Wow!!! A few years ago, we were totally blown away by a compilation put out by Smithsonian Folkways called Indonesian Guitars, which among many amazing tracks happened to feature a song called "Fajar Di Atas Awan" by Irwansyah Harahap. It was of that disc's highlights, with haunting female and male vocal harmonies, lilting acoustic guitar, sruti box drones and cymbals. What we didn't know was that Harahap and singer Rithaony Hutajulu, both ethnomusicology professors at the University of North Sumatra, were the main composers and singers for a larger group of musicians and performers called Suarasama, and that song was the title track of THIS incredibly beautiful, blissful record by Suarasama, a 1997 live recording, now released for the first time in the U.S. by the fine folks at Drag City. We are so stoked, what a wonderful surprise this is.
Formed in 1995, Suarasama's musical influences are widely diverse, creating contemporary music based on vartious aesthetic and conceptual aspects of Middle Eastern, Indian, Sufi Pakistani, Eastern European, Southeast Asian as well as North Sumatra Batak and Malay traditional music. But the results are very far from academic. Instead the music is infused with a hermetic introspective devotional quality that seduces the listener with its soft trance-like rhythms and haunting vocal mantras. Persian and Indian percussion of tablas and defs meld with deft finger-picked guitar and gambus improvisations and dueling vocal harmonies that propel circularly forward in hypnotically beautiful interweavings. Meditative and organic, full of levitation-inducing majesty. For any devotee of raga folk, Masaki Batoh, Six Organs, Daniel Higgs, L, Robbie Basho, Sandy Bull, Congregacion, The Habibiyya, Malachi, Pandit Pran Nath, The Trees Community, or Bruce Palmer, this is absolutely essential!!
It's always pretty amazing when reissue labels continue to set high standards with rediscovered music. Especially when you think the well has surely gone dry, that they must have to heap loads of praise and hyperbole on a record that no one has heard of to get folks to buy it, only to have it not be as good as one hoped. That's what we were expecting going in to this 1969 private press Jim Sullivan record, when the label was describing it as a cross between Fred Neil and David Axelrod, two of our favorite musicians. While the description is somewhat apt, we couldn't help in our excitement over what we were hearing to come up with better comparisons like the Memphis swamp-folk of Tim Rose, the string-driven downer folk-blues of Tim Hardin or the lysergic folk-pop of Hoyt Axton (especially his debut, My Griffin is Gone). Needless to say, we are loving this record!
U.F.O. is a unique hybrid of Southern-fried world-weary folk with classic top-notch LA studio production sheen. Backed by the legendary Wrecking Crew, Sullivan's earthy but wide-eyed existentialism is cradled in stunning atmospheric orchestral arrangements that give deeper scope to the song's melancholic luster. Why this wasn't a major studio release at the time is a mystery because it sure sounds like one. But mysteries seem to have dogged Jim Sullivan throughout his life, as he strangely disappeared in 1975 in the New Mexico desert. His belongings abandoned, his motel room untouched.
Light in the Attic has done an incredible job of piecing together Sullivan's backstory and disappearance, but with no definitive resolution except for the legacy of one of the best lost folk records we've heard in a long while. Highly recommended!
Jussi from Circle (how many of our reviews start with those 3 words?) is a big big fan of this band, a stripped down minimal blues boogie duo who also hail from Finland, and now have this compilation cd out on Jussi's Ektro label.
One chord, two chords, three chords maybe, they do the most basic blues progressions over-and-over-and-over-again, it's super simple and super repetitive stuff, hypnotically head noddin' for sure, kind of lazy and laidback. They do sound a bit like Circle, if Circle were just guitar and drums and played the blues out on a backporch somewhere, drunk on moonshine, endlessly chooglin' away. A few tracks add a bass player, a few also have singing, but mostly this is all instrumental, just drummin' and strummin', primitive stompin' and geetar honkin', nothin' but. Real simple. Zen blues or something. It's so monomaniacal it almost gets ridiculous; we mean really, while we do like this, at the same time, it might be totally stupid. Or awesome. We can't even tell. But like we said, Jussi from Circle is a big fan. And there's 80 minutes of this stuff here, the disc is packed to the brim, 23 tracks in all, five of 'em previously unreleased, the others taken from 7"s and albums going back to 1995.
After all these years, Mark Kozelek's music still fills us with chills and goosebumps like no one else can. His melancholic voice and restrained arrangements come together for songs that sink so deep into our veins and lead us into cloudy and dazed daydreams. Admiral Fell Promises is a new set of songs written by Kozelek (he was on a big covers kick for a while) and they rank right at the top of anything he has created. The formula is not all that different from past Sun Kil Moon releases but there is something in the stark immediacy of the songs that is pulling us in so deep to this carefully crafted album. Maybe it's all the years he's spent in San Francisco but the record is just so perfect for those fog filled grey days that hit us all throughout the year and make us forget what day/month/year it is. These songs are so perfect for that dazed and dislocating sensation, filled with such a bleak romanticism. If he didn't have such a tasteful sense of subtly he could easily wow a crowd with impeccable almost flamenco/Spanish sounding guitar playing. Kozelek is one of those people who has never rested on his laurels. After Red House Painters it would have been easy for him to just allow that to be his lasting legacy, but over the years under his own name and the Sun Kil Moon moniker he continues to create a body of work that will stand the test of time. A must have for Kozelek fans and if you have checked out on his releases for a while this would be a great time to check back in!
It's easy to hear bits of No Neck Blues Band and Sun Burned Hand Of The Man And Avarus, and various other practitioners of that sort of rambling free folk stumble when first listening to this mysterious disc by some group called Sun Supreme. But listen closer for a minute and think about it. SUN Supreme, and where would any of those bands be without... Well, yeah, without the Sun City Girls, and while we can't really confirm it, this disc -was- recorded in Seattle, in 2004 and does pretty much sound like a late night, druggy ramble through some serious SCG territory.
The give away, is that it's not nearly as abstract as those other groups, it's way more melodic and musical, with a heavy emphasis on the guitar, and a distinctly Eastern bent, lots of strummed chords and kitchen sink percussion, bits of piano and other noisemakers, going from that sort of stumbling campfire improv to decidedly propulsive krautrocky groove, occasionally devolving into ramshackle chaos, but just as likely to coalesce into huge epic swells, before settling back down into more dreamy late night rambling. Really cool.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! Packaged in beautiful hand screened chipboard sleeves and pressed on ultra thick vinyl.
Every time these folks shamble through town we dig through their stuff and get as much as we can for you all, often they're down to only a few copies, but for this we took everything they had, the last 20 copies of this super limited tour only double 7".
Two clear vinyl slabs of far out free-ness, very Middle Eastern sounding in that Sun City Girls world music filter way, clattery drums and rattles and shakers, distorted music box melodies, tribal hand drums, wood blocks, affected guitars, lots of reverb and weird loops, some very Beefheartian vocals on one track, and some lovely chanting on another that sounds like a super distorted call to prayer. This is SHOTM at their most exotic, sounding quite a bit like some super lo-fi long lost Muslimgauze recording. Really cool.
Thick clear vinyl, striking full color sleeve, and again we only got about 20 off these and most likely won't be able to get more once they're gone.
