We have to say, when it comes to country, the idea of that country music being funky, well, some of us definitely had a sort of 'no chocolate in our peanut butter' reaction, but as everyone learned with the whole chocolate / peanut butter situation, those two things did in fact end up making a pretty good combo. The soul funk / country thing though is definitely a harder sell, and there are plenty of tracks here that had us thinking maybe we were right, those seventies signifiers that definitely have the potential to rub us the wrong way, saxophone, wakka wakka guitars, those ubiquitous female background vocals, in fact, this sounded less country and more like seventies singer-songwriter soul, which is maybe where it does actually fit better. The fact that Wilson was a Augusta/Nashville singer-songwriter, signed to the label alongside Kris Kristofferson and Tony Joe White, seems to have had more to do with his 'country' classification, that his sound, one that was definitely a country pop, but you know, the more we listen to this, the more we dig it. Dark, softly soulful, moody and contemplative, subtly soaring strings, and Wilson's voice, deep and mellifluous, sounding a bit like Kris Kristofferson crossed with Isaac Hayes. Not surprisingly, our favorites here tend to be the brooding ballads, the perfect showcase for Wilson's incredible voice, but the funky honky tonk jams have definitely grown on us, with some kick ass horns, fuzzy organs, and Wilson often slipping into some spoken word patter.
If you really want to be sold on the funky side of Wilson's sound though, check out "Sheldon Churchyard", with it's heavy psychedelic wah wah funk guitar, super stereo panned sound, the guitars swinging from speaker to speaker, the melodies dark and ominous, acoustic guitars, horns, a wicked main melody, tense and brooding and dramatic and seriously rocking, we're actually sort of surprised this hasn't made it onto more comps, cuz it's a killer. And truth be told, this collection, which gathers up Wilson's first two records, is heavy with killer jams, from soft and soulful, to dark and twangy, to downright funky and psychedelic.
And like all Omni releases, there's a big ol' booklet with liner notes and lots of rare photos.
This is Aaron Calvert (of the L.A. band Evergreen) and Mikel Garmendia of Cars Get Crushed. Which is why I was surprised by this cd. I was expecting that post punk late 90's sort of thang. Instead I found some good ol' Americana with a healthy dose of No Depression with interesting production, at times reminiscent of Tom Waits or Vic Chestnutt. EP length at 35 minutes.
There is nothing groundbreaking here but it's done really well. Totally captivating and charming. The vocals are slurred and lazy and drunk sounding, maybe even a bit too much... Really pretty nice.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
All Rudimentary Peni covers!!!
Cloud of angular riffing, blurred into a dense swirl of muted crunch, woozy warbly, with the pitch constantly shifting, over which Wolfe's voice drifts ghostly and ethereal.... before the sound settles into a dolorous creep, all drifty twang, and distant echo drenced vox, a sort of gothic Morricone-esque doomfolk, very reminiscent of Woven Hand, that same sort of apoacalyptic swamp folk vibe, but here, that sounds is stretched into something more ephemeral and wispy, which leads directly into a swaggery stretch of spectral blues, echo drenched and wreathed in a thick fog of reverb and echo, her voice buired in the mix much of the time, all blurred gothic swoon, but on tracks like "Black On Gold / Sickening For Something" her voice is fron and center, witchy and bewitching, powerful and passionate, channeling a little PJ Harvey via Zola Jesus, but with a definite pounding punk vibe. But then the sound will space out again into the skeletal creep of "Dissolution / Rehearsal For Mortality", all spidery minor key guitars, minimal percussion, Wolfe's voice winding itself around the slowly unwinding doom/dreamscape,
culminating finally in the tripped out title track finale, a free form Dead C style doom, all bursts of chaotic noise, and stumbling anti-rhythms, draped over a dirgey riff, and Wolfe's soaring intense vox, before all the sounds coalesce into a churning dirge, the vocals growing more and more intense, nearly overwhelming the music, a tense, intense, darkly dramatic finish.
Smolken has always been a confounding personality, the man behind both Wolfmangler and Dead Raven Choir, releasing records on proper metal labels, but also on weirdo avant free folk microlabel Jewelled Antler, mixing black metal, folk music, country, bluegrass, whatever the hell he feels like really, the results sometimes brilliant, often baffling, but always weird and wonderful in their own way.
