This is the closest we will ever get to Bill Callahan’s living room, or…porch. The stage at Baby’s All Right has been set with a sturdy wooden chair and four handsome plants, two flanking each side to make up some kind of homey throne. A long-haired gentleman places ashtrays smoking with incense behind the stage monitors. “I want to be the incense roadie,” chirps a nearby voice, just before Callahan takes his seat in a blue button-up and well-worn boots. He does so without a word, easing into a simplified rendition of “Feather By Feather,” a song from his Smog days.
You could say that all of the evening’s songs were simplified, seeing as they were born of only six strings, a foot tambourine, and occasional harmonica. But one thing to learn from stripping a song to bare-bones is: how well does it hold up that naked? We were given the substructure of Callahan’s melodies throughout the set, and found they can still support the heft of his baritone beautifully; maybe this is no surprise. By force of habit, my ears still cued in the synth strings on “Jim Cain” and the distortion on “Dress Sexy At My Funeral,” but I didn’t want for any of it. The truth at the core of Bill’s sparse delivery is that his songs are bulletproof. They’d be as memorable tinkling out of a hurdy gurdy as they would set to a 30-piece orchestra.
Callahan has said in many interviews, perhaps weary of the ever-present question regarding his retreat from “the Smog moniker,” that he sees Smog and Bill Callahan as one and the same, merely on different points of a continuum. True to that philosophy, he doled out generous helpings of his catalogue old and new, playing everything from “Prince Alone In The Studio,” to “Too Many Birds” and his cover of Kath Bloom’s “The Breeze.” Upon strumming the first chord of “Riding For The Feeling” the crowd nearly fainted with excitement.
“You recognize that song from the first chord?” he said, looking bemused. “That’s the coolest thing. I never thought I’d get there.”
The audience continues to go wild with anticipation.
“I hope it’s the song you think it is.”
There is an austerity about Bill Callahan that I haven’t seen in too many performers…a kind of steely fortitude that makes me wonder if he’s not a man, but maybe a mountain, or a barquentine. He was there to do one thing, and it sure as hell wasn’t chitchat. Callahan doesn’t pander, just delivers. And yet despite the weight of his music, despite this being a rare moment to be earnest, and split open, and to feel something…there will always be a drunken idiot shouting safely from the back of the room.
“I fucking hate you Bill!” barks a fool who has been yelling quite the opposite up until now.
Callahan, who seems as though he could win any argument with the sting of his silence, looks up at the ceiling, a smirk slowly spreading across his lips. “I’m used to it,” he quips.
Anyone who has read a handful of interviews with Bill will pick up on his bone-dry sense of humor, but on the page you won’t get a sense of his comedic timing – the deadly delay he administers between minimal remarks. It’s a joy to see a few soft-spoken words slay a drunken monologue. Perhaps that speaks to the power in Callahan’s lyrics as well: nothing superfluous, everything purposeful, quality over quantity.
It would have been easy for Callahan to call it an early night, but he played a real stew of a set, clocking in at around an hour and a half, and giving us the chance to choose his last song.
“Well, that’s about all I got time for, goodnight,” he says after closing with “Say Valley Maker.”
The drunken fans persist: “To Be Of Use!” they scream.
New York songstress Alexa Wilding has an upcoming EP Wolves, which sees a transition from her previously more airy folk music. We sat down and talked about where her inspiration came from for the piece, as well as what sort of transition we can expect from her past work. After taking a few years off from music, Alexa realized the pull toward this art form was stronger than she had previously acknowledged, and she found herself creating music when she needed an outlet. It also provided her with a chance to really focus on herself. This is an EP that saw her through a difficult time in her life—when one of her children was diagnosed with cancer—and both its name and content reflect the changes Alexa underwent.
Read on below for an interview with her, and keep an eye out for Wolves, which is due to release on July 8.
AudioFemme: Tell me about your musical history, are any of your family members involved in music?
Alexa Wilding: Yeah, I come from a pretty ridiculously arty family. My dad’s parents were well known opera singers. My mom’s an actress, my dad still is a filmmaker, my grandmother was a painter, so needless to say—and my aunt was a ballet dancer—we’re sort of an arty bunch. And music played a pretty big role in my childhood and in my family’s culture really.
What inspired you to create your new EP Wolves?
Sort of circumstances I never ever thought I’d be writing a record in. I had twins in 2013. They’re going to be three next month. And unfortunately—well, things are fine now, but my son Lou went through cancer treatment. So the record was written in the most unlikely of places. He’s fine, which is really good for him.
That’s such a relief.
Yeah, it was crazy. It was really crazy. But you know, becoming a new mother, I wasn’t really sure, like am I going to keep doing music? It’s all I’ve ever done, but I was just so sapped creatively from the wild psychedelia of being a new mother and then we were thrown into this crisis. And basically what it meant was weeks on end for six months, we basically lived in the hospital. We switched off nights, my husband and I, so my son at home always had a parent.
But for the first round, I was in such a state of shock that I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I would just stare out the window at the East River and be like, “Where am I? How did this happen?” I was so terrified. Then by the second round, I don’t know what happened, but I said, “Okay, that’s it, Alexa. You need to carve some space for yourself.” So I turned to what I always turned to, which is music. I wrote the songs on Wolves on a toy piano borrowed from the hospital playroom.
It was wild. And while my son slept and healed, the songs just came. And mostly it was an escape for me. Like when I tell people that I wrote the songs in these unusual circumstances, they’re like, “Oh my God, this must be a really depressing cancer record.” And I’m like, “Actually there isn’t even a mention of what was going on.”
I so needed an escape, and what I did was I really focused on a time in my life right before I became a mother. That year I was touring nonstop and different relationships were kind of coming in and out of my life, so the record was sort of making peace with some of those loose ends, things that were put on hold to become a mother. And by doing that, I was able to become present.
Pediatricians always joke when you become a parent, and they’re like, “You know, you’re a parent, you need to put the oxygen mask on you first and then your kid.” And I was always like, “What the hell does that mean?” But that’s kind of what I did. So it was very surreal to leave this six-month experience with a cancer-free child, which is obviously the most important thing, but also as an artist, to have these songs that were ready to go. And it was very reaffirming after taking a few years off to be like I don’t really have a choice. I guess making albums is just what I do.
That’s awesome. I’m so glad he’s okay.
Thank you! Me too, me too.
So what does your ideal audience to this EP look like?
That’s a good question. People have joked about me that my following are a small but dedicated circle of very well-dressed people. I was like, okay, yeah, I like that. I feel like this record in particular is my most accessible one to date. But, that said, it’s the one I find most interesting. So I hope I haven’t sacrificed any of the oddness by having my first full-band record. I think that women in particular, hopefully, will relate to it. I am definitely a 90s kid, so I came of age with Lilith Fair. Kim Deal was like my hero, and Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan. Ya know, we all laugh because Sarah McLachlan is so dorky now, but I was listening to her recently when I was on a job, and I was like, “This is good stuff. Everyone’s got to chill out about this. She changed history.”
Yeah, I agree. There’s something about it where you’re like, this isn’t really a guilty pleasure because I’m not guilty about this.
Yeah, that makes sense! Totally. I loved all that stuff. So I am unabashedly saying and hoping to carry on that tradition of women who, ya know, wrote good songs and knew how to play their instruments and told stories that were very personal to the female experience. And that said, you know, I think more men are actually hopefully going to like the record, too, because it has a masculine side to it as well. It’s really—and this is really stereotypical—but it’s really trying to move. Which I wanted, because the whole idea with Wolves was be like, here are these feminine stories that I was trying to summon up in myself, like the wolf, to have the strength to handle my experience. With most of the record, there’s a softness to it, but to be totally blunt, the joke we made in the studio was always, “Boobs and balls, boobs and balls: They have to be in direct proportion, in an even balance.”
So I feel like it’s my toughest record, in a weird way. And I’m really proud of that because I was getting really sick of, ya know, before and people saying, “Oh, it’s just a girl picking her guitar. La-di-da.”
Right, yeah, that’s kind of insulting.
Or you get up to play a show and people would immediately look at you and before you started and be like, “I know what I’m in for.” And that used to make me crazy. I’m hoping it’ll reach a wider audience, and it’s not just the freaky folk thing anymore. When I wrote it, I was listening to a lot of radio and having fun playing with melodies for the first time in a way that I was like, “I want everyone to like this song!” Even the person who’s just tapping their foot, they’ll get that out of it.
Is there anything you’re hoping that your fans will take away from this piece?
Yeah, I mean obviously I can’t divorce the story of the circumstances in which it was written from the music. And my fans were so supportive during our crisis. Ben Lee, who’s a friend, did fundraising for us. So many of my friends used their celebrity to sort of help us. And the story, despite myself, got a lot of attention. And I was really happy to share our story with different media outlets. Because, as Ben said when he started—he did a Plumfund—because something people don’t realize is that I was like, “I’m not fundraising. What will people think? We have insurance! Blah blah blah.” But a medical crisis like that really wreaks havoc. Things you don’t even think about, like going to take cabs to and from the hospital every day. So that was really a lifesaver. But what he said was, “They are us. This could happen to any of us.” And what I’m hoping people get from it is the importance of holding onto yourself during a crisis, whether or not you are a parent. I don’t want to isolate or alienate fans who are not parents, but at the same time I’m pretty sure the record will hold a special place. It really has touched a lot of mothers, at least in New York City a lot of mothers have started following me during this crisis.