Chicago alt-country label Bloodshot Records now has an 'old school' offshoot! 'Tis called Bloodshot Revival, and one of the first releases is this collection of two dozen Sundowners' tunes from the '60s and early '70s (and one more recent song from '88). If you find yourself askin' "Who were the Sundowners?", you probably weren't in Chicago back in those days. 'Cause if you were, heck you'd know that they were a beloved down-home tavern trio. Their set lists were filled with originals and covers ran the gamut from the traditional to the contemporary. Covers included The Beatles' "Something", Bobby Darin's "Things", Robbie Fulks' "Cigarette State" and "Tom Dooley". A wonderful tribute and treasured document of a bygone era.
Heavy noise-rock from these SF locals.
These are always the hardest ones to write. The bands we've loved for years, the songs we've been listening to for decades, with no need to think beyond the pure visceral enjoyment of the sounds, just years of getting lost inside the music, and with music like this, going deeper and deeper with every listen, never a need to put that sonic magic into words, but still championing these sounds for all we were worth, but instead of a lengthy essay or diatribe, it was an insistent "YOU NEED THIS!" Or "You've never heard anything quite like this." Or even still "This is probably one of our all time favorite bands, and if you haven't heard this music, you have been missing out."
Years of finding copies of these long out of print gems in used bins and bargain bins and even dollar bins, because this was not popular music. As much as we loved it, and obsessed over it and played it for everyone we knew (and not everyone felt the same unbridled passion for these sounds that we did) and as much as often as we gave those occasionally discovered used copies to anyone we thought might love it as much as we did, there was no real hope for this band to reach the heights as a Sebadoh or a Pavement, even though they swam in the same sonic waters, for the Supreme Dicks were their own peculiar musical beast, one whose pop was subtle, whose noise was chaotic, whose vocals warbled and cracked, whose recordings were of extremely low fidelity, whose performances were loose and ramshackle, but whose magic would not have existed, certainly not in the same way it did, had all of those random elements fallen (im)perfectly into place. Thankfully they did, and we have this, years later, a lovingly compiled collection of the complete recorded works of Massachusetts indie folk outsider rock weirdos the Supreme Dicks.
The Dicks experienced a brief bit of popularity in the mid-nineties, finally seeing their debut record released, especially notable having formed all the way back in 1982, and during the years 1992-1996, the band released two albums, one ep, one single, one split single and a collection compiling the early works that predated their proper debut, it's all included here, and is darn near overwhelming all gathered up in one place, especially considering that ONE song in, and we already had chills. Such is the power of the Dicks, who sonically seemed to situate themselves somewhere between the Palace Brothers, Silver Jews, Yo La Tengo, Pavement and Sebadoh (Lou Barlow even pops up on a Dicks jam or two), their sound an eerie psychedelic folk, a stumbling abstract primitivism, raw, and a bit warped, always seeming to teeter on the edge of collapse, that tension, that inevitable doom, rendered in sound and somehow woven into the fabric of their unique sound. Later, that sound would evolve to include sonic elements that would seem to be drawn from krautrock groups like Ash Ra Templ or Popol Vuh, but it's hard to say whether that was intentional or happenstance.
Their first album, The Unexamined Life, is probably the Dicks material that would be the least alienating to the casual listener, rooted in indie folk, the arrangements simple and spare, the instrumentation standard, but that's where the familiarity ends, as the Dicks forge their own path, and one song into their debut, seal the deal and establish themselves as masters of this arcane and unique to them musical form. "In A Sweet Song" gently tumbles into motion, all spidery acoustic guitar, delicate and crystalline, the vocals a sung/spoken warble, frought with emotion and tension, the drums stumbling, a lo -fi pound, in swoop more guitars, a brief bit of psychedelia, all druggy slippery melodies, and the clang and jangle of loud guitars, slowly building, a wild tangle of competing melodies that give us chills every time. The lyrics haunting and heartfelt, building again to a seriously rad jam that sounds like it was lifted straight out of a classic Pavement jam, pressed onto a 7", left in the sun, and then played back on an old Sears turntable, all warped and woozy and so so so wonderful. Even nearly 20 years later, nothing can touch this. And so goes The Unexamined Life, a bizarre collection of fractured folk music, fragmented and abstract, multiple vocalists, keening high about to crack warbles, and deep croons, fluttering flutes, hazy soft focus psychedelia, lilting and gently pastoral one second, weirdly chaotic the next, sawed strings, total super catchy jangle pop nestled amongst twisted Jandekian slowburn outsider folk, blown out super distorted psychpop melting into what sounds like some sort of bastardized classic rock, like the Grateful Dead via Faxed head, the tape crumbling, the sounds seeming to decay, even though the music itself is fairly straight ahead, finally finishing off with the appropriately titled "Strange Song", a sprawl of slow building tripped out psychedelic free noise freakout most modern bands would KILL for.
Workingman's Dick was originally released on Freek Records in 1994, and collected all of the early Dicks recordings, and is a glorious hodgepodge hinting at what was to come, not that far removed from their debut, if anything a bit more experimental, the timbre of the sound and the quality of the recordings varying from track to track, the sounds slipping from freakfolk to murky dirgery, and from haunting skeletal folk to Sentridoh like experimental fuckery. It's maybe the most difficult listen of the various releases, but also contains some of the band's dreamiest gems. This Is Not A Dick, was recorded around the same time as their final record, but was a lot like Workingman's Dick in that it was cobbled together from recordings made between 1987 and 1994, and much like Workingman's Dick, is sonically varied, opening with some abstract psychedelic drift, all grinding guitars and chiming melodies, a freaky lo-fi basement jam that is surprisingly and fantastically (although subtly) unhinged, and from there on out, the band slips from dreamy strummy shimmer to garbled crumbling experimentation, one of our favorites being "Marks Phonecall From Orgoneland", which is a dreamy little Avarus like microjam that's all whistling and tinkling chimes, skittery rhythms and hushed percussion, all accompanied by the phone call in question, a strange spoken word rant over a clattery No Neck Blues Band like clamor, the other being "Harmonic Convergence (Live At L'Oasis 1987)" which is a cool collection of recordings of the what sounds like various clubs between songs, lots of silence, clinking glasses, a recited poem with plenty of jeers from a sparse crowd and the band requesting someone to come up and play drums for them. Weird and wonderful.
Finally, the band released their last record, The Emotional Plague, in 1996, and this is where the band's warble folk and psychedelic crumble becomes a bit more expansive and far reaching, the above mentioned perceived influence of Ash Ra Tempel and other like minded outfits, transforming the group's sound into something more lush and lovely, and marginally less difficult. Marginally. Opener "Synaesthesia" is a haunting bit of droned out psychedelic drift, thick low end rumbles, chiming melodies, distant skeletal guitar melodies, the song starting out dark and powerfully minimal, but seeming to gradually fall apart as the track progresses, which leads right into the first proper song, the production notably more polished, the guitars ringing out, the drums not buried in the mix, but the sound still a little off kilter, slightly atonal, a little off key, the song a gorgeous lilting almost ballad, that builds to a full on psychrock freakout, and then peters out, leading directly into a nightmarish stretch of ominous FX drenched psychdrone creep, atonal and warped and warbly, eventually morphing into what almost sounds like some lost Neil Young outtake, unexpected for sure, but quite cool. And The Emotional Plague is where this already hard to describe band gets even more difficult to understand, let alone describe, most of the elements were present on past recordings, but here sound reimagined, and reinvented, repurposed even, the band seemingly able to reel of some perfect, delicate folk music like they could have been making music like that all along, but as if to say "why the hell would we?!" they immediately take the sound and pull it apart into a stumbling alternate dimension Pink Floydian dirge that manages to be psychedelic, but also some sort of twisted indie pop, all fused together into something that is both and neither. The tracks on The Emotional Plague are longer, some nearly 10 minutes long, which let the Dicks explore and ramble and stretch out, weaving tranced out sprawls of repetition, of looped mesmer, of smoldering psychedelia, of hushed delicate dreampop drift, of haunting backporch alien Appalachia and of brooding, almost orchestral majesty, replete with horns and haunting spoken word, and a twisted deconstructed coda, "Green Wings Fly Adventure (Showered Reprise) an elegiac final movement, the perfect way to end such a mysterious and strange record, and an even more perfect way to lay to rest one of the strangest, most incredible, and under appreciated bands of the last two decades.