They Call Us Naughty Wolves marks the return of Smolken as Wolfmangler after more than two years of relative inactivity, and to be honest, we were approaching this with a bit of trepidation. It was after all a record called They Call Us Naughty Wolves, and according to the label was blackened burlesque chamber music, a sort of channeling of pop from yesteryear, not to mention that some of the cds come with a pair of Wolfmangler undies (really! more on that in a second). But really, conceptually and sonically, this is no stranger than past Smolken projects, so we threw it on, and were pleasantly surprised, if one can find this sort of music simply 'pleasant'.
The sound is creepy, and dark, and creaky, and mysteriously ominous, strings moan and groan, a slow lugubrious chamber music, transformed into something much blacker and creepier, the melancholic gloom and string laden dirgery accompanied by a blackened croak, vokills that gurgle and growl, although they are sometimes accompanied by an angelic female counterpoint. The guitar or bass is more a fuzzy blur, a droney rumble, that underpins the strings, cellos or violins driving the tracks, creating the muted melodies, and it's that weird guttural vocal and string combination, that can't help but remind us of those groups like Xynfonica, Shevelreq, Gluttony, Thursar, the twisted metal vox with gnarled guitar synths emulating exotic instruments. So right off the bat, if that stuff is to your twisted taste, then this will definitely hit the spot. But Smolken's vision isn't so damaged or demented, it's definitely rooted in sounds more traditional, a sort of blackened doom chamber folk, which will appeal to fans of dark slow low moody weirdness. Although some of it is definitely WAY weird. The band occasionally slipping into some strangely jaunty jig like Renn Faire folk music, but for the most part, it's just some seriously brooding, surprisingly beautiful, freaked out and fucked up outsider darkness, like Tom Waits' Black Rider blurred and muddied and blackened into some woozy warped soundtrack to a filmic fable of wolves and woods.
Two lucky aQ customers who order this, will also get a companion pair of red (riding hood), women's panties, with a screenprinted image of a wolf dressed up like grandma on the butt, They Call Us Naughty Wolves after all, it'll be totally random, so cross your fingers...
Amazingly alchemic guitar compositions in the primitive / wooden / post-Appalachia vein. Lovely.
There was a time, when we were getting in a new Wooden Wand record every week, for years it seemed like, and over the course of all those release, the sound of James Toth and his Wooden Wand gradually shifted, from ramshackle free psych and obtuse abstract folk, to something more singer/songwriter, culminating (for us at least) in the very Dylan-esque James & The Quiet, which for all its good qualities, seemed to not connect the way past records did.
Since then, there's been a few more records, but by then we had sort of given up, or if not given up, ceased to be all that interested.
But our curiosity was piqued with WW's return to Michael Gira's Young God label, with what was purported to be an actual proper country record. We were a bit skeptical, but wow, is this great, like Wooden Wand via Townes Van Zandt, TvZ being a particularly apt comparison for these songs, as they definitely owe much to him in terms of melody, arrangement and phrasing. "The Mountain" sounds like it could almost BE a Townes Van Zandt cover. But Toth definitely has found his muse, whether it's TvZ or not, these songs are gorgeously dark and bleak, simple and stripped down, but augmented with occasional female vox, whirring organs, little flurries of psychedelic shimmer, some of the songs are lush and expansive, but our heart belongs to the more intimate numbers, darkly skeletal and super intimate. There are still moments that remind us of Dylan, or Jandek, but once those are woven into the tapestry of Death Seat, they're a natural fit with the more melancholy country dirges and wistful twang flecked ballads. A fantastic surprise and a definite new favorite.