But what I hope fans take away from it is the idea that we can make friends with parts of ourselves that we used to be. I think that’s a lot of what the record is about. I talk a lot about different relationships. There’s one song, “Road Song,” in which it’s kind of a cinematic song. I mean, it’s basically a woman saying that she wants to be with somebody who’s with somebody. And that was a really scary song for me to write. I had to sort of make peace with that part of myself. We all have that.
I know I’m talking to a female music blog right now so I can say this, but I think it’s very hard for women to talk about their desire. Men are allowed to say, “I want that!” Or, “I want her!” Or, “I want to go on the road with my rock and roll band.” And nobody really thinks twice about it. And when it comes to women, we have a harder time talking about that. So for me, this record dealt with a lot of love as issues. Like with wolves. Like why can’t that person step up and do what the wolves do and be my partner? Why can’t I step up? In “Road Song,” it’s like I want that—I want what he has. And “Durga,” the last song, the lover is disappointed in the fact that her partner is not leaving his easel to tend to her needs. So like, all these little stories, these little snippets. Also, there’s this song called “Black” that’s a really small song where I just talk about going to a dark place. As women, especially as mothers, we’re not allowed to talk about wanting to go to a dark place. We’re supposed to just keep it together and lay low, so I think I was dealing with a lot of those questions on the record.
That makes a lot of sense. There is that weird expectation, especially with a mother, if you say anything is wrong, people are like, “She can’t handle motherhood.”
Exactly! I was even worried, like what are people going to think? She wrote this record about her son? It’s like what I was dealing with, and people were doubting me. It’s because I wrote a record that I was able to mother him. We’re so judgmental. And women are the worst!
I read a quote recently, a female filmmaker had a really bad interview where she had a movie come out and the interviewer kind of bashed her, and it was a fellow female. And she wrote an open letter defending her films, and in it she said, there’s a famous quote, I forget who said it: “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t support other women.” I love that. All about the sisterhood!
Definitely. So since you feel you’re kind of switching genres, is there any genre that you now feel like you fit into better?
I definitely was sort of occupying—I mean, I was told I was occupying more of a freak folk, folky, flower crowns thing. And I love a flower crown, but I really want to be moving more into just singer/songwriter. And someone like Natalie Merchant is incredible, as sort of the godmother of this sort of genre. People that I normally look up to in my own sort of circle. Also, Adler is incredible; I love her stuff. She’s somebody who made really spooky folk music and is now sort of standing her sound. I see this in a lot of my peers. Merchant has really taken off, which is so good for all of us, but I see it in our circle, and we are really moving away from the pigeonhole of “girl with a guitar.” And I still, I mean, it’s so cliché, but I still hear in interviews or after shows, “Oh my God, you were so incredible. I can’t believe you play your own instruments!” It’s just wild. That still exists.
You’d think we’d moved away from that already. So is there any specific song that you feel more of a connection with than the others?
My favorite song on the record—I mean, I have a couple—but there’s this song called “Stars,” it’s the fourth song, that I really love because it was just such an example of my escaping. It was a memory of being on the road, and I talked about being by the Rockies and the clear skies and the sadness I felt because I was so trapped as I was writing it. I really love that song. The line is, “Sometimes the sky throws a handful of stars in your way.” For me that sort of sums up the whole thing: that life really takes these crazy, wild turns, but you can really get through them in a magical way if you consider the circumstances with the same wonder and curiosity as you would a good situation. So I really tried to do that during my son’s crisis. And people would say during it, “How are you so together? How are you so cheerful?” And I would just wake up every day and I’d wash my face and I’d put on a nice dress and try to make everything look nice and do my best and have the same curiosity toward a bad day as you would a good day, which sounds really Pollyanna, but it really takes fucking guts. And I’m in awe of some of the people who really inspired me to summon up the wolf woman. The she-wolf.
That sounds amazing. What do you have planned for the future right now?
So we’re releasing Wolves in July, and I’m really only playing a limited amount of shows just because I’m with my kids right now and the logistics of three-year-old twins. I don’t know, I am a bit of an overachiever, but I have to sort of draw the line. I’m still going to do what I can to share the songs with the world. And I’m actually beginning the next record, which will be a full-length record. I’m really excited about that. And also, I’m writing a book, basically about the whole experience.
If you could perform at one venue, existent or nonexistent, which one would you choose?
Oh my gosh. One venue. As a New Yorker, I would kill to perform at the Beacon. That’s a real dream of mine. Or Carnegie Hall.I saw Suzanne Vega do something there a few years ago, and she couldn’t help herself and said, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice!”
But my one regret is that, before becoming a mother, I didn’t tour in Europe. And I really look forward to doing that in the future. In particular, I just want to play in Paris. That would be a really happy, happy night.
What besides creating music do you do as a hobby? Do you have anything that kind of forms your identity?
Yes, so mother/musician/writer. I’m quiet about my writing, just because music is so in your face. But I write and read constantly. I’m a real bookworm.
Do you have any musical milestones that you’re working toward adamantly?
For me, the biggest milestone is that I’d really love to have a label or a team behind me. I’ve been doing this by myself for so long, and I’ve never really found the right fit or didn’t ask for what I wanted or didn’t have that sort of fateful connection happen yet. And while I know those relationships can be very fraught, whether it’s label or manager, I’m really ready to put the proper team behind what I’m doing simply so we can reach more people with the music. I want it to happen in a natural way, but I’m just hoping I can continue to. And I’m sort of coming back after a long time. And it’s might be a bit of a slow ride, but I’m realizing that my ambition is much greater than I ever thought it was. Again, another thing as a woman is that we’re not really supposed to be like, “I want to take over the world!” But I really want my music to reach everyone.
English duo Slow Club are back with a new folksy single, and it’s exactly the sort of song you needed to improve your week.
Slow Club are experts at creating music that helps you slow down and get a little introspective, offering the pause that we tend to be oh-so hesitant to take. And “Ancient Rolling Sea” is no different in that sense. It starts off with a rustic, twangy feel and advances into a classic chilled out Slow Club tune. It primarily sees entrancing vocals from frontman Charles Watson alongside a heavy bassline that’ll reverberate within your core.
They’re currently touring through the UK, and we’re hopeful for an upcoming U.S. tour. For now, get your sway on to “Ancient Rolling Sea” below.
There are only so many words, and as a result, only so many band names that can be claimed before they start to overlap. For example, here’s six bands that have “moon” in their name, and considering these all were chosen simply because I’ve heard their name recently or saw it on a show calendar, there are probably many more (such as Moonwalks featured in our latest Playing Detroit column). Here’s a quick guide to what they sound like, where they’re from, and how you tell them apart.
Moonchild
The Los Angeles based group Moonchild plays jazzy pop that includes tenor saxophone and clarinet (played by vocalist Amber Navran). They have all the timing and timbre of a standard jazz or lounge band, but with echo-y layers of vocals and brass played with a soulful swagger.
Summer Moon
Summer Moon could be placed into the category of “super group;” its members include Nikolai Fraiture (The Strokes), Erika Spring (Au Revoir Simone), and Tennessee Thomas (Like) as well as Lewis Lazar. So obviously, they sound pretty good.
https://youtu.be/AsOIlRMGzy0
Moon Honey
Moon Honey is from Los Angeles, but via Louisiana. They play intricate, surreal pop with theatrical vocals supplied by Jessica Ramsey. The trills in her voice are reminiscent of an old Disney movie soundtrack, while her melodies recall the Dirty Projectors minus the harmonies.
https://soundcloud.com/moonhoneyband/boy-magic-1
What Moon Things
What Moon Things is a New York band that’s part punk, part moody dream pop. Check out “Squirrel Girl,” a track from their self-titled LP that sounds like the perfect soundtrack for wandering through a dark, abandoned warehouse. The trio is also playing several CMJ shows at venues like Aviv, Pianos, and Bowery Electric.
The Soft Moon
The Soft Moon is a San Francisco band with a heavy, industrial sound, best described as steady and sludgy (and as their recent video for “Dummy” proves, occasionally creepy).
https://soundcloud.com/goincase/when-its-over
Moon Duo
Moon Duo is a San Francisco project made up of Erik Johnson (Wooden Shijps) and Sanae Yamada. Their sound is a combination of electronic and Krautrock elements, with droning, understated vocals, and lots of keys and psychedelic guitar solos.
There is no epic heartbreak suffered by Kurt Vile on his latest album b’lieve i’m goindown, no great struggle he has to overcome. There’s just everyday malaise punctuated by moments of deeper sadness as well as happier feelings. This is why b’lieve i’m goin down is so relatable – these feelings could happen to anyone, except they happened to the Philadelphia singer-songwriter, who is also a former member of The War On Drugs.