This deluxe reissue includes most of the original artwork, new liner notes, tons of rare photos, and tacks on a couple B-sides and a handful of unreleased jams, but even without those extras, this collection gathers up one of the most beautifully baffling and bafflingly brilliant bodies of work from one of our favorite groups of the last 20 years. And while we did our best with the above review, it's hard to stress just how utterly recommended and essential this really is!
And vinyl folks, while the whole set was not pressed on vinyl, the two proper albums were, so both The Unexamined Life and The Emotional Plague are available on vinyl (deluxe double lps to boot!) for the first time EVER.
These are always the hardest ones to write. The bands we've loved for years, the songs we've been listening to for decades, with no need to think beyond the pure visceral enjoyment of the sounds, just years of getting lost inside the music, and with music like this, going deeper and deeper with every listen, never a need to put that sonic magic into words, but still championing these sounds for all we were worth, but instead of a lengthy essay or diatribe, it was an insistent "YOU NEED THIS!" Or "You've never heard anything quite like this." Or even still "This is probably one of our all time favorite bands, and if you haven't heard this music, you have been missing out."
Years of finding copies of these long out of print gems in used bins and bargain bins and even dollar bins, because this was not popular music. As much as we loved it, and obsessed over it and played it for everyone we knew (and not everyone felt the same unbridled passion for these sounds that we did) and as much as often as we gave those occasionally discovered used copies to anyone we thought might love it as much as we did, there was no real hope for this band to reach the heights as a Sebadoh or a Pavement, even though they swam in the same sonic waters, for the Supreme Dicks were their own peculiar musical beast, one whose pop was subtle, whose noise was chaotic, whose vocals warbled and cracked, whose recordings were of extremely low fidelity, whose performances were loose and ramshackle, but whose magic would not have existed, certainly not in the same way it did, had all of those random elements fallen (im)perfectly into place. Thankfully they did, and we have this, years later, a lovingly compiled collection of the complete recorded works of Massachusetts indie folk outsider rock weirdos the Supreme Dicks.
The Dicks experienced a brief bit of popularity in the mid-nineties, finally seeing their debut record released, especially notable having formed all the way back in 1982, and during the years 1992-1996, the band released two albums, one ep, one single, one split single and a collection compiling the early works that predated their proper debut, it's all included here, and is darn near overwhelming all gathered up in one place, especially considering that ONE song in, and we already had chills. Such is the power of the Dicks, who sonically seemed to situate themselves somewhere between the Palace Brothers, Silver Jews, Yo La Tengo, Pavement and Sebadoh (Lou Barlow even pops up on a Dicks jam or two), their sound an eerie psychedelic folk, a stumbling abstract primitivism, raw, and a bit warped, always seeming to teeter on the edge of collapse, that tension, that inevitable doom, rendered in sound and somehow woven into the fabric of their unique sound. Later, that sound would evolve to include sonic elements that would seem to be drawn from krautrock groups like Ash Ra Templ or Popol Vuh, but it's hard to say whether that was intentional or happenstance.
Their first album, The Unexamined Life, is probably the Dicks material that would be the least alienating to the casual listener, rooted in indie folk, the arrangements simple and spare, the instrumentation standard, but that's where the familiarity ends, as the Dicks forge their own path, and one song into their debut, seal the deal and establish themselves as masters of this arcane and unique to them musical form. "In A Sweet Song" gently tumbles into motion, all spidery acoustic guitar, delicate and crystalline, the vocals a sung/spoken warble, frought with emotion and tension, the drums stumbling, a lo -fi pound, in swoop more guitars, a brief bit of psychedelia, all druggy slippery melodies, and the clang and jangle of loud guitars, slowly building, a wild tangle of competing melodies that give us chills every time. The lyrics haunting and heartfelt, building again to a seriously rad jam that sounds like it was lifted straight out of a classic Pavement jam, pressed onto a 7", left in the sun, and then played back on an old Sears turntable, all warped and woozy and so so so wonderful. Even nearly 20 years later, nothing can touch this. And so goes The Unexamined Life, a bizarre collection of fractured folk music, fragmented and abstract, multiple vocalists, keening high about to crack warbles, and deep croons, fluttering flutes, hazy soft focus psychedelia, lilting and gently pastoral one second, weirdly chaotic the next, sawed strings, total super catchy jangle pop nestled amongst twisted Jandekian slowburn outsider folk, blown out super distorted psychpop melting into what sounds like some sort of bastardized classic rock, like the Grateful Dead via Faxed head, the tape crumbling, the sounds seeming to decay, even though the music itself is fairly straight ahead, finally finishing off with the appropriately titled "Strange Song", a sprawl of slow building tripped out psychedelic free noise freakout most modern bands would KILL for.
Workingman's Dick was originally released on Freek Records in 1994, and collected all of the early Dicks recordings, and is a glorious hodgepodge hinting at what was to come, not that far removed from their debut, if anything a bit more experimental, the timbre of the sound and the quality of the recordings varying from track to track, the sounds slipping from freakfolk to murky dirgery, and from haunting skeletal folk to Sentridoh like experimental fuckery. It's maybe the most difficult listen of the various releases, but also contains some of the band's dreamiest gems. This Is Not A Dick, was recorded around the same time as their final record, but was a lot like Workingman's Dick in that it was cobbled together from recordings made between 1987 and 1994, and much like Workingman's Dick, is sonically varied, opening with some abstract psychedelic drift, all grinding guitars and chiming melodies, a freaky lo-fi basement jam that is surprisingly and fantastically (although subtly) unhinged, and from there on out, the band slips from dreamy strummy shimmer to garbled crumbling experimentation, one of our favorites being "Marks Phonecall From Orgoneland", which is a dreamy little Avarus like microjam that's all whistling and tinkling chimes, skittery rhythms and hushed percussion, all accompanied by the phone call in question, a strange spoken word rant over a clattery No Neck Blues Band like clamor, the other being "Harmonic Convergence (Live At L'Oasis 1987)" which is a cool collection of recordings of the what sounds like various clubs between songs, lots of silence, clinking glasses, a recited poem with plenty of jeers from a sparse crowd and the band requesting someone to come up and play drums for them. Weird and wonderful.