Seems like only moments ago, my favorite record of last year came out. Maybe that's just because I still listen to it almost every day!! It's that good. If you read the AQ list you know I'm talking about the totally amazing Woven Hand record, a solo project of David Eugene Edwards from Sixteen Horsepower. Let's quickly recap for those who don't know what the hell I'm talking about. Sixteen Horsepower make weird backwoods gypsy folk, augmenting normal instrumentation with fiddles, accordions and mandolins. Dark and swampy tales, campfire stumps and lugubrious dirge folk crawls. Sound good? Well that's 'cause it is!! A huge AQ favorite. We weren't sure what to expect from Edwards solo record. We certainly weren't expecting it to surpass 16HP in every way, but it did!! Darker and creepier, tales of apocalyptic doom and Biblical salvation rendered in dreary, droney folk, lit by the fire of a bayou campfire. SO SO SO GOOD!!! One of the few records that really moved me. Seriously, like to tears. It's so gorgeous and passionate and sinister and perfect. Yes, PERFECT. So here we are a year later and a new record from the Woven Hand. Blush Music is music composed for a modern dance performance by the Belgian dance troupe Ultima Vez. It's about half re-worked songs from the first record and half new material. At first I was a little disappointed that it was different versions of old songs, until I heard the new versions. GOD!! This record perfectly complements the songs on the first record. One of the highlights from the first record was the cover of Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine", a perfectly gut wrenching, tear jerking slow motion valentine to lost love. On Blush Music, "Ain't No Sunshine" reappears as the 12+ minute "Animalitos", with the original stretched out into an entirely new shape, complete with dark, mornful ambient passages, wheezing organs, bombastic percussion, rumbling drones, bird calls, and forest sounds, with the vocals and melody occasionally surfacing only to be immediately overwhelmed by the turbulent soundscape. A couple songs from the first record get this treatment and the results are sublime. The new tracks, while not as immediately catchy as a lot of the tracks on the first record, still capture the same dread and dark hope. A good way to imagine this record in relation to the first, is imagine the first record as the -soundtrack- to an epic biblical southern love story equal parts Ben Hur, The Ten Commandments, Southern Comfort and All The Pretty Horses. Now imagine that Blush Music is the -score-, all the incidental music, the theme reworked and stretched out to hover emotionally beneath dialogue, or to guide the viewers emotions. I think this record works better if you already own the first one (thankfully the first one was just released domestically), but that isn't to say Blush Music is not a perfect slice of dark and droney, fire and brimstone, forlorn and forgotten, gorgeously damaged, gypsy psych-folk. 'Cause it is!
As any avid reader of the AQ list can no doubt attest to, we have long been huge fans of Mr. David Eugene Edwards, formerly of Southern Gothic swamp folk outfit 16 Horsepower, currently performing as Woven Hand, a band that takes the swampy folk of 16HP somewhere even darker, a world of imminent damnation, and dreams of glorious salvation. The music of Woven Hand is a dark and brooding, fire and brimstone, apocalyptic doom folk, with Edwards testifying like his life depended on it. And maybe it does. Edwards makes no bones about being a Christian, and the music of Woven hand plays like the Old Testament come to life. Damnation and suffering, a cold cruel world, the only hope of life everlasting is to somehow weather the harsh and hellish, to bow down and be lifted up. And the thing is you don't necessarily have to be religious to be terrified of death and suffering, or eternal torture, and even the staunchest atheist might think twice if offered a chance at eternal life, and eternal happiness. Typically, the word of God, the usual messages from on high, repent or die, do unto others, are hugely heavy handed, granted, they are meant to be as they do concern your eternal life, but when delivered in the context of the Woven Hand, some of us find our agnostic selves chilled to the bone, the fear of God, -some- God anyway, gets us quaking in our boots. But it's more about the delivery than the message for us, and from a purely musical approach Woven Hand's music is gloriously grim, an expansive and minor key world of darkness and drama, lost souls and true love, simple strummed guitars, dramatic understated strings, fiddles and wheezing accordions, haunting arrangements, bizarre percussion, strange FX and incredibly intense ambience, and of course Edwards' gorgeously affecting croon: dramatic, intense, emotional, but so obviously troubled, conflicted, hopeful too, yet streaked with a dark despair.
So although Woven Hand's chillingly morose gothic twang is perfect on its own, when tangled up with Edwards' moody tales of punishment and salvation, of love and death, it takes on even more emotional weight. And compared to the first Woven Hand record, Edwards seems to slowly be moving away from the sound of 16 Horespower, the first Woven Hand could have been another 16HP record, but such is the way with records like that, a 'solo' record from the band member who wrote most of the music for the band he just left. But each record has been getting darker, more personal, disturbingly so, but at the same time, more epic, more cinematic, and more and more beautiful.
When we hosted our first South By Southwest showcase last year, with our pals at WFMU, and were preparing out dream lists of bands to play, Woven Hand was right near the top of our list, after all, we'd made 4 of the 5 Woven Hand records our Record Of The Week (5 of 6 counting this one), and had somehow never seen them live. So when they confirmed, we were ecstatic, how could it not be totally amazing? But the biggest surprise wasn't that it WAS in fact, amazing, or that it was powerful and moving and intense, it was that they were so LOUD and so HEAVY, the room packed, the sound ALIVE, a crackling energy coursing through every note, the volume deafening, but somehow it was perfect, just a huge swirling mass of intense apocalyptic swampy doom folk, the drums thunderous, the guitar jagged and howling and heavy, and the vocals, on record it's some sort of testifying, but live, we were almost ready to convert, and become born again. It was that intense, that inspirational, that emotional.