He sounds tired and jaded, frustrated that even the life of a recording, touring musician eventually lends itself to its own brand of monotony.On “All In A Daze Work,” he sings that he’s “Strummin’ unsuccessfully, but moresojust pressing keys.” You may not write songs for a living, but you can empathize when something you’re good at – something you love – seems so far away from what you can and want to do at the moment. On both “Pretty Pimpin” and “That’s Life tho,” he sings about the disconnect he feels with his own image: Not recognizing himself in the mirror and therefore brushing a stranger’s teeth, and coming across as a “certified badass” when he goes out, though he admits to us that he took pills beforehand to take the edge off.
But one of the album’s best moments comes at the very end, on “Wild Imagination,” when he aims his frustration and sadness at the disconnect created by our lives online. It’s summed up neatly in the easy, folk-y song’s first verse: “I’m looking at you, but it’s only a picture so I take that back/But it ain’t really a picture/It’s just an image on a screen.” We live in an age where pictures are no longer cherished, personal memories to flip through. Now they’re social currency, and their worth is based on the reactions of others. So he goes on to ask, “You can imagine if I was though, right? Just like I can imagine you can imagine it. Can’t ya?” This is a scene that’s played out on iPhones everywhere, when we click the little heart next to a friend’s Instagram photo because we know it signals to them that we see them, we like them, they are valued.
Getting trapped in this world is just as depressing as being removed from it, but knowing it exists. Vile is definitely living in his own world, and while it’s one that isn’t perfect, it’s one that he made himself, offline. These days, doing that can be a little terrifying. But like he says on “Wheelhouse,” “You gotta be alone to figure things out.”
Though there’s no link specifically for “Wild Imagination,” you can stream b’lieve i’m goindown here and watch the video for “Pretty Pimpin” below.
The crowd wears sunglasses until the day gives in to night. The VIP’s are elevated in the front under umbrellas sponsored by Hendricks gin, or in the very back penned off in a Aquacai holding area. Teenage volunteers run around, excited and sweaty in contrast to the stone-faced security guards (well, it is summer in New York- everybody’s a little sweaty). It’s a Wednesday night and this is Summerstage, the outdoor concert series in Central Park where fans can see their favorite bands, communing with nature on a floor of astroturf.
When you’re standing shoulder to shoulder with your fellow listeners, feeling the claustrophobic of the makeshift rock arena inside the huge, open space that is Central Park, trying not to spill your eight-dollar, twelve-ounce cup of craft beer, it’ll never be more clear that while you hate large crowds, you love live music more than almost anything. The music of Angel Olsen seems to come floating down from the trees behind her instead of the speakers mounted on the stage. She is equally impressive live as she is on record, though she lamented that she had “a summer cold for Summerstage.” Her voice is both delicate and powerful, wavering and twisting itself from note to note over the foundation of her band.
Though charismatic, she lets her music carry the performance – her songs are not conductive to onstage antics or theatrics. That’s for the best, because the next act was the complete opposite, Father John Misty. Frontman Josh Tillman crooned his heart out, and left no syllable unaccompanied by a gesture, shimmy, sashay of the hips or another abuse of the mic stand. Just when you think the crowd is too big, and you’re too far to get the full effect of his performance, you hear him sing “You’re the one I want to watch the ship go down with” and feel like he’s talking straight to you. You think that crowds aren’t so bad after all. And anyway, you’re in Central Park on a gorgeous night: if you can’t see the stage, you can just tilt your head back and stare at the fading sunset, letting the music wash over you.
Mauro Remiddi has had quite a life. The Italian born singer/songwriter once joined a Berlin circus at age 21, playing percussion, accordion, and violin to accompany the acts. He’s visited North Korea as an Italian musical ambassador and shaken hands with Kim Jong-un. Recently, a new adventure brought him to Brooklyn, where he recorded the EP Half Awake under the name Porcelain Raft.Not content to settle down for long, he soon moved to Los Angeles to mix the tracks and start his own label, Volcanic Field.
Remiddi has the weary voice of an artist who’s seen a lot, but managed to hold onto some hope and gentleness. The songs on Half Awake, true to the release’s name, are mellow and dreamy with an infusion of energy just below the surface. On the opening track “Leave Yourself Alone,” that energy comes from fuzzy synths under sparse guitars. On “All In My Head,” a less subtle dance beat works perfectly under an organ intro and Remiddi’s smooth vocals. He proves his versatility by ending the EP with the folkier track “Something Is After Me,” a song are heavy on piano and soulfulness.
All of these elements are put into play on the title track. It starts with Remiddi humming a soulful intro, then a bass beat kicks in under his singing: “Should I come over? It seems that I’m half awake.” More drums and the plucking of a guitar are added as he makes up his mind: “I’m coming over/ I need to see you again.”
Half Awake is available now via Volcanic Field, and Porcelain Raft will be playing an album release show on Friday, June 26 at Baby’s All Right! Check out “Half Awake” below.
Sara Curtin, one half of the DC folk-pop duo The Sweater Set just released the single “Careless” from her forthcoming sophomore solo album Michigan Lilium, and AudioFemme is pleased to premiere it. Strummed like the folk star she is, the song both sounds pretty yet carries some seriously emotionally intelligent lyrics (“Boy I’m troubled, I should know). It’s smart yet delicious, like a kale smoothie as yummy as a milkshake. Listen to “Careless” below.
Though his exact height is unconfirmed, we do know a few things about The Tallest Man On Earth: His name is Kristian Matsson. He’s a singer/songwriter from Dalarna, Sweden- though it’s hard to tell from his folky sound, and influences that include American artists like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan. He’s put out four albums, and his latest is Dark Bird Comes Home, released May 12th via Dead Oceans.
On this record, Matsson expands his sound with more instruments- keys, drums, the occasional harmonica. The new lineup doesn’t clutter his songs, but enhances them. Where his earlier relied mostly on his guitar work and rambling singing style, the band behind him now allows Matsson to leave space between his words. This makes his vocals more focused, particularly on songs like “Timothy,” and “Darkness of the Dream.” Though it’s still as quietly stunning as his earlier work, it’s now more accessible for those who need more than a voice and guitar to hold their attention.
Key tracks are the jaunty “Slow Dance,” “Darkness of the Dream” (“The letting go is here and now/ The beauty’s in your arms, no mind is out to wander/ Just let yourself out of your sight, careless/ And some love will be there”), and the bittersweet “Dark Bird Is Home.” Check out the track below!
“A Call For Distance” is a stand-out track from Glider. It’s a slow-burning song that gradually adds layers of Broderick’s vocals, the plucking of guitar strings and the rattle of a drum. The music rises and settles naturally, like the tide flowing in and out. Broderick’s voice is soft, but compelling as she asks for “A call for distance…to force a change without a name.” Her ability to perfectly layer her vocals shows that though she’s backed many other artists, she really only needs herself.
Glider will be released on July 10th through Western Vinyl. Check out “A Call For Distance” below:
For a normal band, making an accordion sound cool would be no easy feat. But for the dream-folk duo Twin Limb, it’s no big deal. Lacey Guthrie plays the instrument along with keys and vocals, and Maryliz Bender contributes vocals, drums and guitar, while Kevin Ratterman fills in the gaps with miscellaneous effects and instruments for the Louisville, KY band.
Like its name, their track “Long Shadow” casts a brooding atmosphere over the listener with the aforementioned accordion. Then suddenly, synths and strings peek through the gloom, and transform the song into something bittersweet. The vocals, emotional without being overly dramatic, make the transition from hopeless to hopeful effortlessly.
This is a band that you definitely don’t want to overlook. Check out their dreamy video for “Long Shadow” below.
“I write these answers now in a dark cabin on the Swedish country side.”
This I can imagine: Sawyer Gebauer, lamp-lit at a maple table pondering the four-year history of his musical project Brittsommar. What is difficult to picture is that he is communicating via computer, and not quill, parchment and pigeon. These dated emblems do not come to mind because Gebauer’s music is dressed in derivative costume, but rather due to the fairytale-like circumstances of Brittsommar’s formation.
“Ha, that’s what most people say-some fairytale scenario.”
Simply put, Brittsommar plays folk music. But theirs is not the saccharine-sunshine variety of Mumford and Sons and Edward Sharpe so prevalent a few years back. Something much darker and more austere is at play here, summoning the sorrow of Nick Cave and the narrative structuring of Lee Hazlewood. It’s a slice of sound that’s long been absent from American indie music, which is perhaps why Gebauer became an expat before finding collaborators with a similar mission to his own.
While most 19-year-old musicians might take a crack at ‘making it’ in New York or Los Angeles, Wisconsin-born Gebauer instead fled to Sweden in 2010, no master plan informing the decision.
“It was just the usual thoughts and confusion that comes with that age after high school. What is this life of mine? This world that we are born, live, and die in. Who am I, who are you? All those typical questions of a world unseen…the beauty of the unknown.”