Finally, the band released their last record, The Emotional Plague, in 1996, and this is where the band's warble folk and psychedelic crumble becomes a bit more expansive and far reaching, the above mentioned perceived influence of Ash Ra Tempel and other like minded outfits, transforming the group's sound into something more lush and lovely, and marginally less difficult. Marginally. Opener "Synaesthesia" is a haunting bit of droned out psychedelic drift, thick low end rumbles, chiming melodies, distant skeletal guitar melodies, the song starting out dark and powerfully minimal, but seeming to gradually fall apart as the track progresses, which leads right into the first proper song, the production notably more polished, the guitars ringing out, the drums not buried in the mix, but the sound still a little off kilter, slightly atonal, a little off key, the song a gorgeous lilting almost ballad, that builds to a full on psychrock freakout, and then peters out, leading directly into a nightmarish stretch of ominous FX drenched psychdrone creep, atonal and warped and warbly, eventually morphing into what almost sounds like some lost Neil Young outtake, unexpected for sure, but quite cool. And The Emotional Plague is where this already hard to describe band gets even more difficult to understand, let alone describe, most of the elements were present on past recordings, but here sound reimagined, and reinvented, repurposed even, the band seemingly able to reel of some perfect, delicate folk music like they could have been making music like that all along, but as if to say "why the hell would we?!" they immediately take the sound and pull it apart into a stumbling alternate dimension Pink Floydian dirge that manages to be psychedelic, but also some sort of twisted indie pop, all fused together into something that is both and neither. The tracks on The Emotional Plague are longer, some nearly 10 minutes long, which let the Dicks explore and ramble and stretch out, weaving tranced out sprawls of repetition, of looped mesmer, of smoldering psychedelia, of hushed delicate dreampop drift, of haunting backporch alien Appalachia and of brooding, almost orchestral majesty, replete with horns and haunting spoken word, and a twisted deconstructed coda, "Green Wings Fly Adventure (Showered Reprise) an elegiac final movement, the perfect way to end such a mysterious and strange record, and an even more perfect way to lay to rest one of the strangest, most incredible, and under appreciated bands of the last two decades.
This deluxe reissue includes most of the original artwork, new liner notes, tons of rare photos, and tacks on a couple B-sides and a handful of unreleased jams, but even without those extras, this collection gathers up one of the most beautifully baffling and bafflingly brilliant bodies of work from one of our favorite groups of the last 20 years. And while we did our best with the above review, it's hard to stress just how utterly recommended and essential this really is!
And vinyl folks, while the whole set was not pressed on vinyl, the two proper albums were, so both The Unexamined Life and The Emotional Plague are available on vinyl (deluxe double lps to boot!) for the first time EVER.
These are always the hardest ones to write. The bands we've loved for years, the songs we've been listening to for decades, with no need to think beyond the pure visceral enjoyment of the sounds, just years of getting lost inside the music, and with music like this, going deeper and deeper with every listen, never a need to put that sonic magic into words, but still championing these sounds for all we were worth, but instead of a lengthy essay or diatribe, it was an insistent "YOU NEED THIS!" Or "You've never heard anything quite like this." Or even still "This is probably one of our all time favorite bands, and if you haven't heard this music, you have been missing out."
Years of finding copies of these long out of print gems in used bins and bargain bins and even dollar bins, because this was not popular music. As much as we loved it, and obsessed over it and played it for everyone we knew (and not everyone felt the same unbridled passion for these sounds that we did) and as much as often as we gave those occasionally discovered used copies to anyone we thought might love it as much as we did, there was no real hope for this band to reach the heights as a Sebadoh or a Pavement, even though they swam in the same sonic waters, for the Supreme Dicks were their own peculiar musical beast, one whose pop was subtle, whose noise was chaotic, whose vocals warbled and cracked, whose recordings were of extremely low fidelity, whose performances were loose and ramshackle, but whose magic would not have existed, certainly not in the same way it did, had all of those random elements fallen (im)perfectly into place. Thankfully they did, and we have this, years later, a lovingly compiled collection of the complete recorded works of Massachusetts indie folk outsider rock weirdos the Supreme Dicks.
The Dicks experienced a brief bit of popularity in the mid-nineties, finally seeing their debut record released, especially notable having formed all the way back in 1982, and during the years 1992-1996, the band released two albums, one ep, one single, one split single and a collection compiling the early works that predated their proper debut, it's all included here, and is darn near overwhelming all gathered up in one place, especially considering that ONE song in, and we already had chills. Such is the power of the Dicks, who sonically seemed to situate themselves somewhere between the Palace Brothers, Silver Jews, Yo La Tengo, Pavement and Sebadoh (Lou Barlow even pops up on a Dicks jam or two), their sound an eerie psychedelic folk, a stumbling abstract primitivism, raw, and a bit warped, always seeming to teeter on the edge of collapse, that tension, that inevitable doom, rendered in sound and somehow woven into the fabric of their unique sound. Later, that sound would evolve to include sonic elements that would seem to be drawn from krautrock groups like Ash Ra Templ or Popol Vuh, but it's hard to say whether that was intentional or happenstance.
Their first album, The Unexamined Life, is probably the Dicks material that would be the least alienating to the casual listener, rooted in indie folk, the arrangements simple and spare, the instrumentation standard, but that's where the familiarity ends, as the Dicks forge their own path, and one song into their debut, seal the deal and establish themselves as masters of this arcane and unique to them musical form. "In A Sweet Song" gently tumbles into motion, all spidery acoustic guitar, delicate and crystalline, the vocals a sung/spoken warble, frought with emotion and tension, the drums stumbling, a lo -fi pound, in swoop more guitars, a brief bit of psychedelia, all druggy slippery melodies, and the clang and jangle of loud guitars, slowly building, a wild tangle of competing melodies that give us chills every time. The lyrics haunting and heartfelt, building again to a seriously rad jam that sounds like it was lifted straight out of a classic Pavement jam, pressed onto a 7", left in the sun, and then played back on an old Sears turntable, all warped and woozy and so so so wonderful. Even nearly 20 years later, nothing can touch this. And so goes The Unexamined Life, a bizarre collection of fractured folk music, fragmented and abstract, multiple vocalists, keening high about to crack warbles, and deep croons, fluttering flutes, hazy soft focus psychedelia, lilting and gently pastoral one second, weirdly chaotic the next, sawed strings, total super catchy jangle pop nestled amongst twisted Jandekian slowburn outsider folk, blown out super distorted psychpop melting into what sounds like some sort of bastardized classic rock, like the Grateful Dead via Faxed head, the tape crumbling, the sounds seeming to decay, even though the music itself is fairly straight ahead, finally finishing off with the appropriately titled "Strange Song", a sprawl of slow building tripped out psychedelic free noise freakout most modern bands would KILL for.
Workingman's Dick was originally released on Freek Records in 1994, and collected all of the early Dicks recordings, and is a glorious hodgepodge hinting at what was to come, not that far removed from their debut, if anything a bit more experimental, the timbre of the sound and the quality of the recordings varying from track to track, the sounds slipping from freakfolk to murky dirgery, and from haunting skeletal folk to Sentridoh like experimental fuckery. It's maybe the most difficult listen of the various releases, but also contains some of the band's dreamiest gems. This Is Not A Dick, was recorded around the same time as their final record, but was a lot like Workingman's Dick in that it was cobbled together from recordings made between 1987 and 1994, and much like Workingman's Dick, is sonically varied, opening with some abstract psychedelic drift, all grinding guitars and chiming melodies, a freaky lo-fi basement jam that is surprisingly and fantastically (although subtly) unhinged, and from there on out, the band slips from dreamy strummy shimmer to garbled crumbling experimentation, one of our favorites being "Marks Phonecall From Orgoneland", which is a dreamy little Avarus like microjam that's all whistling and tinkling chimes, skittery rhythms and hushed percussion, all accompanied by the phone call in question, a strange spoken word rant over a clattery No Neck Blues Band like clamor, the other being "Harmonic Convergence (Live At L'Oasis 1987)" which is a cool collection of recordings of the what sounds like various clubs between songs, lots of silence, clinking glasses, a recited poem with plenty of jeers from a sparse crowd and the band requesting someone to come up and play drums for them. Weird and wonderful.