And the thing is, Woven Hand records do a pretty amazing job of capturing that emotion and energy on record, no small feat considering how many of the most amazing bands live, fall flat recorded, but that has never been a problem with David Eugene Edwards and his Woven Hand, or even Sixteen Horsepower, the band that came before (and was also a Record Of The Week honoree). The records are holy documents of sound, Edwards' fundamentalist Christianity, that would normally rankle, in the context of Woven Hand becomes so much more, the power of belief, the power of the spirit, of faith, rendered in sound. It helps that the sounds is a harrowing, brooding, apocalyptic swampy folk, rife with tales of damnation and salvation, hellfire and misery and suffering, the music simultaneously a cautionary tale, and a song of praise, the two often wound up tight, making the message, and the music, that much more mysterious.
On The Threshingfloor, Woven Hand sounds as dark, and haunting, and heavy as ever, the various Eastern and world music elements that were definitely present on past records, here are much more of an essential component, adding an exotic vibe to the already intense doomfolk. The record begins with a haunting almost acoustic ballad, lots of buzzing steel strings, a moody minor key melody, minimal percussion, and Edwards' powerful vocals, all underpinned by thick droning swells. It's on the next track, the title track, that we revisit the power of that live show we witnessed in Texas, a frantic chunk of jangle and strum, lots of extra percussion, anguished super powerful vocals, an acoustic guitar wielded like a battle axe, Eastern melodies woven throughout, a seriously powerful bit of musical conversion. "A Holy Measure" is more stripped down and folky, but no less powerful, followed by the doom folk dirge of "Raise Her Hands", creepy and menacing and yet still utterly lovely.
One new element, that we never noticed before was what seems to be nods to groups like Joy Division, low slung gloomy basslines, deep tortured vocals, on one hand it seems like maybe it was always present, but here, that vibe is huge, try to imagine some sort of Christian apocalyptic doom folk cold wave, and you'll be getting closer to tracks like "His Rest", or "Behind Your Breath", gothy and grim, but still flecked with twang and shimmer and strum.
Elsewhere, "Singing Grass" is a gorgeous and utterly heartbreaking ballad/dirge, all acoustic guitars and moaning cellos, and the vocals, so dark and mournful, easily the most moving track on the record. "Wheatstraw" is only a minute long, but it's darkly evocative, a haunting dronescape, gauzy and hazy and ghostlike. "Orchard Gate" is a gothic folk epic, fire and brimstone made sound, but again, for all its darkness and misery, it's just so breathtakingly beautiful.
The strangest moment is the record closer, "Denver City", a weirdly rocking skiffle folk rocker, with distorted vocals, and surprisingly major key chord progression, which sounds more like Railroad Jerk than Woven Hand, it perhaps doesn't fit the dour mood of the rest of the record, but maybe that's why it's at the end, the light at the end of the tunnel perhaps. But if light is the last thing you want from Woven Hand, then bail out before "Denver City", and you'll emerge from The Threshingfloor still wholly under its dark spell....
Despite the jarring loudness suggested by this release's title, Corbi Wright's music is utterly hushed and contemplative. Her voice swoops from a withery whisper to a raw PJ Harvey-esque emotiveness. The loose weave of her barebones, unstructured folk sits well alongside the recent likes of Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice or The Alps. We know this to be true 'cause we've played them back to back a few times, and it made for a very enjoyable listen that flowed exceptionally well. So there. And to tie things neatly together, AQ pal Mr. Jefre Cantu (member of The Alps, Tarentel among many others) assisted Ms Wright in the recording of these songs. Very nice.
Didn't like this one that much, sorry. Kinda corny actually.
