Slo-mo country-folkish atmospherics from members of Neurosis (Scott Kelly and Noah Landis, plus two non-Neurosis dudes). Gloomy and low key, with Scott's Lou Reedish vocals dragging raw over the proceedings. Neurosis fans into Scott's previous solo outing Spirit Bound Flesh or the similar solo works of Steve Von Till ought to dig this disc of desolate 'rock' music. Non-Neurosis fans too! Gruff yet weepy.
So moody. So atmospheric. So weird. So awesome. The fourth full album from this band we've previously described in an all-encompassing if imprecise way as "doom metal / postrock / black metal / doomfolk / black ambient alchemists" is another gorgeous and grim glimpse into their ceremonial soundworld, a realm that's dirgey, ambient, dreamlike, doubtless haunted by ancestral pagan spirits. Blood Of The Black Owl is one of the several projects of Chet W. Scott, who runs the Glass Throat label - some others being Cycle Of The Raven Talons (formerly Ruhr Hunter), The Elemental Chrysalis, and Cedar Spirits (reviewed this list too). All his music is pretty intense, and idiosyncratic, so it's hard to pick a favorite, but definitely we've always been big into Blood Of The Black Owl, and this new album takes this project to yet another level.
The disc begins with the croaking droning vocals of what sounds like a half-dead shaman, accompanied by the shaka-shaka sounds of hand percussion, witchy drones, and spooky nighttime noises, what could be horns, or hoot owls. Although the feeling is evident that Scott's intent is something deeply mystical, more secularly speaking, these twilight sounds could be the soundtrack to a cult 'giallo' horror movie, for sure, set out in the woods somewhere, ritual murder afoot, Native American relics factoring into the plot somehow. The next track continues the vibe, with mumbling invocations and a repetitively ringing bell, which reminds us for a second of Anton Batagov's Music For The 35 Buddhas. And so this disc goes, getting heavier and more sinister as it spins, always slow and spare and soundtracky. Part slowcore, part black metal (the rasped vokills, the fuzz guitar that comes as a shock when it bursts out, like on track four, "Sundrojan"), Light The Fires! is a mostly "mellow" but still devastatingly nightmarish trip conjured by chanting vox, plodding tick-tock percussion, eerie field recordings. Lovely melodic moments coexist with crushing doomic textures. Imagine Aluk Todolo teamed up with the Jewelled Antler collective, recording an album for the Neurot label, documenting a spirit quest they never came back from� Truly fantastic & recommended!
Comes in the oversized unique 6"x6" six panel gatefold Glass Throat style cd packaging. (Double vinyl version apparently upcoming too.)
I came to love folksinger Kath Bloom's frail, plaintive, birdlike voice through her recordings with the avant guitarist Loren Mazzacane Connors -- the pair made 5 gorgeous LPs in the '70s which are no longer available, but from which a current best-of cd has been compiled. (Highly recommended.) I've since been sort of obsessed with tracking down Kath Bloom and have finally succeeded. She is still making music, thank goodness, and thus we're proud to be carrying her self-released Come Here cd-r (I think we might be the only store to do so). Kath's voice is as fragile and trembly as ever, and the instruments accompanying here are likewise light -- airy guitar, harmonica, bittersweet fiddle. Most of the pieces are from the mid-'90s. Very nice, but an acquired taste, so make sure to listen to the soundclips.
On her eighth album, Ms Kath Bloom proved she still has many stories to sing from her thick songbook with many pages still to be filled. As always, her voice and words are steeped with raw nerve honesty and open hearted emotion. Often Bloom's delivery wavers precariously on the edge of despair. Clearly it's a voice that's lived through the thick and the thin, but that has not lost all hope. Hers is utterly unadorned folk of the most fragile kind, but there is a palpable resolve that underscores the seemingly frail proceedings. As intimate and tenderly true blue as ever, Thin Thin Line is sure to please her loyal fans! Released on Mark Kozelek's Caldo Verde label... yes, a man with good taste!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
GORGEOUS. Windy's new favorite record. Folksinger Kath Bloom's frail, plaintive voice is perfectly suited to Mazzacane's meandering folk guitar. Here's what Mazzacane says in the liner notes: "These recordings were made between 1981 and 1984. I produced and released them on the St Joan label in editions of 200 copies. There were 5 LPs total, from which the best songs were taken for this release. While Bloom's songs were clearly in the 'new folk' style, my free-form playing and vocalizations were too unsettling for most folk music fans. The music therefore received more acceptance in the small avant music scene than in the much larger folk scene of the time."