It’s the kind of cryptic response one would expect after hearing Brittsommar, their swelling melodrama of strings and minor chords suggesting too many nights spent with Evan Williams and Aesop’s Fables. In both song and conversation Gebauer takes on an air of the wizened raconteur-a true storyteller who has somehow never written down a song in his life.
“I just feel as soon as I write it down it disappears. It’s down and out. It’s on the page and that’s where it will stay, between the binding. Perhaps when I start to get older and the drink eventually gets to me I´ll have to start documenting. We´ll see.”
But true to his Midwestern roots Gebauer occasionally retreats from the role of bard, admitting the more down-to-earth and banal reasons for leaving home:
“I wasn´t interested in university or staying at the pizza joint I worked in. I wasn’t interested in staying in the relationship I was in- or any as a matter of fact. There was no option besides getting out of Madison.
At the time, I was quite into Swedish musicians- Tallest Man on Earth, The Knife, Jens Leckman, Jose Gonzales. So I thought, ‘Well, I might as well go there and see what I can do.’ There was something there in the back of my head and the bottom of my gut that pulled me in that direction. One North Country to another.”
Gebauer turned to WWOOFing and found a host farm on which he could work in return for food and board. He picked the first farm listed but changed his mind last minute, settling on another called Rosenhill. It was this flighty impulse that laid the foundation for the four years to follow.
“I didn´t know anything about the country- the language, the culture etc. Maybe if I knew then what I know now, my situation would be different.
When I got on the bus to go to Chicago O´Hare from Madison it still didn’t hit me that I was doing some “radical” thing that most people wouldn’t do.
When I arrived at the farm I fell in love with the farmer’s daughter. It was her 18th birthday and I knew it was just her and I from then on out. This was to be Brittsommar´s violin player, Evelin.”
Sawyer and Evelin traveled together between Stockholm and Berlin, accumulating band mates each with compelling backgrounds of their own. Guitarist Johan Björk is a Swedish judge. Drummer Gilad Reichenthal is a former Israeli rock star. Evelin Sillén is currently studying art, and cellist Chris Smith hails from Australia where he used to build satellites for the German space agency.
What Gebauer and Sillén found in these musicians was a desire in step with their own: to form an ever-shifting lineup of contributors that would allow Brittsommar to be in constant motion, forming more of an artist collective than a traditional band.
“When Evelin and I moved to Berlin we met Chris and Gili there, by chance really. We were looking for a new band and they showed up. You just know you are gonna be friends and band mates before you even play together for the first time. There is this energy. We were all going through huge stages in our lives- just giving everything up again and moving to this dark hole that is Berlin. So we kinda clicked on an existential level.”
It’s the stuff of fate and fiction, seasoned with the kind of characters you’d find in a Jeunet film. The story doesn’t outshine the music, but it does beg to be told, and when I first heard Brittsommar’s “Tell Me” playing on a laptop in Minnesota, I knew it had to be heard.
While the group has garnered applause from European outlets, they’re virtually unknown in the States, which, as I relay to Sawyer, is a damn shame. I ask if this makes him feel out of touch with American audiences.
“Well that actually has to do with the PR. The last album was promoted to a primarily European demographic. I think the States are more jaded than in Europe. America is so fast and it has seen and created much of what’s going on over here so the mentality is kinda like, ‘yeah so what?’ In Europe it’s somewhat of an exotic thing- this guy abandoning his home in America to move out to the countryside of Sweden. Being back in NY it’s like, ” So you come from Wisconsin…mmhm.” Haha, I don’t know if that’s true really…”
The album Sawyer refers to is 2013’s The Machine Stops. Defying the sophomore slump principle and any sentiments of “yeah, so what?” Machine reveals miles of artistic growth when compared with their 2011 debut, Day of Living Velvet. While the first record is a far cry from bad or boring, it seems a bit thin in production and intensity after listening to Machine, which is a rolling maelstrom of mournful folk.
Gebauer’s voice is a resounding barrelhouse that is all the more impressive when you see that it’s coming from a beardless ectomorph. Despite its depth, it bears a solid range; it is not the monotone last resort of someone who can’t actually sing. At once painful and reckless, it is the central presence of Brittsommar’s sound, but never overwhelms the wailing surges of cello and violin or the precisely plucked guitar. Evelin Sillén’s accompanying vocals add a sweet reprieve while Reichenthal doles out trembling snare rolls fit for a funeral procession.
Machine’s opener “Sing Low” is a strong starter, relying heavily on Gebauer’s lulling baritone. The song builds layer-by-layer, first with tinny fingerpicking and eventually culminating in crashing cymbals. “Half-Inch Map” has Gebauer at his most snide and berating: “and you’re just getting by by the skin of your crooked teeth.” The track is wily and slightly sinister, implementing squealing strings that could be found on a Dirty Three record.
“Middle Man” is a favorite, though an even better version can be heard in a live performance filmed outdoors in Freiburg. The video communicates the band members’ dexterity as musicians, as well as Gebauer’s charisma as a performer, yipping occasionally like a coyote with his guitar held at chin level.
Sweeping and melancholy, “The Painter” is another high point of the record, as well as a beautiful cover of “Aint You Wealthy, Aint You Wise” by Will Oldham-aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy. It’s a fitting source of inspiration for Gebauer, whose story would seem to merit a pseudonym of his own. Much like Oldham and Beirut’s Zach Condon, there is a sense that Gebauer is a musician lost in his own time. Is there a 73-year-old man trapped in that a twenty-something’s body? There just might be.
It’s a charlatan’s charm, though nothing is false about Gebauer or his music. The mere discrepancy between his age and aura is what spawns such suspicion: is all this for real? And if so, why the hell haven’t we heard more about it?
Fortunately, there is still time to discover. Gebauer is bringing it all back home to record a solo LP in San Francisco this month, stopping by New York to play a gig on the way.
“The album is gonna be pretty sweet and lowdown compared to the others-somewhat acoustic then a mirage of grungy drums and out of tune violins. Finding the voice again. The past albums were a lot of story telling…
With these upcoming tracks I developed quite a bit compared to when I was in Berlin two years ago. I got reacquainted with the tranquil chaos that is America. This past year I returned to the states and lived in NY. Went to the west coast and drove from San Fran down to Austin where I was to play at SXSW. Then I flew to Madison for the fist time in years. So I went East to West, South to North. I found my ‘roots’ I suppose.
It was amazing. When I returned to Madison, the songs just came. Flowed out in a way that hasn’t happened to me in quite some time. I guess it was the re-realization that you can never go home again…”
You can never go home again, and you certainly can’t live forever. Gebauer seems to be comfortable with seismic change in ways few people are. In the small number of interviews I’ve found he mentions-in his own baroque way-the inevitable death of Brittsommar.
“Yeah, it´s only natural. You don’t wanna drag something out too long. Let it die in its footsteps, one can say. Doesn’t mean the music is over, just a change in direction and meaning. It has been some time and people have gone in and out. It started in a different time and we are all now in different periods with our lives. Brittsommar was then. Now its something even better.”
Gebauer will play a solo show at Troost Bar in Greenpoint on Thursday, November 20th. Also on the bill is the lovely and talented Scout Paré-Phillips.
Over the course of the past two years, Lily & Madeleine Jurkiewicz, teenage sisters from Indianapolis, have had a performance go viral on Reddit, written their first original songs, gotten signed to Asthmatic Kitty, released two full-length albums and an EP, and played several tours. The duo’s most recent album, the spooky and elegant Fumes, starts with the basics that have always characterized Lily & Madeleine’s sound–unadorned folk melodies and close harmony between the pair’s twin voices–and twists the basic foundation into something more nuanced and experimental. In what’s perhaps a byproduct of their overnight success coupled with being so young, Lily and Madeleine are still evolving as artists: Fumes pushes at the outer boundaries of folk and indie pop–turf that has by now become familiar to this group–and hints at more experimental, darker territory to be explored in the future. Even “Peppermint Candy,” one of the poppiest tracks on the album, complexifies its catchy melody with a sinister lyrical slant: “Peppermint candy, and a hand upon my gun,” the first verse begins, “I keep it handy, I’ve never been the kind to run.”
The overarching feeling in these tracks, however, is a kind of hopeful independence: the women in the songs are alone but self-sufficient, and just discovering their powers. “We felt inspired to create songs that reflected our current empowerment,” Madeleine explained to me when I called the sisters to chat yesterday afternoon. It was their second tour stop, and they were in Boston, waiting to start soundcheck. Read on to learn about Lily & Madeleine’s writing process, what they’ve been listening to these days, and what’s next for the duo.
AudioFemme: Hi, guys! You just kicked off a tour–how’s it going so far?
Lily: It’s been really fun. We’ve only had one show–we’ve done some radio things–but tonight is our second show in Boston.
Madeleine: We had a show in Indianapolis, right before Halloween. That was our album release show. The first show that we traveled to was in Charleston, WV, and we played on the Mountain Stage, which was really cool because they’ve had, like over 800 shows on that stage and broadcast them on the radio. Now we’re in Boston, and we really love Boston. It’s gonna be fun!