During a time of creative restlessness and an ornery disregard for his audience and label alike, Neil Young throughout the eighties tried out several genre exercises with very mixed results. Though looking back on them now, records like the electronic rock album Trans (1982) and his rockabilly mini-record, Everybody's Rockin' (1983) have developed their own peculiar charm, even if David Geffen didn't think so back then (he tried to sue Young for making deliberately uncommercial records). The third of these records, Old Ways (1985), was a straight up country record that fared worse than the previous two. But while the contract dispute was raging on, Young was out on a year long tour with a band of country session greats including Spooner Oldham, Hargus Robbins, Rufus Thibodeaux and Ben Keith called The International Harvesters. While the resulting album was not one of Young's best, this new Archives series release (Vol. 9 for those who are counting!) showcases what a great live band they were, and it shines a brighter light on this grey period of Young's career. While a few tracks were featured on the Old Ways album, he also reworks earlier songs such as "Are You Ready For The Country", and "Motor City" and Southern Pacific" from the critically maligned hard rock album Re*Ac*Tor from 1981, giving them more a honky tonk stomp and chug feel. There's even a reworking of Buggalo Springfield's "Flying On The Ground is Wrong". But for Neil Young enthusiasts, the real reason to pick this up maybe the inclusion of 5 never before released tracks that are all first rate! All in all, a kick-ass and rollicking live set that is worthy of this great archival series.
We'd be stocking the vinyl of this too, but for some reason ol' Neil or his management/record company thinks folks should pay $55 for it! Good grief.
It might be unfair (though easy) to lump Richard Youngs' recent output into the trendy category that lately has been swallowing all music that includes singing and acoustic instruments, namely "freak folk" (or "acid folk" or whatever you want to call it, you know what we mean). On Autumn Response Youngs is hardly singing the music of "the people", nor is he making conscious efforts to associate his music with that of past artists and traditions of his native British Isles. Instead, the lyrics suggest a solitary imagination, isolated and introspectively afoot in a landscape (the further journeys of a 'summer wanderer'?). His song structures are simple and atmospheric...mantra-like..built around emotive, hypnotic, doubled vocal tracks that become vertiginous at times with repeating riffs on acoustic guitar. The affecting, pastoral melodicism and minimalist structuring of these songs gives the impression that Youngs has combined the talents of the great Roy Harper with the methodologies of folk guitar experimentalist Steffen Basho-Junghans, perhaps.
Like most of Youngs' recent records on Jagjaguwar, this one is constructed with a limited set of 'rules' (instruments, production effects, etc.) which makes the record less a collection of songs and more a cohesive single work evolving through its various parts until arriving at the 16+ minute closer, "Something Like Air". It's something all right, and it's breathtaking, as is so much of this lovely, lovely album.
You can count on Scotland's Richard Youngs to make great records, whether he's in experimental mode, or folk troubadour mode, or both. Beyond that it's not always easy to know what to expect, though this new one seems comfortably familiar, falling into the melancholic folk zone, Summer Through My Mind being a lovely, lovely (and lonely) album of Youngs' voice and guitar strum. There's some harmonica and slide guitar twang giving this a down home, country-ish vibe, naturally channelling ancient Brit-folk balladry as well into its sad, sparse soundworld.
Youngs' singing is more about the emotive timbre of his wistful, high voice than rhyme or meter - he could probably sing the phone book, accompanied by his pensive, plaintive guitar, and it would sound hypnotic and heartfelt. However, his lyrics are in fact more interesting than that.
One track, "Story Of Jhon", is narrated in spoken form by special guest (and fellow lo-fi folkie) Simon Joyner, while Youngs sings the same words, echoing in overdubbed, overlapping fashion what Joyner just read. It's effective at somehow giving the story/song more weight and import, and a sense of timelessness. But, it's also a tad bit much after a while, the track being over ten minutes long, and so THAT particular piece might not bear repeat listens quite as much as the others on here, however. Many of which wherein Youngs also often doubles his own singing voice, and repeats phrases mantra-like, as on the even lengthier "Spin Me Endless In The Universe" - but there's, you know, nobody talking (sorry Simon). That one is lovely for the duration; and also, ferinstance, we could happily hear Youngs sing the record's title track over and over again, in blissful reverie, until summer does indeed roll around yet again!
One of our favorite Record Store Day offerings has been repressed, and is now also available on cd as well.
A Lament for Epirus compiles 78 rpm recordings of Greek violinist Alexis Zoumbas, and it's a stunningly melancholy collection of solo recordings (though some tracks are accompanied by cymbalon and bowed bass) that showcase the joys and grief of life in the mountainous region of Northwestern Greece where Zoumbas hails from. Reminding us of those funerary violin cd-rs we had awhile back ago, Zoumbas of course is the real deal, and you can feel every beautiful ache in each note he conjures. Fantastic stuff!