Back in the nineties, for a while there, it was all about No Depression. Or Alt-country, or perhaps the worst genre identifier ever, Y'alternative. Painful to even type. Whatever you call it, modern country folks bands were everywhere, born of a love of punk rock, and classic country, blue grass and indie rock. THE No Depression band was of course Uncle Tupelo, who would go on to spawn Wilco and Son Volt, but back in the day, Uncle Tupelo were the shit, heavy and super rocking, raucous and wild, but always with plenty of twang and able to strip down to straight bluegrass at the drop of a hat. Their album No Depression is where the genre got its name (and that record of course was named for the Carter Family song), and Uncle Tupelo and their record, and the legion of bands that followed in their wake even inspired a magazine covering all the various No Depression bands. Richard Buckner, Whiskeytown (featuring Ryan Adams), Freakwater, Old 97's, Bad Livers, Jayhawks, Waco Brothers, Scud Mountain Boys, Pernice Brothers, Robbie Fulks, �Pine Valley Cosmonauts, Handsome Family, the Sadies, Tarnation, Be Good Tanyas, Split Lip Rayfield... We could go on and on, many of those bands continue to play today, a bunch broke up but various members went on to record on their own. Then there was Blue Mountain, a band that had brief flirtations with success, but seemed to continually hover just shy of the mainstream, which is a huge shame, as they were (and are, as far as we know) just as good as any of those other bands, if not better.�
Fronted by the husband and wife duo of Cary Hudson and Laurie Stirratt, Blue Mountain hewed sonically close to the No Depression blueprint created by Uncle Tupelo, that killer mix of crunchy guitars and classic twang, but where UT came from a much more punk rock background, Blue Mountain seemed to be much more purebred country. Hudson and Stirratt's vocals sounded perfect together, amazing harmonies, crunchy guitars, incredible hooks. Blue Mountain's first proper record, 1995's Dog Days, still ranks as one of the best record of the whole No Depression era. Some of the songs were dark and brooding and heavy, others were twangy and acoustic, folky and almost straight bluegrass, most were a mix of the two. But like always it was all about the songs, and the songs here are fantastic, totally catchy and timeless, and on top of the killer songs, Hudson has one of the best rock voices since Jay Farrar. Listen to the sound samples. If you dig Uncle Tupelo and any of the above mentioned bands, odds are you're gonna dig this. Definitely sounds as good as it did in 1995.�
The reissue tacks on a whole mess of bonus tracks, new liner notes, extra photos, and comes housed in a slipcase.
Don't let the punny name fool ya, this surely isn't "blues rock". Nor blues. Nor rock. Not really. Nor is it of Yugoslav origin, despite the biographical misinformation posted on the Holy Mountain website that claims Blues Control to be an obscure '70s psych band from Yugoslavia. Nope, Blues Control are an instrumental Brooklyn duo on guitar and synths and drums, making a wonderfully fucked up yet pleasantly listenable psych-squabble of a sound that's not super easy to describe, actually... let's just say that if it were blues rock, it'd be druggily confused, utterly EXPERIMENTAL blues rock. The eight tracks found on this eponymous debut wander through mellow, spacey passages, interludes of seasick synth symphonics, and blown-out epic episodes full of fuzzed-up motorpsycho guitar leads, drunken and damaged sounding. Blues Control's two-man trash team are up to something strange here, counter-intuitive creativity that can make a cool track out of some pretty piano dropped into a droney wash, followed up by a broken-amp bass solo and some off-kilter beats, ferinstance. This totally fits in on the out-there Holy Mountain label alongside the likes of Residual Echoes and Aufgehoben, especially considering how fractured and distorted they can get, almost like a fuzzed-out Starfuckers on the very first track. We're digging this a lot.
We're pretty excited about this new vintage reissue label, Monk, that's releasing these nice deluxe vinyl versions of early recorded music that are hard to come by these days: blues, folk, country, bluegrass, Western swing and early jazz. Sure there's Mississippi records, but these have nicer packaging, are well researched, and compiled, and just a bit more, well, deluxe. Plus Monk also seems to be focusing on the veritable stars of these genres like Charley Patton, Charlie Poole, Dock Boggs and Django Reinhardt, providing a fine selection of their best early recordings.
Dock Boggs, if you aren't familiar, was a singer and banjo player, discovered playing in mining camps as he worked the mines all over the Appalachian Mountains. A contract from Brunswick Records in 1927 got him out of the mining camps to record these 12 songs after which he had the start of a fine career, touring extensively and playing parties before the Great Depression hit and he was forced to give up professional music. It wasn't until the folk revival of the sixties where he was re-discovered and recorded three more records for Smithsonian Folkways. This record represents his complete recordings for the Brunswick label made between 1927 and 1929, and a more sadly intense and beautiful document of early Appalachia may nary be found!
Following the self-titled release he put out on his own label last year, Bonnie Prince Billy aka Will Oldham is back to serving the corporate overlords of Drag City with this new album, the umpteenth zillionth in his discography (if we've counted correctly - it's tough, especially with the man's many monikers).