AF: You guys just released Fumes, your second album in 2 years. You’ve been so prolific so far–what’s your writing process like? Do you set a regular schedule or routine for yourself in terms of writing or playing?
Lily: I like to play every day just because it’s relaxing and fun. I like to write too, but you can’t always write a song by pressuring yourself to do it–sometimes it’s better when you’re inspired. So I don’t write every day.
AF: Has your writing process changed since your first recordings?
Madeleine: Honestly, no. The writing [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][on Fumes] was pretty similar to what it was for our first album. We wrote the same way, with me, Lily, and Kenny Childers, who’s our co-writer. The way that Fumes is different from the first album is that once we got into the studio and started arranging the songs, we began to experiment more. We brought in some new musicians and tried out different sounds, different distortions, things like that. The writing itself wasn’t different but the production was a little more involved.
AF: What inspired you thematically on this album?
Madeleine: Once we finished the first album and had some success with that, we knew we wanted to make a second album that was going to be just a little different, a little more evolved. Because we’d grown up, I guess. We were inspired by the tours we had been on, the people we had met, the experiences we had had, the way that our careers were shaping us as artists and as women. We felt inspired to create songs that reflect our current empowerment, I suppose. That’s really the main theme of the record. Empowerment.
AF: And these are all new songs that you’ve written since putting out a successful record. On your first EP, did you include any old songs? Anything that you’d written before knowing there was even going to be an EP to put them on?
Lily: No, everything that went on the EP was written specifically for the EP. Before then we’d never written songs. So pretty much every song we’d ever written at that point went on the EP.
AF: Wow. So did you start songwriting specifically for the recording process?
Madeleine: Yeah, pretty much. We met our manager and producer and he challenged us to start writing our own music. We just fell in love with the process of creating together, and we both just love music so much that it totally made sense to write our own material. Before that point we hadn’t really done much with writing.
AF: Did you worry at any point that you wouldn’t be able to write songs?
Lily: Oh, yeah. It was really hard at first. We tried and we didn’t know how to do it. Now it’s great.
AF: Clearly! So what got the ball rolling? Did you enter into the process totally collaboratively?
Madeleine: We did, yeah. That’s kind of how we always do it. Usually one of us will start with an idea and bring it to the other. Once we have a verse or a melody, just something to start on, that makes it easier to develop the song more quickly and turn it into something we both like.
AF: What are the best things about songwriting with a sibling?
Lily: Because we’ve always lived together, we have a lot of the same experiences. At the same time, we have different emotional reactions to things. Under pressure, Madeleine tends to get more anxious, and I tend to get more pushy. It’s a difference in our personalities.
AF: It must be beneficial to you as business partners to have different strengths. How has your personal relationship evolved since you began this project?
Madeleine: Definitely [it is beneficial to have different strengths]. I think we balance each other well. We’ve always been close. We’re not very far apart in age, and so we had the same teachers growing up, and very similar friend groups. This experience has made our relationship stronger, but nothing’s really changed that much, because we’ve always been friends.
AF: Have you always played music together? What were your first musical experiences?
Lily: We would always sing together around the house and things like that. But we never performed together.
Madeleine: Like Lily said earlier, we’ve loved music forever. It was something I would do as a hobby because I liked it and I was good at it. I didn’t think of it as being a career until we started writing and released our songs and signed to a label. Even then, I was really unsure of what we were getting ourselves into. Not until recently have I felt super comfortable with what we’ve been doing, but now I’m ready to be an artist and a musician. I’m letting myself do this and control this. I’m feeling good about it now.
AF: It sounds like you’ve both had to grow up really quickly.
Lily: Kind of. Yeah, probably. What with the places we’ve been, and the challenges we’ve had to overcome. But I do feel that we’d be the same people if this wasn’t happening.
Madeleine: I think about what I’d be doing if I was in college, or whatever, if I wasn’t doing this with Lily. I probably wouldn’t be as strong, and as sure of myself, because we’ve had really cool experiences that my peers haven’t had yet or may never have. So we’re lucky.
AF: Is it hard keeping in touch with friends who are on that other path?
Madeleine: I’ve stressed about that a lot. Like, as recently as last month. More and more, I feel like the people who want to stay in contact with me and support me, they will. Those who don’t, I don’t have any place for them in my life.
AF: Talk to me about blood harmony. I love that phrase. What does it mean, and why is it so special to you?
Madeleine: I love that phrase too. It’s so creepy and cool. Well, I think it’s really natural for us to harmonize because we have the same voice, and the same genes. It’s really just the way we naturally do things.
AF: You have this amazing story of having a song go viral on Reddit and breaking into recording in this very fast, Internet-based sort of way. What do you think about Internet stardom and “going viral” as a way of breaking into the music industry?
Madeleine: It seems like that’s the way it happens now. We live in this age of technology, and posting stuff to YouTube is super common. Things going viral, it happens all the time, and I think it’s actually an awesome platform for artists to get going and put their art out there. Sometimes you have to search through a lot of crap to get to the good stuff, but I think it’s an awesome way for musicians to get started. I think we’re lucky that it happened for us that way.
AF: Really fast, too! If that hadn’t happened, would you be trying to break into the music business in other ways?
Lily: I think so. I think I’d probably go to college and study something music-related. But this is what I truly want to be doing so I’m glad everything went the way it went.
Madeleine: I don’t even want to talk about what I’d be doing if I wasn’t doing do this. Because obviously this is what the universe has given to us right now, this opportunity, this chance, so I think it just makes sense for us to keep going with it. If I wasn’t, I guess I would be in college, and have friends and a boyfriend and hang out and go to parties. But I’m doing this, and I want to be doing this.
AF: What are some of your individual influences, and what do you both like to listen to?
Lily: My influences, they shift a lot. I tend to get really obsessed with an artist for a couple of weeks and then it dwindles a bit. I still listen to them, but I calm down and move on to something else. Right now I really like hip hop.
AF: Wow, I would not have guessed that from listening to your album!
Madeleine: Lily’s been sending me some of her hip hop stuff. I like it, but it’s not my favorite. I’m into electronic stuff–not hardcore electronic, but I’m starting to get into the genre a little bit more and take some influences. Maybe on our next album you’ll see some hip hop and electronic influence in our songs!
Catch Lily & Madeleine live tonight in New York City at Le fabulous Poisson Rouge! It’s not too late to pick up your ticketshere, and stay tuned for my coverage of the show. To get a taste, watch the official music video for “The Wolf Is Free,” below:
When I was in college, I spent a lot of time dating musicians, which meant I spent a lot of time sitting in on band practice. By “dating,” I guess I mean puttering around somebody’s basement, falling asleep on an old, bottomed-out couch, my French homework in my lap. Or being invited over to “hang out,” which meant lying around and listening to my amarato’s admittedly very good sound system crank out some rare Morphine b-side or watching him play “Wave of Mutilation” on acoustic guitar. But all that is beside the point. The point is, there’s something about Foxygen’s new album, …And Star Power, that reminds me very much of sitting in on band practice. The songs meander at length, and often talk more to themselves than to their listeners. They navel-gaze. To get to the nuggets of exhilaration and catchy magic buried in this thing, you have to sit through a lot of repetition, strumming, and self-amazement.
It’s easy to see why …And Star Power is so ambitious, and sometimes seems like it incorporates every musical thought the band has had over the past year. On their 2012 studio debut Take The Kids Off Broadway, the California-based outfit Foxygen–aka Jonathan Rado and Sam France, who between the pair of them make a sound so huge and anthemic it’s hard to believe they’re a duo–set a standard for overarching power rock full of catchy choruses and drunk-around-the-campfire feelgoodery. Then, the very next year, they put out the airtight and stellar We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic. It was sweet and raucous, and in its way, it was a huge album, too–concise as a well-packed suitcase, 21st Century Ambassadors seemed as if it could expand into two or three records worth of triumphs and lessons.
Measure for measure, the number of well-constructed melodies in …And Star Power probably equals that of 21st Century Ambassadors; however, the former is a double album, clocking in at about an hour and twenty minutes. With extra time comes extra filler, presented as spaciousness and a vaguely futuristic ambiance punctuated by such spoken interjections as “society, maaaan” thrown seemingly at random into the background of the tracks. One might imagine that Foxygen decided to make a double album before writing the requisite songs to fill one, but I think it’s more likely that …And Star Power‘s long-windedness is a result of a challenge it makes to itself to be even more multi-faceted than 21st Century Ambassadors, and simply incorporateevery kind of music in the history of rock and roll. Thus the swirl of lo-fi strummed folk, the sludgy doom metal, the channel-changing static, thus the campy ’70’s space noises, thus the schizophrenic production. Like porch furniture being sucked into a tornado, classic Americana, noise rock, California psych, and more than a few nameless hybrids go flying towards the gaping maw of Foxygen’s musical vision. Voila: …And Star Power.