Finally, the band released their last record, The Emotional Plague, in 1996, and this is where the band's warble folk and psychedelic crumble becomes a bit more expansive and far reaching, the above mentioned perceived influence of Ash Ra Tempel and other like minded outfits, transforming the group's sound into something more lush and lovely, and marginally less difficult. Marginally. Opener "Synaesthesia" is a haunting bit of droned out psychedelic drift, thick low end rumbles, chiming melodies, distant skeletal guitar melodies, the song starting out dark and powerfully minimal, but seeming to gradually fall apart as the track progresses, which leads right into the first proper song, the production notably more polished, the guitars ringing out, the drums not buried in the mix, but the sound still a little off kilter, slightly atonal, a little off key, the song a gorgeous lilting almost ballad, that builds to a full on psychrock freakout, and then peters out, leading directly into a nightmarish stretch of ominous FX drenched psychdrone creep, atonal and warped and warbly, eventually morphing into what almost sounds like some lost Neil Young outtake, unexpected for sure, but quite cool. And The Emotional Plague is where this already hard to describe band gets even more difficult to understand, let alone describe, most of the elements were present on past recordings, but here sound reimagined, and reinvented, repurposed even, the band seemingly able to reel of some perfect, delicate folk music like they could have been making music like that all along, but as if to say "why the hell would we?!" they immediately take the sound and pull it apart into a stumbling alternate dimension Pink Floydian dirge that manages to be psychedelic, but also some sort of twisted indie pop, all fused together into something that is both and neither. The tracks on The Emotional Plague are longer, some nearly 10 minutes long, which let the Dicks explore and ramble and stretch out, weaving tranced out sprawls of repetition, of looped mesmer, of smoldering psychedelia, of hushed delicate dreampop drift, of haunting backporch alien Appalachia and of brooding, almost orchestral majesty, replete with horns and haunting spoken word, and a twisted deconstructed coda, "Green Wings Fly Adventure (Showered Reprise) an elegiac final movement, the perfect way to end such a mysterious and strange record, and an even more perfect way to lay to rest one of the strangest, most incredible, and under appreciated bands of the last two decades.
This deluxe reissue includes most of the original artwork, new liner notes, tons of rare photos, and tacks on a couple B-sides and a handful of unreleased jams, but even without those extras, this collection gathers up one of the most beautifully baffling and bafflingly brilliant bodies of work from one of our favorite groups of the last 20 years. And while we did our best with the above review, it's hard to stress just how utterly recommended and essential this really is!
And vinyl folks, while the whole set was not pressed on vinyl, the two proper albums were, so both The Unexamined Life and The Emotional Plague are available on vinyl (deluxe double lps to boot!) for the first time EVER.
Yet another backroom discovery, found a stash of this mysterious missive from someone calling themselves Swagger Jack, some sort of hillbilly drunken pirate, armed with a busted up old acoustic guitar, a jaw harp, a harmonica, maybe some busted up old keyboards, but very little else. A little digging is all it takes to discover that Swagger Jack is in fact long time aQ fave / pal Antony Milton, head honcho of killer cd-r label PseudoArcana as well as a member of various awesome groops (The Stumps, AM, The Nether Dawn, Mrtyu, Glory Fckn Sun, etc.), but as Swagger Jack, Milton is in full on hillbilly/folk/bluegrass mode, laying down simple lilting chunks of slo-mo Appalachia, lo-fi and hazy, druggy and minimal, simple steel string buzz augmented by jaw harp twang, harmonica wheeze, some minimal percussion, and a ramshackle backing of creaking, groaning whir and shimmer. The whole record sounds as if it was recorded on a rickety old porch, or in a forest clearing, like a more songy Avarus, or Tower Recordings with a backwoods hillbilly twist, some Velvet Underground druggy drift stripped down and recast as some sort of Fahey-esque dronefolk, bits of classic NZ soundmakers like Roy Montgomery, The Clean, Alastair Galbraith, and the like, woven into rickety backwoods twang flecked drone laced zoner country ballads. Pretty incredible stuff for sure, listening to this now, we're sort of surprised more folks didn't go crazy for this, and surprised that we somehow missed listing this completely, but better late than never, gorgeous stuff, and way recommended.
You might recognize Mr. Dominic East as the lead vocalist for that fine Bay Area band Our Lady Of The Highway, but now please acquaint yourself with Swallow and Swallows. That's his solo indie folk songsmith alter ego and these are his personal home recordings circa 2004-2006. As we've mentioned with regards to OLOTH, East bears a striking resemblance to both Mountain Goats' John Darnielle and The Weakerthans' John K. Samson in not only his earnest vocal delivery, but also his songcraft and heart-baring lyrical intimacy. It's even more evident on this release as he keeps the arrangements to a minimum with spare and solitary guitar accompaniment. Whenever we've played this, someone invariably asks if it's a new (or long lost) Mountain Goats record. Now, we're by no means griping, but geez, these guys are virtually doppelgangers! Not a bad thing when it sounds this gooood!
Mike Tamburo is another in the burgeoning free folk cd-r underground who through no fault of his own has been overlooked on our weekly new arrivals list. We do our best, but it's pretty dang impossible to keep up with the hundreds of new releases every week, but now we've got the chance to introduce you to the amazing dark musical world of Mr. Tamburo.
Dance Enis Dance is a 32 minute piece for acoustic guitar, Tibetan bowls, chromatic harmonica, e-bowm slide, hammered dulcimer and effects. The result is a modern raga, an epic multi part piece, that could have just as easily been a series of songs, but they are all deftly woven together into the whole. The first part is a simple bit of Appalachian strum that is gradually smeared into a blurry, fuzzy ambience, an effulgent streak of slow shifting buzz. The second 'movement' is super subdued, a dark dark drift, with bells and chimes ringing out over a muted background of warm chords and steel string shimmer, eventually drifting off only to be replaced by a flurry of dulcimer notes, a dense cloud of tangled melody, which is eventually overtaken by thick slabs of crumbling guitar distortion, throbbing and pulsing. The last few minutes are a see-saw, veering back and forth between delicate steel string folk with dreamy slide guitar offering up haunting minor key melodies, to wild fervent strumming and back again, culminating in a strangely atonal bacchanalian psychedelic denouement. Really good stuff. We can't wait to hear more.
This cd-r is packaged in a full color sleeve with a huge insert, art on one side, liner notes (and a poignant tale) on the other.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!
The Tompkins Square label who puts out the Imaginational Anthem compilations (volume 2 of which is reviewed elsewhere on this list), has reissued the 1965 sole private press record of finger-picking guitarist Harry Taussig. A contemporary of John Fahey and Robbie Basho (Taussig's only other recording is on a 1967 Takoma label compilation featuring both Fahey and Basho), Taussig's repertoire explores blues, ragtime and Americana, covering songs from Reverend Gary Davis and Elizabeth Cotten as well as other traditional songs. Comparisons to Fahey will of course abound, but there are definite differences in their playing styles. Most notably Taussig's exploration of stark ragtime idioms and stricter adherence to songforms, leaving less room for the excursionary meditations that Fahey fostered.
While this reissue is remastered with original liner notes and photos, our only complaint about it is the lack of Taussig's back story. What happened to him? Is he still alive? Perhaps the mystery is what the title eludes to. Fate is Only Once.