All BPB fans will surely want this, and if you're a fan some of these songs may sound a bit familiar, as it's a Nashville makeover of mostly tracks taken from 2011's Wolfroy Goes To Town, or associated B-sides. These songs didn't sound like this at all on Wolfroy, though - these reworkings are lush with lap steel and gospel singing, Earl Scrugg's grandson plays mandolin, there's banjo and fiddle too, it's very very Nashville all right, and as such, this could be a really good record with which to introduce fans of classic country to this indie artist. Oldham sounds a bit like a laconic Townes Van Zandt, some of the songs here so nicely sad and weary, others with bit more Nashville pro powered pep to 'em. We're liking it a lot.
Seems like everywhere you look these days you're bombarded with praise and press for Will Oldham. From The New York Times to Wire Magazine it's been hard to escape images of ol' Bonnie Prince Billy, but truth be told, he is one fine songwriter who deserves much of the praise and accolades coming his way. While not all of his recent outings have totally blown us away, we're very much digging the rich and sometimes dark country sounds on Beware. The instrumentation is a bit more nuanced and compelling than on his previous effort Lie Down In The Light. It kind of made perfect sense that a customer who was in the store the first time we played this asked what Lee Hazlewood record this was, and were surprised and happy to find out that it was actually Will Oldham. With appearances on the big screen, a recent artist in residency in the Marin Headlands over the Golden Gate Bridge from here, and this new set of songs, Oldham has been one busy bee and we think well worthy of all that adoration and praise.
A couple years back Will Oldham adopted the Bonnie 'Prince' Billy moniker and released what stood as the crowning achievement of his career, the brilliant I See a Darkness. Now he returns to form with an album that is quite possibly even more heartbreaking, yet strangely more upbeat and optimistic. Instead of grim songs about death, we get lonely songs of love filled with spirit and hope and even a little joy. The instrumentation is much more eclectic, and the compositions range from dark a capella to backwoods country swing. With guest spots from Freakwater and Dave Pajo (and Harmony Korine?!?), Oldham has created an album that has raised the bar yet again. It's funny how the guy manages to renew your interest even after you swore you were tired of him (as I do often).
Will Oldham has adopted a new alter ego. No longer Palace, not even just Will Oldham, he's the artist currently known as Bonnie 'Prince' Billy. While the past few Palace/Oldham records weren't anything really to write home about, almost all of the Bonnie 'Prince' Billy singles and this album have been exceptional. Idiosyncratic vocals that don't warble all that much and the working class approach to acoustic based rock are what you expect from him, but you'd never guess he'd get so scary.
The new album from Will Oldham & friends is simply wonderful. And we know we rave about Oldham a lot, from his work with Palace Bros to the solo material, but really we mean it -- this is one of his best records. In fact, we think that without the charming but sometimes syrupy twang prevalent on his earlier efforts, Master and Everyone has finally launched Oldham into the same lofty, hallowed territory as other iconoclastic folk practitioners such as Townes Van Zandt. Yeah, this is that good.
The new record has the same kind of low-key charm as his last offering, Ease On Down the Road, although while that record had a sunny back-porch vibe and moments of sly, naughty humor, the laconic, mellow sound of Master And Everyone is tinged with melancholy - as is much of Oldham's recorded output - but doesn't try to reach into the inky realms of cathartic intensity found on I See A Darkness (which is one of the best records he's made). Instead, the feeling is familiar and comforting, as Oldham wraps a honeyed falsetto or low, secretive whisper around distant stories of love and lonelines, filtered through the phrasing of early god-fearing folk balladeers. Female harmonies add to the sweetness. Gone is Oldham's faux Appalachian hillbilly guise, and the tenuous, always-cracking vocal warble, and the sometimes pointlessly peurile lyrics, and in its place is a warm, muted, dark folk record. Very reminiscent of seventies British folk, especially Nick Drake, with gorgeous female vocals perfectly complementing Oldham's warm languorous voice. A perfect drifiting off record.
Probably the best testimonial to the goodness of this record is not the fact that the aQ staffers who're already Bonnie Billy fans like it, but the fact that Andee, aka staunch Oldham naysayer (who liked almost nothing after the Palace Bros debut), LOVES this record too. And that's saying somethin'!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A quietly-released single that is only being offered direct to stores (bypassing distros) at this time, this is the second Bonnie Princ Billy single from Will Oldham and company. Like the one before it (which we still have a few copies of), this is Oldham in a less abject, less stark phase, very pleasant to the ears. Buy now or cry later!
These keep flying out of here, but we finally have enough (at the moment) to list... For the first time perhaps since his early Palace Brothers days, Bonnie Prince Billy aka Will Oldham is self-releasing and self-distributing his latest record on cd, lp and cassette. Like our favorite Bonnie Prince Billy records, like the great Master and Everyone, this new release is beautifully intimate and spare. Using just his guitar and voice to get to the core of heartbreak and lament, his plainspoken delivery world-weary yet hopeful, getting right under the skin and close to the bone, like no one else can. Our new favorite BPB release in quite awhile.
It's easy to take Will Oldham for granted at this point as he has become as prolific as he is talented, but when you can continually write and create such warm and wise music , well, then we're fine with the abundance of recent releases.