..And Star Power came out October 14th on Jagjaguwar. Pick up your copy here, and check out the psychedelic lullaby “Cosmic Vibrations,” from …And Star Power, below:
Seeing Sam Amidon perform at Music Hall of Williamsburg on Saturday, I had no idea that the music he played wasn’t wholly his own until after the show. His set was built from folk standards, remastered to create something new. Normally, learning something like this changes my opinion of an artist, as it doesn’t really feel like they should get all of the attention and credit for their music. Not that I completely write them off, but it’s definitely a let down. But I didn’t feel disappointed when I realized that the performance I had just experienced was in part dependent on old folk standards. Somehow, the origin of the lyrics Amidon and his band sang didn’t quite matter as much as how they sang them. And he sang them as though he’d written them himself, deeply personal odes to a fading folk tradition.
At most shows, I’m a relatively easy audience member to please. I instantly connect to artists who perform and make you feel like they truly love and enjoy what they’re doing. When you feel the joy from the people up on the stage, that’s when you know you’re watching something special. At this show, I couldn’t help but to get that feeling from the band. The lyrics of the songs don’t really matter when you’re watching people perform something interesting. The folk standards are more of a vessel for the band to exhibit their talent than the meat of the experience.
Amidon traditional catalogue is shaped to a more modern bluesy rock/folk that’s infinitely more interesting and entertaining than someone standing up onstage with a banjo, performing a straight and faithful cover. Especially during the title track of the band’s new album, “Lily-O” (which he referred to as “the murder song”), Amidon’s inflection sets his voice apart from any other folk singer I’ve heard. Amidon released his first record of Irish traditional standards in 2001, and that Irish influence still comes through in his newest work. At times, he talks more than he actual sings, even muttering at times, but reaches higher and lower registers when necessary. The muttering gives the songs a bit of a haunting sound, especially considering the moody content of some of the songs, which narrate anything from walking in the woods to shooting groundhogs. Combined with the acoustic guitar or banjo or fiddle, it creates a beautiful sweeping ballad.
The band had its awkward moments, like many do live. A joke about Bruno Mars’ former role as drummer for the band started out funny and sarcastic and then several minutes later had gone on far, far too long. It concluded with Amidon pretending to play the fiddle horribly and then smoothly transitioning into the next song, wherein he played beautifully. However awkward and long the joke was, it reflects a bit of Amidon’s style; he mixes humor with some of the dark lyrics in the folk songs. It’s an interesting contrast: folk songs with a wink, almost. Toward the end of the show, Amidon announced that this tour was conveniently doubling as his book tour. At first, I thought this was also a joke, but the book is indeed real and was available at the merch table for purchase. It’s a small collection of Tweets (his or others’, I’m not sure) but proves that Amidon’s interests extend beyond that of creating and performing music.
Despite these minor distractions, Amidon’s show was one that was rewarding to experience. Not all artists sound as good live as their albums do, but listening to the album after seeing them live first, I much prefer the live version. Not that the recording isn’t good, it’s just that the live inflections in Amidon’s voice can’t be felt as completely in the album version. The live show sounded raw and imperfect, yet beautiful and uncomplicated. He’s touring throughout New England the rest of this month before heading to Europe in November. You can check out a performance with Bill Frisell on NPR’s World Cafe below.
Kevin Morby is nothing if not prolific. He left Woods indefinitely last year — with whom he released a new album every year until his departure — and put The Babies (his band with Cassie Ramone) on hold. Now. he’s focusing on his solo work, and his sophomore record, Still Life, is perhaps one of his most contemplative pieces.
Released October 14th on Woodsist, Still Life opens with the track “The Jester, The Tramp, & The Acrobat.” It is a reeling, Lou-Reed-meets-Leonard-Cohen story, using broad strokes to provide just enough color to each character, but never a direct plot line. It’s an approach continued throughout Still Life, which provides listeners with feelings and reactions – not stories.
This might perhaps be the reason this LP is so thoughtful. The album is named after an art piece by Maynard Monrow entitled “Still Life with the Rejects from the Land of Misfit Toys,” but even truncated as it is, the title is apt: Still Life is low key, low-energy, and highly meditative. Still Life does not dwell, but it lives in a land of misfit toys which leaves a little room for playfulness.
Even with a healthy dose of the stillness – considering and reflecting on hard subjects – there’s still lots of movement; Morby shifts gears before songs feel too stagnant. That’s reflective, in many ways, of his move from New York City to Los Angeles last year. Throughout the album, he moves through themes of finding peace, death, and parades. When Morby handles the subject of death, he is never heavy-handed – instead, he is hopeful, considerate, but realistic. “I’m not dead, but I’m dying,” he says in “Amen,” the 7-minute track that has multiple movements that bleed into each other. “So slow, so slow,” he qualifies.
He sings in the haunting “Bloodsucker,” “I am trying to make peace with who I am,” and he hasn’t completely abandoned his former bands’ aesthetics. While Woods defines itself as a psych-folk band, Morby’s solo work focuses more on the folk aspect of that equation. In this way, Morby’s own influences come to full light: his love of Bob Dylan’s songwriting emerges in the fast paced “Ballad of Arlo Jones” which channels Dylan during his major move to electric in the 60s. “Motors Runnin” is a kindred spirit to The Babies; Cassie Ramone’s repeated lines in “Run Me Over” almost feels echoed in Morby’s track. In spite of the different influences and camaraderie, the tracks all feel right together. Still Life is carefully constructed, and sonically simple, but has just enough complexity in its riffs and hooks to keep the songs in your head after a few listens.
This much is clear: Morby has grown tremendously over the years as a musician and songwriter, and he shows no sign of stopping.
Still Life is out now on Woodsist. He’ll play some shows for CMJ; check out dates and watch his video for “All of My Life” below:
10/24 – Brooklyn, NY – Rough Trade (Aquarium Drunkard CMJ Showcase)
10/25 – Brooklyn, NY – Academy Records *Free*
12/01 – San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall w/ Angel Olsen
12/04 – Los Angeles, CA – El Rey Theatre w/ Angel Olsen
As curator of his New Images record label, Matt Mondanile (a.k.a. Ducktails) has quietly assembled and eclectic roster that includes the blistering psych of Spectre Folk, the bright atmospheric drone of Helm, the wonky synth and gamelan collage of Tsembla, and classic Big Star-esque indie of The Shilohs. With the release of Itasca’s Unmoored By the Wind, Mondanile adds the smoky nostalgia of folk singer-songwriter Kayla Cohen to his cohort. Ahead of the record’s October 14th release, Cohen shares newest single “After Dawn,” a soulful acoustic piece tinged with the first blue hues of the sun coming up after a long, hard, night.
Prior to signing with New Images, Cohen released a slew of small-press CD-rs and cassettes as well 2012 LP Grace Riders on the Road. Fans of folk greats like Sibylle Baier and Linda Perhacs will find a lot to love in Cohen’s contemplative tunes; in “After Dawn” she takes the simple act of sitting at the window and turns it into a refined art. “Say my prayer for the day” she hums in a detached, low register, “and the light streams through the window / hours slipping through my fingers / and it’s just like i thought / you wait for a time then you forgot / how to spend each day / trying all the same.” The verse is followed by soporific guitar picking in which she seems to get lost, and a brief, light-as-air flute solo flickers through her strumming like some wandering notions through her consciousness. She’s so meditative that she’s lost, and so lost she’s ambivalent, but rather than a careless shrug, Cohen has chosen to embrace and commemorate that floating feeling. It’s impossible to not want to float along beside her.
When the vocals come back, time has passed; Cohen sings: “After dusk, sit by the window / look out at the people walking by / all my thoughts in the air around / can so easily fall away,” and it’s easy to wonder what cerebral journey she’s been on. For all her reverie, she keeps the thoughts that trouble her to herself, stating cryptically only that they’re lost beyond the pane of glass, shifting transparently like a reflection there. Her lyrics are sparse enough to want more of them, to want to wander in that same trance forever. Unmoored By the Wind promises to offer the perfect soundtrack to a daydream, which makes Itasca daydreaming’s newest muse.
Pre-order the LP from New Images here, and take a listen to “After Dawn” below.
The delightfully bespectacled Justin Townes Earle dependably releases a record every year or so, and has done so since 2007. He can be counted on for more than just punctuality, too. Not one of Earle’s records is a dud: at worst, he’s palatable and bland, and at his best, he expertly shines a light into fresh quadrants of the well-traversed territory of outlaw Americana. He comes honestly by his “darlin'”s and “mama”s–the son of Texas songwriter Steve Earle, who gave him his middle name in honor his godfather Townes van Zandt, JTE is the heir apparent of modern country, and despite what’s perhaps an understandable reluctance to fully embrace the Nashville lifestyle, the stuff seeps out of his pores. Every song is a story, piled high with neatly turned guitar work and vocals that can be mournful or flirtatious, contemplative or charming.
Often, in his songwriting, Earle plays the suave but troubled rambler. First there was “Ain’t Glad I’m Leaving,” off his full-length debut The Good Life, wherein he balks at romantic commitment and assures a protesting lover that she’s better off without him. Then came Midnight at the Movies, which included the similarly self-depracatory but audibly grief-stricken “Someday I’ll Be Forgiven For This.” As is often the case, true stories are behind the good lyrics. The years since he released his first EP Yuma haven’t been entirely smooth for Earle, who struggled with drug abuse and an arrest that led him into rehab in 2010.