If there's one thing you can count on with those Wolfe identical twins (Alison from those grrrrrls Bratmobile and Cindy from this much more southern twangy band you're reading about right this very moment), it's that if they've got something on their minds
From the label that brought us Neko Case, the Corn Sisters, and the New Pornographers, it's time for a little Tennessee Twin! Legend has it that following the break-up of Allison Wolfe's band Bratmobile, Allison and her twin sister (and puppeteer extraordinaire) Cindy Wolfe had planned on collaborating forces on an old-country outfit in Olympia, WA. Well, as you may know
We reviewed a previous, long out of print reissue of this, way back in 1999, saying simply and succinctly (as we did back then, we're more long winded now):
Outstanding psychedelic folk rarity with delicate female vocals, from Hawaiian trio circa 1973. There's just enough tabla, slide guitar, and Arp synthesizer to give it an 'edge.'
We further cited it as being one of then AQ-owner Windy's new favorites.
Well, These Trails apparently have fans over at Drag City too, 'cause they've just reissued it, on cd and vinyl, and we're glad to have this old fave back! These gentle, melodic songs are alternately sunny, sprightly and delightful, or moody and mellow, a bit country-twangy and tropical too, this album overall having a wonderful hippy Hawaiian vibe to it... As mentioned above, some strangely buzzing, burbling synth alongside the acoustic guitars and dulcimer gives the proceedings a darker, mystical feel much of the time, with tracks like the droning, melancholy "Hello Lou" being among our favorites. The vintage electronics, in combination with the lovely harmonized vocals, do definitely put this into a very special category of its own, even among all the privately pressed, mysterious one-album-ever gems out there, from the dusty past.
Definitely for fans of Linda Perhacs, also perhaps imagine '70 UK folksters Trees on a Hawaiian vacation, on the beach at sunset, with a synth plugged in somewhere.
Perfect time to have this reissued, with the ongoing acid folk and New Age revival, lots of folks haven't heard this before and are gonna LOVE it. We should have had it on our Summer Special last inbetween list, come to think of it. So check it out, and hang loose, very loose, with These Trails.
Maybe Drag City will reissue The Enlightening Beam of Axonda, next...?
By the way, amazing that These Trails somehow anticipated the internet, by writing a song here called "Of Broken Links"... haha.
Rosie Thomas' sophomore release is a soft, subdued affair. The first song is definitely one of its standouts. It might even make you want to keep hitting the "repeat" button, but listen on and you'll be treated to ten more hushed, intimate folky tunes. Luminous notes from a piano hang gently in the air. Thomas exudes a quiet confidence, delivering her introspective lyrics with an emotive lilt that brings to mind Shawn Colvin or Sarah McLachlan. Only With Laughter Can You Win gracefully walks the line between adult contemporary and indie alt-country. Perhaps pushing it further into the latter and adding to the close-to-home-and-heart feel are the presence of a number of her relatives - her mother, father, sister and brothers all join Ms Thomas on a song or two. As well, Iron & Wine's vocalist Sam Beam hops aboard for one song too.
Rootin' tootin' rounders, bounders, no-good son of a guns! The hard livin', hard lovin' types who won't be tied down ("I'll Be A Bachelor Till I Die", "Bummin' Around"), who'll spend their last dollar at the card table ("Rovin' Gambler") if they haven't already spent it on liquor ("Drunkards' Blues", "A Six Pack To Go"), that's who these songs are all about. Fun stuff from rhinestone-studded honky tonk cowboy Hank Thompson, a real Western Swinger all right, twangy of voice and guitar, who sings of drink ("Teach 'Em How To Swim") and drugs ("Cocaine Blues") and other such wholesome subjects, making the low-life lifestyle sound pretty dang cool - and for sure nobody can tell him what to do, even if it might wind 'em up in prison after shooting a man down for cheating at cards.
These two country music classics, Songs For Rounders (1959) and the live At The Golden Nugget (1961), the latter complete with authentic casino ambience of spinning roulette wheels, etc., and Thompson's between-song patter, are both full of such gems, mostly material penned by Thompson, as well as by Merle Travis, Hank Williams, and other greats. Lots of jumpin' good-time grooves and clever lines ("Take my glass, fill it to the brim / If I can't drown my troubles, babe, I'll teach 'em how to swim")... But Hank also slows it down for some bluesier ballads, getting serious about the likely outcomes of the lifestyle choices he had been seemingly celebrating; ultimately, singing the sad "I Cast A Lonesome Shadow", taken from a rare 7" single (the disc is rounded out with bonus tracks from some other early '60s Thompson releases).
While we can't say that anyone here at aQ has ever been a big, big country music fan, the Omni Recording Corporation's various reissues like this one and others by the likes of Dick Curless, Johnny Paycheck, Porter Wagoner, have gone a long way to changing that. This 2-on-1 disc is a definite delight!
A John Fahey project!
MISSISSIPPI RECORDS NEW RELEASE!!! MISSISSIPPI RECORDS NEW RELEASE!!! MISSISSIPPI RECORDS NEW RELEASE!!!
We gotta do that every time, there's so many folks now who want them all, every Mississippi Records release, be it blues, or country, or gospel or punk rock. And can't say that we blame you, pretty much everyone at aQ is the same way, a box from Mississippi shows up, and we all gather round to see what magical sounds are awaiting us.
This time, it's a collection of unreleased recordings from Bishop Perry Tillis, preacher, and master of the electric blues, with a super idiosyncratic guitar playing style and a gorgeous voice, and a truly strange approach to music and spirituality.
Unlike the Tillis cd a couple years back on Birdman, which featured songs recorded in the seventies, these tracks here were collected from home recordings, made in the years right before Tillis' death. Super lo-fi and raw, these tracks were recorded on an old boombox in Tillis' living room, even going so far as to use multiple boomboxes for a primitive sort of multitracking, the results are fantastic and strange and gorgeous.
Yeah, it's classic sounding blues, but the guitar parts are dense and angular and tangly, his voice raw and rough, but everything smoothed by the lo-fu recording, and there are strange harmonies happening too, the result of Tillis "channeling angels" who want to help him by singing along and testifying.
The enclosed liner notes, feature an interview with Tillis, where he answers questions in the voice of his 'guardian angel', and, well it's a bit confusing for sure, but he, or she, tells the story of his life, talks about the angels, really fascinating.
But it's the music that matters, and once again Mississippi seemingly can do no wrong. The sounds here are soulful and energetic, mysterious and beautiful, spiritual and emotional, but also surprisingly rocking and groovy, and bluesy and bad ass.
The packaging as always is fantastic, super thick sleeves, nice heavy vinyl, and extensive liner notes. Needless to say, if you haven't started collecting Mississippi releases, this one is as good a place to start as any, and like the other Mississippi lps, these go our of print pretty quick, so grab one while you can.
Hard to believe it's been nearly a decade since we first heard Timesbold, and come to think of it, it's been almost as long since we've heard any new recordings from these guys. We originally discovered them, when aQ fave Greg Weeks was performing in town, and the opening act was none other than Timesbold, whose sound was a dizzying hybrid of mournful dark country dirgery, lush experimental pop, and a certain classic country rock vibe. We compared them to Palace, Songs:Ohia, Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, Neil Young and the Band. And somehow these guys did channel all of those, into something entirely their own.
This record is not new, it's from 2008, and we can't tell when it was recorded, could be even older, and heck, we're not even sure if these guys are still a band, but what we do know, is it's so good to hear them again, and these songs take up right where their self titled record on Blue Sanct left off.