The Wonder Show Of The World might just be the most free flowing and affecting BPB album in a while. We're not exactly sure who/what the Cairo Gang is, but we're definitely enjoying their contribution. And we do know that long time contributor/collaborator and super talented guitarist Emmet Kelly (The Cairo Gang?) takes on a much bigger role than he has in the past. It's a way more subtle, subdued and minimal approach to production and song structure and we have to say we kind of love it this way. Sometimes the over-the-top instrumentation and full on country jams that have made up some of his recent releases takes away from the core of what makes Oldham's songwriting so intimate and special.
The Wonder Show Of The World finds Oldham getting back to that more sacred and refined sound. It's not about riffing on a certain genre (country, gospel, etc.) instead it's just about creating moving, emotional and haunting songs. At this point it's really not too far fetched to think of Oldham as possibly the closest thing to this generations Dylan, a storyteller who has found music as the best medium to share his gift of language and evoking emotion. Oldham fans are sure to love this and even those of us who had taken a little break from him are finding that this record is reeling us back into his world.
Now, given that I'm admittedly a little tired of Will Oldham, this new mini-album of his came as a delightful surprise. Oldham's rickety backporch warblings are wonderful, sure, but somehow, 2 or 3 albums worth of it is enough for me, and he's got 4 or 5
Boxharp is the solo (with plenty of help) project of the Court And Spark's MC Taylor. So as you might expect, it shares a lot soundwise with the C+S. However, it's a bit more experimental, with much more emphasis on texture and ambience. Boxharp's muted
Born and bred (and still residin') in Como, Mississippi, 58-year old bluesman R.L. Boyce grew up singing gospel in the church choir and playing the drums in fife-and-drum bands (Otha Turner is his uncle). He then eventually took up the guitar. Now has finally just released his first full-length album, on vinyl only via the down home music fiends at Sutro Park. One side was recorded in a studio - the other on R.L. Boyce's porch! He plays here with Sutro Park veteran Luther Dickinson (guitar), Lightin' Malcolm (guitar), Calvin Jackson (drums), Calvin's son Cedric Burnside (drums), and others. R.L. does a few of his own compositions, plus two by that other R.L., R.L. Burnside, and one traditional number as well. In all cases, the good times roll. Boyce's style is loose and improvisational, with lots of unedited laughter and impromptu banter in-between takes, though these rambling songs would be long anyway - album opener "R.L.'s Boogie" is over 9 minutes long, fans of Endless Boogie take note! Definitely our kind of blues, expressive and unconcerned with propriety. Despite its deep roots in tradition, this ain't museum-piece blues, it's the living thing.
180 gram vinyl pressing. The jacket includes detailed sleeve notes (with footnotes!), and bears the motto "World Boogie is Coming".
Want some more slow, despairing avant-country dirges from the former leader of the Geraldine Fibbers? You get seven previously unreleased live tracks here, plus two album cuts taken from Bozulich's excellent Red Headed Stranger cd -- one of which, "Can I Sleep In Your Arms" happens to feature Willie Nelson, who was responsible for the original Red Headed Stranger record back in the '70s. Now, we're not sure about the marketing theory behind this, as you'd imagine that anyone interested in the live cuts already has the studio album, but $10.98 ain't bad for 41 minutes of live material. The live tracks are recorded at various times and venues with different line-ups, all tracks but one featuring the guitar of Nels Cline, and many with melancholic strings, usually courtesy of the violin of Carla Kihlstedt. From a cover of Neil Young's "Running Dry (A Requiem For The Rockets)" to the the 13+ minute Bozulich composition "Outside Of Town" this nicely showcases Bozulich and company's knack for a dark, sorrowful blend of trad. country-folk stylings and more improv-oriented droning, noisy bits.
Suitcase Full Of Blues collects the recorded works of Ishman Bracey, one of the more obscure Delta bluesmen whose work nonetheless comes highly recommended. Bracey ran in the same circle as Tommy Johnson, whose Cool Drink Of Water Blues (also issued on Monk) we reviewed last list. As with Johnson, many of Bracey's recordings also feature the guitar and mandolin talents of Charlie McCoy, which definitely helped to flesh out some of Bracey's ideas. Four of the songs here are previously unissued recordings ("Leavin' Town Blues", "Brown Mama Blues", "Trouble Hearted Blues", and "The Four Day Blues") featuring just Bracey, and while these tracks are good and provide an interesting look into his process, it is the versions with McCoy's talents added where everything falls into place. Also like Johnson, Bracey recorded for Victor and Paramount, which was notorious for sub par sound quality. The Paramount recordings make up the second lp, and yes, they are a little rough around the edges, but not enough to destroy the quality of the songs themselves, which also feature Charlie Taylor on piano and Kid Ernest Michall on clarinet (along with Bracey, this lineup was known as the New Orleans Nehi Boys). Throughout the course of both records, a fairly diverse array of styles is on display, often showing off Bracey's progress and his adaptability. His adept picking style and vocal technique, a nice slow drawl not quite as gruff as some of the other delta bluesmen, are really great on their own, but collaborations make up the bulk of the material, and the material with the Nehi Boys is particularly strong. The songs give off a nice, drunk sort of feeling and sound like a bunch of close knit musicians bashing tunes out for fun, which often betrays the bleakness of the songs.
