYou ballad.  Though squarely within the Weiss/Oberst mold, there’s plenty of room for Hathaway on the theology-infused-folkster horizon.  This EP marks a significant milestone in maturity and growth for the young wordsmith.  Perhaps the most pivotal part is the restraint he’s shown.  Hathaway seems to be getting comfortable with himself, secure with his words and more understated in his delivery.  The result is a quartet of songs with enough intensity to hold the Angry Tigers at bay and enough gripping honesty to captivate the listener.

Rating: 8/10

review: Trances Arc- TA

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on August 4,2010.

With the hellacious Southern summer a full 7 or 8 weeks from even letting on at relenting, one might expect a mid-July rock release to bear some of the scalding intensity of these dog days. Tentatively enter: Trances Arc’s TA. This sophomore release is self-admittedly a battle against the “headiness” of their first XOXOX. In that capacity, TA achieves a summery freeness perhaps not as readily evident as before.

But we’re talking about Southern college rock here. Forget the over/under-thinking and put out a melter to match the climate! A true summer rock record warps like vinyl on an Atlanta sidewalk. Instead causing me to retreat into the deep-end of a lukewarm pool, this release merely had me wondering why they thought they could light me up with a magnifying glass? Nothing hurt, just a lot of the same old tricks. Warm, but not blistering. SPF 5.

Barring a few moments, the pilot-light flare-up track “Fuego Balloons” and the terribly delightful ripping solo in “Black Lung,” the album, on the whole, lacks either the risky abandon or the tight cohesion that might really give the listener something to sweat. Sure, TA provides great shuffle-fodder: which could either be the start of something beautiful (creating buzz for the band and giving you that perfect track for the state-line on that last interstate stretch before heading back to campus) or more likely dooming the disc to the bottom of the stack and letting the albums of folks who make albums (the Thom Yorkes, Strokes, Muses, and Cold War Kids of the world, to whom this band certainly nods), rise to the top.

Maybe I’m being a bit harsh. Let me backtrack a bit. There were some noteworthy moments. The aforementioned “Fuego Balloons,” with its drum, organ, and handclap-infused swagger, lit me up. “Our Wild Eyes” struck a nice balance between arena-rock grandeur and intimate emotion; a mischievously playful young-love ballad done well.

I have a hard time with this collection of songs, because it’s not at all unlistenable; they’re just not, especially as a whole, all that compelling. Have a listen for yourself, and I think you’ll find a few solid tracks, some more than capable musicianship, fleeting summer fun, and a bit of underachievement.

Rating: 5/10