He’s been sober for a couple of albums now, but his music still dips into the lonely, complicated character that defined the folk singer’s early work. The somber sections of Single Mothers, though, crystallize around the simple and deep-rooted sadness of an abandoned child–as opposed to the empty braggadocio of a loner who just can’t be tamed, not even by the love of a good woman. Maybe this interpretation reads into the title a little too much. The son of an absent famous father, Earle grew up with a single mother of his own.
But the title track–its steady beat and simple, symmetrical lyrical structure–sets the tone for the rest of Single Mothers in terms of gravity and mutedness. Reduced to its essential components, Earle’s songwriting doesn’t always grab your attention the way that his younger, more caddish self might. But there’s a payoff: you get to hear his voice at its most vulnerable.
Which isn’t to say that JTE has totally lost his swagger. “My Baby Drives” provides some rockabilly-ish, dance hall relief from the intimacy of “Single Mothers” and the forlorn next track, “Today and a Lonely Night.” “Wanna Be a Stranger” floats along with all the lightness and insta-nostalgia of small towns you drive through and don’t stop in. As a collection, though, Single Mothers tends towards interior songwriting that favors quiet payoffs over flashy country licks. In fact, it is as if Earle particularly avoided that kind of sexy troubledness that falls to those who walk out of their homes and go wandering, opting instead for the unshowy and exhausted hardship left for the single mothers who remain behind.
Single Mothers dropped September 9th on Vagrant Records, and you can order the album here. Check out the music video for “Time Shows Fools,” off Single Mothers, below!
Just now, I googled “1960s witchy psychedelic folk,” grasping, I guess, for a manageable term that encapsulates both Nico’s glamourous theatrics and Brigitte Fontaine’s quirky darkness. I’m sitting at a table in the pool-house out back of a big and beautiful summer home on the coast of Maine, where I’ve been hired as a kind of temporary live-in servant. I shit you not. I’ve got a view of the Atlantic from nearly point blank range, and the moon is new, and all things witchy seem more than possible tonight.
Natural beauty this acute makes any little thing that sticks out of the landscape seem intentionally sinister, like the pale pink dismembered crab torso I saw ripped open and splayed out on a rock while I was on the beach this evening waiting for the moon to rise. The music of Weyes Blood, whose earth name is Natalie Mering, is sort of like that–so beautiful that its oddness makes that beauty spooky, and so strange that its classical loveliness gleams even brighter.
Mering has been under the radar for a couple of years, but that doesn’t mean she’s stayed quiet. After a stint with experimental psych folk outfit Jackie-O Motherfucker, she sang backup vocals for Ariel Pink, and has since performed prodigiously as a solo artist – touring, appearing at festivals, and playing shows of her own with friends like Quilt and The Entrance Band‘s Guy Blakeslee.
In 2011, Mering released The Outside Room, her debut under the Weyes Blood name, on Not Not Fun. Already then, her basic toolkit (haunting vocals, ancient-sounding folk music) was essentially intact, although The Innocents reveals some significant updates. Less funereal but more complicated, Weyes Blood substitutes her first album’s foundation of abject misery for one of classical–even courtly–dignity. Harmonizing against herself, Mering’s vocals take on an entirely new, much richer quality on The Innocents, almost like putting on 3D glasses. But that isn’t to say that melancholy has no place on the album: when Weyes Blood tells you, in the middle of the strange, sad, choral “Some Winters” that “I’m as broken as woman can be,” you believe her. That’s the kind of voice she’s got, low and regal and primed for heartbreak. The finery of that song has a cracked-china feel to it, stemming from its psychedelic tendencies. Static and interference marr dreamy piano arpeggios. The angelic chorus of ahhs hovering around Mering’s tortured alto like a halo slowly melts into a mechanized humming that sounds like the low buzz of an airplane engine. When the song has sentimental moments, something cold and sterile always follows.
If, like me, you’re listening to Weyes Bloodsomeplace wild and desolate, The Innocents intensifies things. It is sparse and spooky. It makes it easy to suspend your disbelief and get swept along with Mering’s moonlit, forlorn reality.
The Innocents won’t be out in the U.S. until Oct 21st, but you can pre-order your physical or digital copy by heading on over to Mexican Summer. In the meantime, check out “Hang On,” the album’s power-driven first single. “I will hang on when the rains come and wash away all I’ve come from,” Mering sings, holding the melody steady as the rest of the song careens through chord progressions and time signatures. The song is sturdy at its core, her voice a pillar of strength in the center of an embellished, rhythmically complex track. She plays Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn on Friday, August 22nd.
The long-locked, regally bearded songwriter Israel Nash Gripka marries spacey psychedelic guitar work to wind-chilled vocals that pay a nod to Neil Young; Gripka’s songs amble, they meditate, they conduct experiments in theme and variation. His third and latest studio album, RainPlans (out August 19th!) finds Gripka signed to independent British label Loose Music–an apt enough match, given Loose Music’s strong stable of Americana standards like Townes Van Zandt, Neko Case, and Steve Earle. And Gripka has some history in common with your average modern cowboy: originally of Missouri, he moved to New York City to release his first two albums, then split for Dripping Springs, Texas, where he soaked up what he refers to as the area’s “desert folklore” as inspiration for this forlorn, majestic new release.
I’m always interested to see what comes from a matchup of psychedelia and Americana. Despite the genres’ shared theme of wanderlust, the former tends to focus on that wandering’s texture and color, whereas the latter deals in oral history and storytelling. Long stretches of Rain Plans feel like deliberate efforts to let the songwriting move on a long leash, to see where the mind will go when it’s left to its own devices, in the absence of the civilization or plot. The musical patterns are cyclical, the melody unhurried, even listless. In one of the album’s most interior portions, in the back half of the title track, all vocals melt away, leaving a swirling and seemingly endless cycle of mesmerizing guitars. The only thing that remains fixed is the pace: held firm, as if by a metronome, at a slow stroll.
So it’s clear that the album is a journey, but one that moves in circles, and it may test many listeners’ patience not to see the point of all this meandering. With all due respect to the virtues of wandering without being lost, these songs are so relaxed that they sometimes don’t appear to grow from start to finish. There isn’t necessarily going to be development from one end of a song to another; in the worst case scenario, the music instead restates the same idea over and over again, in different ways. Rain Plans isn’t necessarily an album that’s going to tell you a story that has a clear-cut beginning, middle, and end.
But if you have time to sit with it a while, the album proves that, for Gripka, spaciousness rarely equals stagnancy. Consider the shimmeringly gorgeous “Iron of the Mountain,” which establishes a single, circular melody–one moment in time, one color–and then extends it for almost four and a half minutes. Rain Plans richly evokes the vivid aesthetic of folklore: it’s a snapshot, rather than a story, of the landscape. Think of it as a collection of moments, which bear loose connection but don’t need each other in order to function.
The only exception to that logic is the closer, “Rexanimarum,” which is Rain Plans’ most unabashedly rootsy track, with lyrics like “pour me out just like sour wine,” and even echoes of old country songs, “got the money if you got the time.” With a lovely and light touch of backup vocals, this song may be the album’s sunniest, and is certainly its most singalong-friendly.
Check out the full album stream over at the A.V. Club, and go here to order your physical copy of Rain Plans! Listen to “Rain Plans,” with all its swirly melodies and smooth vocal harmonies, below via SoundCloud:
Despite his fifteen-year career and numerous collaborations, including work with Kurt Vile’s group The Violators, Steve Gunn always seems reluctant to advertise himself. I’m not just talking about advertising in a buy-my-records sense, although there is that — last year, the brilliantly nuanced Time Off slid right under the radar — but even on a riff by riff level, Gunn’s albums showcase his guitar work without bragging about it. Each phrase falls with decisiveness, but very little fanfare.
Not unlike its creator, Gunn’s new single “Milly’s Garden,” from the forthcoming full-length Way Out Weather, gives off an aura of understated good nature. Gunn’s music has always had a special sensitivity to physical environs, but whereas his more folky (and nomadic) records seemed to amble through a backdrop of wild Americana, “Milly’s Garden” sits still in and revels in one place, letting its thoughts turn inward instead of focusing on the passing scenery. Gunn’s virtuosity on the guitar isn’t flashy, but here, on a track that isn’t in a hurry to get anywhere, his skill shines through.
The song leans more towards instrumental long-form rock music than Gunn’s music has done in the past, and there is SO VERY MUCH to be said for a jam musician who isn’t blindly in love with the sound of his own guitar. Listening to this, it occurred to me that I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a blues-based long jam played humbly before, but here it is: and it’s just a way to isolate guitar lines and dress them up with intricacy and variation. When Gunn lets his ingenuity on the guitar be more important than structure or vocals or songwriting, the resulting music actually feels pared down. “Milly’s Garden” is catchier and more concentrated than most of the songs on Time Off, but doesn’t sacrifice any of the intimacy of that album.