Once again, Monk delivers, making this a highly welcome addition to everyone's collection.
Three cheers for Billy Bragg! Uh, make that four! One for each of these reissued albums -- Life's A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy, Talking With The Taxman About Poetry, The Internationale EP and the Live & Dubious EP, and this one. This reissue comes with a bonus disc of rare and previously unreleased recordings. Hip hip hooray, indeed!
(Psst, for Bragg super fans, there's the Volume One 9-disc box set which boxes the four reissues along with a bonus dvd!)
Holy smokes! It's nothing but reissue mania for Sir William of Braggville! You might recall those fine folks at Yep Roc Records' first batch of four reissues which came out early this year. Collectively known as Billy Bragg Volume 1, they included Life's A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy, Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, Talking With The Taxman About Poetry, The Internationale EP and the Live & Dubious EP. Super great!
Well, the autumn brings forth four more of ol' Billy's best, all splendidly remastered and rereleased. They are England, Half English, William Bloke, Worker's Playtime and this one from 1991. You may or may not recall, this is the album where Bragg pulled out the big guns for back-up -- Johnny Marr, R.E.M.s Michael Stipe and Peter Buck and Kirsty MacColl -- though he really didn't 'need' 'em!
As with the previous bunch, each one comes in a trayless digipak with new cover art and a bonus disc of rarities. Ahh, but isn't it such a bittersweet pleasure to hear them again after all these years with Bragg's early '80s socio-political commentary still ringing relevant and true today more than ever?
(Oh yeah, and if you wanna go completely Bragg wild, there's a Volume Two boxset that has all these releases and a dvd packed together with a big booklet. Let us know if you're game!)
Holy smokes! It's nothing but reissue mania for Sir William of Braggville! You might recall those fine folks at Yep Roc Records' first batch of four reissues which came out early this year. Collectively known as Billy Bragg Volume 1, they included Life's A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy, Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, Talking With The Taxman About Poetry, The Internationale EP and the Live & Dubious EP. Super great!
Well, the autumn brings forth four more of ol' Billy's best, all splendidly remastered and rereleased. They are Don't Try This At Home, William Bloke, Worker's Playtime and this, his most recent album proper, originally released in 2002.
As with the previous bunch, each one comes in a trayless digipak with new cover art and a bonus disc of rarities. Ahh, but isn't it such a bittersweet pleasure to hear them again after all these years with Bragg's early '80s socio-political commentary still ringing relevant and true today more than ever?
(Oh yeah, and if you wanna go completely Bragg wild, there's a Volume Two boxset that has all these releases and a dvd packed together with a big booklet. Let us know if you're game!)
Three cheers for Billy Bragg! Uh, make that four! One for each of these reissued albums -- Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, Talking With The Taxman About Poetry, The Internationale EP and the Live & Dubious EP, and this one. This reissue comes with a bonus disc of rare and previously unreleased recordings. Hip hip hooray, indeed!
(Psst, for Bragg super fans, there's the Volume One 9-disc box set which boxes the four reissues along with a bonus dvd!)
Haven't heard from the ever-engaging socio-political troubadour Billy Bragg in some time. His last release was 2002's England, Half English and prior to that Mermaid Avenues Vol. 1 and 2, his Woody Guthrie-penned collaborations with Wilco. But almost as if to remind us of his immense body of work that spans two decades, and to spur us on to revisit it - here is a double cd collection of some of his most well-known songs. Included are "A New England", "Levi Stubbs' Tears", his cover of "Walk Away Renee", "You Woke Up My Neighbourhood", "She's Got A New Spell", "Help Save The Youth Of America"... the list goes on and on. There's also a handful of the Bragg/Wilco songs as well as a bonus disc of rare Bragg odds and ends. All the essentials, indeed!
Three cheers for Billy Bragg! Uh, make that four! One for each of these reissued albums -- Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, Life's A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy, The Internationale EP and the Live & Dubious EP, and this one. This reissue comes with a bonus disc of rare and previously unreleased recordings. Hip hip hooray, indeed!
(Psst, for Bragg super fans, there's the Volume One 9-disc box set which boxes the four reissues along with a bonus dvd!)
Three cheers for Billy Bragg! Uh, make that four! One for each of these reissued albums -- Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, Talking With The Taxman About Poetry, Life's A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy, and this one. This reissue comes with five bonus tracks and a bonus dvd of two live performances (one from 1986 in Lithuania and the other from 1988 in East Berlin). Hip hip hooray, indeed!