Lush instrumentation, banjo, organs, big guitars, slippery slide, moaning cellos, crystalline harmonics, urgent steel string strum, the drums slipping from shuffle to pound and back again, the sound warm and lush, twangy and surprisingly rocking, a darkened country drift melded to an apocalyptic swamp folk, the vocals super distinctive, emotional and heartfelt, very reminiscent of Will Oldham and Jason Molina (of Songs:Ohia), fragile, often on the verge of cracking, yet still powerful, the songs smolder and brood, occasionally introspective and minimal, but also occasionally explosive and intense, the songs rife with subtle hooks, all the hallmarks of classic country folk, but wreathed in experimental tendencies, and a wide reaching sonic palette. It's a shame these guys aren't more well known, these songs, all of their records, this is most definitely the kind of thing that would inspire some serious obsessiveness in fans of Palace, Souled American, 16 Horsepower, Woven Hand, Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, Munly, the Decemberists, Low Anthem, Sparklehorse, Giant Sand and other purveyors of dark twang...
Really fantastic!
Finally a full length from the amazing Timesbold! We first discovered them as the opening act for AQ fave Greg Weeks last year and loved the shit out of their debut ep. This full length fufills every promise their ep made and then some!! A dark and lonely trip down some very familiar paths, but the scenery is quite different and the company is much better. Taking the mournful, bleak country rock of Palace or Songs:Ohia, the lush melancholia of the Flaming Lips or Mercury Rev, and the classic songsmithery of Neil Young or the Band, Timesbold emerge with something at once totally timeless and classic, but also fresh and unique. Piano and acoustic guitars are the foundation for these expansive and gut wrenching tales of misery and hopelessness. Spare and sparse, evoking wastelands, both physical and spiritual, these tunes are so intense and brutally poignant, furtive peeks into the souls of men damned by love and loss. Breathtaking and intense, dark and dreary, but gorgeously recorded and produced. Thick throbbing low end, wisps of shimmery harmonium and that voice, a warbling, cracked cry to the heavens for forgiveness and salvation. So so good. This is probably the saddest, most beautiful, best sounding record we've heard in a really long time. Fans of Woven Hand, 16 Horsepower, Palace, Songs:Ohia, Souled American and all that sort of rickety, dreamy, country/folk/rock will LOVE this as much as we do.
MPEG Download: "Giniwin" [/audio/timesboldginiwin.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Giniwin" [/audio/timesboldginiwin.m3u]
After a handful of primarily country-infused solo albums (and countless others with her ol' band the Mekons, not to mention many collaborative efforts), Sally Timms has assumed an altogether new sound and persona for her newest full length, In The World Of Him. And it seems fitting that this release should appear on the broader-scoped label Touch & Go rather that her usual rootsy homebase of Bloodshot Records. We caught a hint of the image transformation from the album's coverart, a photo of Timms (oddly and uncomfortably) scantily clad in clear platform heels and lingerie slip sitting on the edge of a rumpled bed of satin sheets. Whoa Miss Sally! What's going on? And the first song made us go "oh my!" once more. It's a startlingly moody breakbeat driven number with her singing in a very smoky cabaret style. Once we got over the initial disorientation though, we took a shine to this 'new' Sally. As the album's title eludes, all the songs were written by men -- Jon Langford, Kevin Coyne, Johnny Dowd, Mark Eitzel, and Ryan Adams. Fine singer/songwriters all of them, but one thing's for sure, she makes each song wholly her own. The key? Her voice is at its most expressive in years, at once embodying both a comforting warmth and a brittle throaty weariness. For those yearning for the Sally of old, fear not! She does drift back into a more familiar dusky twang further into the album, and sort of weaves back and forth between the two worlds. An impressive reinvention.
This cherished local group is comprised simply of languid violin, sprightly accordion and gentle guitar, but what a lovely deep full sound they make. Sometimes they're conjuring up macabre cartoon music, sometimes a dusty waltz, sometimes it's a Kronos Quartet-style light romp through several different moods 'n genres within single tracks. Willie Nelson even guests on one song! If Tom Waits opened a coffeehouse, Tin Hat Trio would be the house band.
- RealAudio clip: Bill
- RealAudio clip: Joel
This is the debut solo album by Ms Tirill Mohn. Some may remember her from the Norwegian prog-folk band White Willow. Lovely!
Torrez features Sidney Lindner, who is brother of AQ regular/wildman Cayce (who you may rememeber from several of the Neighborhood Films) and one half of AQ faves Golden Hotel with Cayce. Sidney's production seems to have a great deal to do with both bands' sound: a rich, thick, miasma of warm hums, shimmering reverb, and spooky ambience. In Torrez, unlike the meandering drug addled psych folk of the Golden Hotel, the focus is definitely more on the songs, and especially the vocals of Kim Torrez, who has a gorgeous, langorous torch singer voice, dark and deep and throaty but also dreamy and ethereal. This is the sophomore album from Torrez and reveals a more fleshed out and accessible sound for this New Hampshire group which I'm not so sure is a good thing. Mind you it's definitely not a BAD thing. It's just that Lindner's unsettling and off kilter soundscapes kept Torrez from slipping into Norah Jones/Dido/Sarah McLachlan territory. And while it's definitely nowhere near that point, there's less of the smoldering, slightly unsettling energy that loomed gloriously over their 2001 debut. Things are generally more evenkeeled and thus more accessible. Rumour has it their apparently-not-so-indie-after-all label KimChee rejected the first version of The Evening Drag for being too fucked up and not commercial enough...hmmmmm....would love to hear that original mix! A standout song is "The Evening Sun" in which they conjured a secret gathering of Godspeed, the Dirty Three, Mazzy Star and Cowboy Junkies. Still quite lovely and miles above their more famous contemporaries.
Dark and langorous, sweet and shimmering country. Super sparse arrangements, delicate lap steel, gorgeous vocals and an amazing super spacious recording make this a sweet surprise. Think Mazzy Star, Souled American, Giant Sand, Low, but recorded late at
The fourth album (their third on Bloodshot Records) from this Chapel Hill, NC quartet is a dark bewitching jewel very much along the same path as their labelmates the wonderful Sadies. Characterized by Melissa Swingle's haunting, lilting drawl, highly reverbed feline pluck and twang, and ghostly musical saw, this is the sultry music of shadows that stretch and creep across your
On this their fifth full length, Trailer Bride offer up a dozen more immensely forlorn songs of journey and flight filled with their recurring references to birds, drifters and heartache. Although none of these songs can truly hold a candle to the pure, deep, raw heartache of "Bird Feet Feelings" from their last album High Seas (a song that could make Cup weep), a couple do come pretty close. No vast departures from the Southern gothic country path they've travelled on their four prior albums, and actually song by song this album follows remarkably close to the mood and tempo swings of High Seas, but things are perhaps ever so slightly more lush and fleshed out. Lead vocalist Melissa Swingle delivers her distinctly sedated plaintive vocals as (mostly) sloooow creeping melodies unfold on the central instruments: Tim Barnes' lilting effected guitar, Daryl White's loping standup bass, John Bowman's understated percussion and Ms Swingle's guitar and piano. She also adds further depths to the dusky, yearning atmosphere with some musical saw, harmonica, organ and accordion. FYI: Trailer Bride received some kind assistance from their fellow North Carolinan friends Southern Culture On The Skids... Rick Miller recorded the songs in his studio, and Mary Huff lent her lovely voice to the song "Vagabond Motel".