(Psst, for Bragg super fans, there's the Volume One 9-disc box set which boxes the four reissues along with a bonus dvd!)
Holy smokes! It's nothing but reissue mania for Sir William of Braggville! You might recall those fine folks at Yep Roc Records' first batch of four reissues which came out early this year. Collectively known as Billy Bragg Volume 1, they included Life's A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy, Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, Talking With The Taxman About Poetry, The Internationale EP and the Live & Dubious EP. Super great!
Well, the autumn brings forth four more of ol' Billy's best, all splendidly remastered and rereleased. They are England, Half English, Don't Try This At Home, Worker's Playtime and this, perhaps one of his most stark and downcast works, from back in 1996.
As with the previous bunch, each one comes in a trayless digipak with new cover art and a bonus disc of rarities. Ahh, but isn't it such a bittersweet pleasure to hear them again after all these years with Bragg's early '80s socio-political commentary still ringing relevant and true today more than ever?
(Oh yeah, and if you wanna go completely Bragg wild, there's a Volume Two boxset that has all these releases and a dvd packed together with a big booklet. Let us know if you're game!)
Holy smokes! It's nothing but reissue mania for Sir William of Braggville! You might recall those fine folks at Yep Roc Records' first batch of four reissues which came out early this year. Collectively known as Billy Bragg Volume 1, they included Life's A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy, Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, Talking With The Taxman About Poetry, The Internationale EP and the Live & Dubious EP. Super great!
Well, the autumn brings forth four more of ol' Billy's best, all splendidly remastered and rereleased. They are England, Half English, Don't Try This At Home, William Bloke and this one -- in our opinion quite possibly one of his best! -- from way back in 1988. It features such gems as "She's Got A New Spell" and "Waiting For The Great Leap Forward". So good.
As with the previous bunch, each one comes in a trayless digipak with new cover art and a bonus disc of rarities. Ahh, but isn't it such a bittersweet pleasure to hear them again after all these years with Bragg's early '80s socio-political commentary still ringing relevant and true today more than ever?
(Oh yeah, and if you wanna go completely Bragg wild, there's a Volume Two boxset that has all these releases and a dvd packed together with a big booklet. Let us know if you're game!)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Those Wilco boys join forces with Billy Bragg in a valiant and quite often successful attempt to put new music to some of the hundreds of song lyrics which Woody Guthrie wrote before his death. Although he is physically outnumbered, musicially Mermaid Avenue is heavier on the Bragg than the Wilco sound.
On their first foray together, recording songs from previously unreleased lyrics of Woody Guthrie, Wilco and Billy Bragg produced - in our minds - a fairly unremarkable effort. With their follow up album we find ourselves pleasantly surprised. Not only is the music here much more akin to Wilco than Bragg (in stark contrast to the first), but Wilco singer Jeff Tweedy also thankfully sings a lot more as well. There's even a shocker of a cameo by singer Natalie Merchant sounding decidedly unlike Natalie Merchant. This is one of those albums that, when we put it on in the store... Yeah, you know the rest. Recommended.
Brethren indeed. This is the work of two consummate stringed instrument manipulators working in the improvised avant-folk idiom... Brother #1, from England, AQ fave James Blackshaw (who just blew us away with an amazing solo instore performance two weeks ago!), a dexterous master of the 12 string guitar. Brother #2, from Belgium, Renaissance lute player Jozef Van Wissem (who was also recently scheduled for an AQ instore alongside his pal Tetuzi Akiyama but unfortunately had to cancel due to a bad cold or flu). Van Wissem has received acclaim from us and others for his solo recordings incorporating electronics and field recordings alongside his innovations on classical lute improvisation.
Together, it's a perfect pairing, Blackshaw and Van Wissem conjuring a delicately dense intertwining of forward-flowing fingerpicked minimalist melodies... stately spiritual praises that are all instrumental but for a brief Current 93ish spoken coda to track one, "...The Lifting Of The Veil". And track three, "How The Unencumbered Soul Advises That One Not Refuse The Calls Of A Good Spirit", is more of an electrically-charged, expansive soundscape of moody string-strike. Electronics, "tennis edits" (??) and the "feline vocals" of one Bun Bun are also woven into the mix with Blackshaw's 12 string and Van Wissem's baroque lute.
To sum up: alchemical loveliness, utterly mesmeric! Really our only complaint about this is also a compliment: at just under a half hour total (28:39), we wish it were longer! The trance-like reveries this induces are too soon interrupted unless we set our cd player on repeat... (not an option with the super-limited vinyl version of this of course.) That's right, the lp version is LIMITED TO 330 COPIES. Whereas the cd is limited to a mere 1000. And we only have a few of the vinyl...
When we first saw this, we were excited that perhaps more lost recordings of UK folk singer Anne Briggs had been discovered, but this is actually the first vinyl release of Sing A Song For You, Briggs' final recording from 1973 that wasn't properly released until 1996 on The Fledg'ling label. Why this has a new title and new artwork is curious, but the record's liner notes give some insight to the singer's ambivalence about this recording and why she retired at such an early age. She was pregnant with her second child at the time and wasn't satisfied with the quality of her singing. Plus playing the bouzouki with its convex back against her pregnant belly was difficult! When the original photo session for the album cover didn't work out and she was asked to do it again while she was preparing for a move to Scotland, it pretty much sealed the final rejection of the project. She finally allowed it to be reissued in 1996 and now we have the 180 gram vinyl version with much better artwork than the cd! As much as we love Anne Briggs, we never paid much attention to that cd, thinking it was older recordings of more traditional material, never really knowing the back-story. But after listening to this, we were wrong to dismiss it! It's definitely a continuation of the much fuller sound from her last officially released record, The Time Has Come. Ten songs here, half she wrote, half traditional interpretations played mostly with Ragged Robin as the back-up band, the only time she has ever worked with a full band, and it really sounds amazing, like a true lost folk record should!
Finally this British Folk classic becomes both widely available and affordable! In a lot of ways Anne Briggs is the British equivalent of Karen Dalton, both were distinctive and influential interpreters of traditional folk songs, and both adamantly hated recording. While Briggs' fate is less tragic than Dalton's, her self-imposed retirement from singing at 27 and long willful reclusion has left fans with a similarly slim catalog of recordings to pore over. Yet Briggs is no obscure figure. Discovered by Ewan MacColl in the early sixties, Brigg's pure yet untutored vocal delivery had tremendous influence on many of the key figures of the British folk revival, namely, Sandy Denny, Maddy Prior, June Tabor and Linda Thompson. By the time of her retirement, she was legendary. The Time Has Come is her second (and in our opinion, best) album, originally released in 1971. Here for the first time she records some of her own songs, a few of them popularized by other artists, like the title track previously covered by her former boyfriend, Bert Jansch. But perhaps influenced by the emergence of rock elements in the folk scene, she also updates the arrangements of her guitar and bouzouki accompaniments so that even the traditional tracks are handled with a warm but modernly melancholic pastoral grace. An artist at what now has to stand as her peak. Perfect for Spring!
There are few voices as pure and natural as Anne Briggs, an untrained but highly influential figure of the British Folk Tradition. This is a fine reissue of Briggs' first album from 1971 comprised mostly of traditional material that has only been previously available as expensive imports. While a few songs are backed by her guitar playing, a large number of them are sung a cappella. But with a voice like hers, the songs don't need much accompaniment. "Go Your Way" is one of our all time favorite songs period and well worth the price of admission. If fans of Shirley Collins or of all portents of magical folk music haven't already discovered and devoured Anne Briggs' scant but essential discography (she only recorded 30 songs before her self-imposed retirement at age 29!), the time has come!!
The title tells the story here: Bright Eyes recordings spanning three years. Twenty songs in all. Varied in sound quality and style. Actually much more pop oriented than their more recent more acoustic folky releases. The highly amusing review printed on the cd itself reflects the latter side of the empassioned love them/hate them response this band seems to draw.
An impressive 5-song ep from this Omaha-based indie rock act that has enjoyed not unwarranted comparisons to the Elephant 6 pop collective, especially Neutral Milk Hotel. With urgent, warbling vocals literally pushed to the brink of manic depressive outbursts, singer/songwriter Conor Oberst sounds like a cross between Jeff Mangum, Daniel Johnston, and Jandek (and maybe even some David Gedge [Wedding Present] to boot). And he's only, like, 19.
A full length from 1998. Fragile, personal music. Ripe with emotion. Fans of Cat Power and Vic Chesnutt take note.
Last list we had the deluxe reish of Baltimore guitarist George Brigman's long-lost Jungle Rot album, a self-released obscurity from '75 that seemed to be one man's tribute to The Stooges and the Velvet Underground. Fuzz-punk-blues-psych from way underground. Well, turns out that as a blues guitarist, George Brigman's biggest influence was probably Tony McPhee of British blues rockers The Groundhogs. So his late '70s outfit was called Split for a reason -- it's the name of (imho) the best Groundhogs album. And Brigman's blues bag is bigger on Split's 1977 album for sure. But if you've been diggin' Jungle Rot like we have, you might want to check this out too. We can't say it's quite as good, but it surely has its moments and many fans of Jungle Rot will like it too. The messed up downer punk attitude, and the fuzz, of Jungle Rot is prevalent here as well. At its worst, decent bar band blues rock with a great guitarist. At its best, really freaking awesome and weird bar band blues rock with a great guitarist. 19 tracks, some previously unreleased bonus cuts included.
Mr. Tom Brosseau is the man behind Grand Forks, an album of really good country folk melancholia.
Grand Forks is a concept album with a narrative centered around the devastating flood of his hometown back in 1997. No frills and deeply poignant, this music finds comfort and solace on a lonely mud-encrusted barstool with a half empty bottle of Kentucky bourbon. With guests John Doe and violinist Hilary Hahn.