Record number three from these local country punks, and the first one we've reviewed, which is weird, since some aQ-ers have long been fans, but also because Trainwreck Riders include amongst their members, Andrew from SF pop gods the Ovens, but while TWR are in fact a bit poppy, their sound is much more twangy, bringing to mind, most obviously, Camper Van Beethoven, Uncle Tupelo, Dieselhed and that whole No Depression crowd. And sure none of those bands exist anymore, and really that whole scene sorta dried up and disappeared, but these guys definitely remind us of why we loved that stuff so much, and have us again wondering why more bands still don't do the whole country punk / country rock thing. It sounds as good now as it ever did. And it's easy to imagine these guys being huge back in the nineties, records on Bloodshot, touring with the Old 97's or the Mekons, but these days, they're definitely doing something WAY outside of what's hip and cool. But goddamn these guys nail it. Big jangly guitars, lush arrangements, loping rhythms, plenty of twang, drawled, laid back vocals, crazy catchy songs, with some occasionally exploding into kick ass start/stop almost mathy breakdowns, like on the second half of "Gypsy Stealin', which finds the band unfurling a dense tangle of progged out twang flecked post rock churn, which somehow fist perfectly with the rest of the songs droned out blugrassy groove.
The band definitely have their pop down too, every song here impossibly catchy, "House On The Hill" being one of our favorites, heavily beholden to Uncle Tupelo, sounding like it could be a cover of some Anodyne B-side, which is a huge compliment for sure! "Orchard Keeper" too, definitely displays a huge UT influence, the song shifting constantly from country gallop to woozy twangy dream pop and back again. But the more we listen, the harder and harder it gets to pick a favorite, as more and more of the songs become potential candidates, which is always the sign of a great record, in fact we only just now made it to the brooding closer, "Shark Attack", a moody woozy reverb drenched country ballad with some seriously grim lyrics about, yep, a shark attack, the music appropriately dirge-y and ominous, a serious chunk of grim dark twang.
The cd comes in a digipak, the vinyl pressed on 180 gram vinyl, also includes a cd version of the whole record!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
From the lead-off track "Delia", Trainwreck Riders come galloping at ya, and they maintain that fevered clip throughout the rest of the album's eleven kick-in-the-pants songs. Where The Neon Turns To Wood is filled with scruffy, whisky-soaked country rockin' that brings to mind the hoarse Jeff Tweedy yelp of Uncle Tupelo, but the band also occasionally veers into more straight-up indie rock territory a la Modest Mouse.
Not to be confused with Doug Martsch's amazing nineties outfit, the Treepeople, -these- Tree People are equally amazing, but are a whole different proposition.
This disc was originally released as a super limited lp way back in 1979 and managed to quietly disappear. Now, here we are nearly three decades later, and whattaya know? There's a whole movement of modern free folk, 'freak' folk and the like, and if you didn't know better, pretty sure we could pass this off as some strange super limited cd-r by some modern folk revivalists. But keen ears would certainly be able to tell. This is so entirely original (especially for the time) and genuine sounding. Mostly acoustic guitars, flute and vocals, the Tree People had two distinct sounds, the first, a lilting melancholy moonlit folk, like Cat Stevens or Van Morrison, a gorgeous lazy drawl, rich and lustrous, over simple folk and fluttering flutes, dreamy and gorgeous, sounding like some lost folk classic one minute, a strange "Girl From Ipanema" style shuffle the next. But even at it's sweetest and softest, the record seems to always have a hint of melancholy, sometimes even a trace of ominous foreboding. Which definitely gives the songs a subtly dark undercurrent. The majority of the record however is spent in full on hippy jam mode. Very Comus-like at times (especially on track two, "Sliding"), wild steel string excursions, dense tangles of fingerpicked melodies and aggressive strummed riffs, with a definite raga like vibe, all over a smattering of hand drums and tablas, a glorious drifting buzzing steel string dronefolk, that just sounds so incredibly timeless. Elsewhere, the same jams evolve into more tranquil acoustic dreaminess, with the flutes floating over sweet lilting melodies, but even then, the songs will be peppered with sudden bursts of buzzing slide guitar, or brief squalls of atonal fingerpicking. SO cool. And considering the current love of all things freaky and folky, it's sort of amazing that stuff like this was already being made 27 years ago!
Obviously, fans of the current crop of modern folk troubadours will find this absolutely essential, Devandra, Vetiver, Espers, Newsom, whatever your particular poison, the Tree People will fit in frighteningly well. Hard to say whether it speaks to the prescience of the Tree People, or just to how much these modern bands have actually been 'borrowing'. Either way, this is absolutely essential.
Packaged in a super deluxe Japanese miniature gatefold style cd sleeve, with a printed obi, and extensive liner notes in English and Japanese!
1970, England. Imagine a rock band that's equally into the sort of psychedelic electric guitar excursions you'd have heard back then wafting from London's hippy ballrooms, as well as ballads and jigs derived from British folk song tradition. With lovely, pure, delicately bird-like female vocals a la Anne Briggs and Sandy Denny... Yes, Trees were quite a bit like Fairport Convention, but rather more obscure. And now, at long last, we've managed to get a hold of these UK import-only cd reissues of their two albums. Gorgeous stuff indeed, utterly magical, definitely for fans of early Fairport, Shirley Collins, Pentangle, and the whole Brit-folk-rock thing.
Both of Trees' records ("The Garden of Jane Delawney" and "On The Shore") are from 1970 and come equally recommended (they may as well be two volumes of the same album). Both of 'em feature the vocals of Celia Humphris, along with both traditional acoustic instruments (dulcimer, mandolin) and electric guitars, and blend original songs and adaptations of traditional folk material.
"The Garden..." boasts a rather strange cover painting, and Windy's favorite Tree's track, "Nothing Special", whose sublimely pretty guitar strumming prefigured a whole movement of jangle pop bands (e.g. REM). Of their two albums perhaps *slightly* the more rock-based and produced, "On The Shore" features the song "Sally Free And Easy" which in recent years, you may recall, was covered by Flying Saucer Attack on a Drag City ep of that title, and also comes with lengthy liner notes telling the story of the band.
1970, England. Imagine a rock band that's equally into the sort of psychedelic electric guitar excursions you'd have heard back then wafting from London's hippy ballrooms, as well as ballads and jigs derived from British folk song tradition. With lovely, pure, delicately bird-like female vocals a la Anne Briggs and Sandy Denny... Yes, Trees were quite a bit like Fairport Convention, but rather more obscure. And now, at long last, we've managed to get a hold of these UK import-only cd reissues of their two albums. Gorgeous stuff indeed, utterly magical, definitely for fans of early Fairport, Shirley Collins, Pentangle, and the whole Brit-folk-rock thing.
Both of Trees' records ("The Garden of Jane Delawney" and "On The Shore") are from 1970 and come equally recommended (they may as well be two volumes of the same album). Both of 'em feature the vocals of Celia Humphris, along with both traditional acoustic instruments (dulcimer, mandolin) and electric guitars, and blend original songs and adaptations of traditional folk material.
"The Garden..." boasts a rather strange cover painting, and Windy's favorite Tree's track, "Nothing Special", whose sublimely pretty guitar strumming prefigured a whole movement of jangle pop bands (e.g. REM). Of their two albums perhaps *slightly* the more rock-based and produced, "On The Shore" features the song "Sally Free And Easy" which in recent years, you may recall, was covered by Flying Saucer Attack on a Drag City ep of that title, and also comes with lengthy liner notes telling the story of the band.