Most fans of legendary (should we say infamous?) world music / punk / surf / WTF? subversives Sun City Girls probably know that a crucial one-third of the trio, SCG's drummer Charles Gocher, sadly met his demise due to cancer in 2007, thus bringing the band's 27-year long career to an end, with their final album being Funeral Mariachi released in 2010. But, their vast corpus of bizarre music lives on, as does the memory of Charles Gocher, at least if the two surviving ex-SCG's have anything to do with it. To that end, brothers Alan "Alvarius B" Bishop and "Sir" Richard Bishop have been touring under the name The Brothers Unconnected, performing an acoustic set of SCG tunes and screening a collection of Gocher's unusual video works. This double lp release documents the uncut entirety of such a show (minus the video portion of course), recorded live in Germany in 2011, with the Bishop bros. delving deep into the SCG catalog, going as far back to such albums as 1987's Horse Cock Phepner and 1990's Torch Of The Mystics to revisit an extensive selection of songs, all of 'em weird and wonderful (to varying extremes of both descriptors). Not only is this intended as a tribute to Gocher, and is something that any SCG devotee will enjoy, it could also serve as wide-ranging semi-introduction for noobs to the beauty, humor, and terror inherent in the SCG's utterly unique oeuvre!
Here's the full tracklisting: "Nyn De Gris Sang", "My Painted Tomb", "The Flower", "The Multiple Hallucinations Of An Assassin", "I Always Felt Sorry For The Monster", "The Brothers Unconnected", "Don't Fuck With The Squid", "Six Kids Of Mine", "Wild World Of Animals", "Academia Nuts", "Soi Cowboy", "Rookoobay", "I Deal A Stick", "Cruel And Thin", "Cooking With Satan", "Eyeball In A Quart Jar Of Snot", "Ali Baba", "Black Orchid", "Bitter Cold Countryside", "Dreamland (For Dinah)", "Horse Cock Phepner", and "Shining Path".
Handsome gatefold sleeve, with one lp on black vinyl, one lp on white vinyl, limited pressing!
Described as "One part Devendra Banhart and one part Daniel Johnston", David Thomas Broughton is like a nu-folk version of Ariel Pink. Earnest and heartfelt, but so so so damaged and strange. Incorporating detuned guitars, struggling malfunctioning drum machines, simple lo-fi organs, circusy keyboards, simple finger picked melodies, struggling Casio drum machines, all tangled up in expansive ultra personal folk songs, but folk bathed in lo-fi effects, backwards guitar loops, shimmering ambience, tape hiss, and pretty much whatever else Broughton could get his hands on or figure out how to get some interesting noise out of.
The opening track "The Circle Is Never Complete" is a gorgeous fractured folk fairy tale, a little cabaret, a little torch song, the vocals mumbled and dripping with reverb, the melody melancholy and lilting, the organ slowing down and speeding up, pitches constantly changing, the guitar unfurling delicate melodies, buzzing and scraping, the drums, a stumbling skitter, the vocals occasionally leap out as parts of the song suddenly attain high fidelity before slipping back into muted murk. So dreamy and sweetly sorrowful.
The whole record is an amazing, gorgeous, curious, damaged, child like, forward thinking slab of what-the-fuck folk, some tracks are drawn out and expansive, others are brief little fragments, all woven together into some twisted personal narrative, but the highlight has to be "Gracefully Silent" an 8+ minute drift of simple strum and gorgeous backwards guitar, so instantly warm and memorable, the sort of part in a song, that breaks your heart, especially when it ends and the song moves on to another part. Thankfully, that first backwards shimmer and strum continues throughout the whole track, with the addition of all sorts of mumbled vocals and random conversations, the track just drifts along as if it might continue on forever...
A cobbled together collection of old unearthed tracks, It's In There Somewhere plays as if it was composed to be this single suite of songs, every track perfectly flowing into the next, the record a gorgeous patchwork of dark and moody songsmithery, ramshackle but meticulously crafted, personal and private, a fascinating and lovely abstract bit of damaged folk dreaminess.
The plurally named Bruces is actually lone gent Alex McManus. If his name doesn't immediately ring a bell, the folks he's played with sure will -- Lambchop, Vic Chesnutt, Bright Eyes. The multi-instrumentalist McManus has crafted a mesmerizing album of hushed, earthy folk. Very haunting and atmospheric, especially on songs like "Pilot Light" and "Nerviosa". Fans of the above mentioned artists as well as Mountain Goats and Will Oldham should certainly lend an ear to The Bruces. Wonderful!
The great Tim Buckley live in 1968, singing "Dolphins" and others. Most tracks are from a couple of BBC sessions, plus there's a 12-minute version of "I Don't Need It To Rain" from a concert in Copenhagen (discovered on a disintegrating reel-to-reel tape found in a box at his home).