Way Out Weather doesn’t drop until October 7th, but you can pre-order it now and check out “Milly’s Garden” below via Soundcloud:
Eliza Callahan and Jack Staffen grew up at the same time–and in the same zip code!–but as the harmony-happy folk pop outfit Jack + Eliza, the pair spans decades. “Hold The Line,” the first single off their forthcoming EP No Wonders (via Yebo Music), takes the seventies-era classic rock that Eliza was raised on and braids it with Jack’s boy-band background. Mellow and sunny, the EP touches on a wide range of influences as it ambles comfortably through its five tracks, underscoring the pair’s intricate vocal harmony with a gentle guitar line. No Wonders presents Jack + Eliza’s music in its simplest form. As you’re listening to the EP, you can practically close your eyes and pretend they’re in your living room–so intimate it feels like a personal introduction.
No Wonders will be out at the end of this summer, but you don’t have to wait until then to get to know them. I sat down for a chat with the duo, to discuss their backgrounds, their creative influences and how the NYC music scene is like no other. Here’s what went down.
AudioFemme: So both of you grew up in New York. How did you meet?
Eliza Callahan: Yes, we both grew up in downtown Manhattan. We actually have known each other since we were about ten or eleven. We weren’t really friends, until I had a friend who played guitar in the band Jack was singing in, and their drummer quit, so they asked me to play drums. I’m really not a drummer. I do not know how to play drums. But that’s how we met. We went to rival high schools in Brooklyn, and everyone kept saying that we should write music together. We were both too shy to approach the topic, but finally we wrote a song one day and we liked it, so we kept going.
AF: When did you write that song?
Jack Staffen: I guess it’s been two years now. We wrote that song the year before last, in August.
AF: How do you guys relate to the New York music scene?
EC: We’ve been writing a lot, and now one of our goals is to find a niche and a group of people we enjoy playing with. There’s just so much out there that there’s no one community that you can gravitate towards. There are definitely bands who we’ve played more than one show with, who we really like, and at our schools there are scenes, but we’re also looking to be part of a bigger scene. Hopefully that happens naturally.
AF: Have you ever wanted to live New York and live somewhere else?
JC: (laughs) No.
AF: Is that because of the musical opportunities here, or do you just love it?
JC: Both. The music scene here is like nowhere else, but I also just love New York City.
EC: I could definitely see living in other cities in the future. I love to surf, and I love the beach, but I’m really not goo with non-urban environments. I don’t like silence. I can’t sleep if there isn’t noise outside.
AF:Tell us about your musical backgrounds.
JS: I started playing guitar when I was five, and I hated it. Then I picked up the piano and I loved it. When I was about nine, I was still really into the piano, but I picked up the guitar again and just fell in love. Pretty much from then on I’ve been playing music, and I started writing music when I was eleven. I’ve never gone in for formal training, we just had a piano and I picked it up from there.
EC: I started on classical guitar–the Suzuki Method–when I was three years old. It was funny because my parents didn’t want me to start that young, but I had a friend whose mom really wanted her to play classical guitar. She ended up quitting, but I fell in love with the Suzuki Method. When I was six or seven, I started playing jazz, and then I decided to play rock and roll because like every child–and every human, I guess–I loved The Beatles. So then I started writing music. I had a little recording device and I would record these stream-of-consciousness, epic songs that went on for eleven or twelve minutes. I went to a school where we wrote a lot of poetry, so I would take the words that I had written and kind of yell them, or sing them, over these weird chords I was playing. As I got older I developed more of a formal approach.
JS: My first song was like…a Backstreet Boys song. Yours was totally different.
AF: Why did you decide to just go by Jack and Eliza instead of picking out a name for your band?
EC: We didn’t start with the intention of being a band. It was just a project we were working on, and our friends would say, you know, this is a song Jack and Eliza wrote together. We just kept on writing music, and we started playing shows, and it became really hard to find a name we could identify with after we had been playing together for so long. And also, we really did want a name. We did not intend to end up being Jack and Eliza, and I hope people can look beyond the boy-girl name thing. I think that has various connotations, and I don’t want that to affect our music, or people’s views of it. But we were also very happy with the ring. We like the ring. I have a whole list of band names that I’ve been making throughout my life, and we just did not feel that any of them fit.
AF: Growing up in the same circle of friends, does that mean that your musical tastes are similar? Do you have similar influences?
EC: No, I think our influences are actually pretty different, although our tastes are getting more similar. I was raised on a lot of old rock and roll. My dad listened to old rock and roll, so I listened to The Kinks, The Beach Boys, that type of thing.
JS: I listened more to what was coming out when I was younger. Radiohead, Fountains of Wayne, Rufus Wainright, that was the stuff I listened to. As I got older I started getting into what Eliza was listening to.
EC: It’s interesting, because Jack comes from a more poppy background, whereas I come from a more rock and roll or folky background, and I think we taught each other the positive things about both of genres.
AF: Tell us about your new EP, “No Wonders”. When is it coming out? How did you start recording it?
EC: It’ll be out at the end of summer or early in the fall. We recorded it here in New York City, with Chris Zane, at Gigantic Studios. We recorded it from December to February. We had completely written the EP before we went into the studio.It’s pretty stripped down. We wanted to keep it simple and have people listen to us first as us in our most “bare” form, and then build from there. We definitely want to add more sonic texture in the future, but to start out, we wanted to keep it very straightforward.
AF: You’ve been playing a lot of shows around the city lately. How has that been?
EC: It’s been a lot of fun. It’s weird, though: we’ve both been performing since we were really young, but I get more and more nervous every time I perform. I don’t know why. When I was younger I could care less.
JS: And I really love performing.
AF: It seems like you guys are kind of opposites, and you balance each other out.
EC: That definitely is true. Jack has a very clean, lovely voice and can sing way higher than I can. Jack takes the high harmony a lot of the time. So Jack will start doing these vocal runs, and then to counter his Backstreet Boy vocal runs, I’ll attempt to sound like Lou Reed. Well, that’s an extreme. But in rehearsal, that is our battle.
AF: Do you write songs totally collaboratively?
JS: It’s pretty much all collaborative. Occasionally one of us will bring a chord progression, maybe with the melody, maybe not, and we’ll work from there.
EC: I don’t know how we’re able to collaborate–I don’t want to say so well, but I don’t know how I would write a song with anyone else. It’s not something that I foresee being possible with anyone else. If anything, the chord progressions are usually collaborative. Jack usually writes most of the harmony, because his voice is better. I write a few more of the lyrics. But it’s pretty much collaborative.
AF: As a writer, I’m totally mystified by that. It seems horrifying sharing control over a project. Is working together sometimes difficult? Do you have any advice for people who want to learn how to collaborate?
EC: Well, I feel that way too, because I write a lot. I think about collaborating on my poetry, or my creative writing pieces, and that’s terrifying, but for some reason, with songwriting, I’m a lot more willing to let go and let something happen that I might not allow when I’m obsessing. I think it’s that I don’t obsess over songwriting the way I do with my other writing. I don’t know why that is, but I think that’s what allows for a hopefully successful collaboration.
As I stood in the back of the packed venue I could feel the anticipation of the audience. Most of spectators did not know there was an opening act, and that they were about to be blown away. I myself was also unaware. Jared & The Mill was one of the best surprises I’ve had all year.
By pure circumstance the first person I met in the Constellation Room was Travis Alexander, the manager of Jared & The Mill. We started talking about music, our jobs and a bit of existentialism. I was promptly introduced to Jared Kolesar, the lead singer of the band, then within a few minutes the concert began. As they walked onto the stage, instruments in hand, the crowd seemed confused at the absence of the main act. However it did not take long for people to become captivated by the absolutely vivacious performance.
For Jared & The Mill this was the finale to over a month of touring with Barry Gibb, one of the founding members of the iconic 70’s band, the Bee Gees. Barry had been looking for an opening act for his tour and, even though musically the two groups have little in common, Gibb was hooked once he heard their sound. The tour had been an incredible journey for them; they went from TD Garden in Boston to The Constellation Room in Santa Ana. Two nights before I met them, they had performed at the Hollywood Bowl (providing some of their parents serious consolation that music wasn’t such a risky career path after all). Hailing from Tempe, Arizona, Jared & The Mill have been playing together for three years and their Southwestern origin can definitely be heard in their tunes and lyrics. Many of the band members had been involved in music long before meeting up – drummer Josh Morin majored in percussion performance and guitarist Larry Gast III studied jazz performance in college. As for Jared, he had been in a business program before he experienced a life-altering realization that he would be happier creating music. Rounded out by Michael Carter (banjo, mandolin and harmonica), Chuck “Bassman” Morriss (electric and upright bass), and Gabe Hall-Rodrigues (accordion and piano), each member of Jared & The Mill has an obvious love for music and this passion shines through when they perform as a group. Each player stands behind a microphone to help create their beautiful harmonies.
In spite of the sound guy’s negligence, they played brilliant concert. I couldn’t help but to give all of them huge hugs and praise. A lot of their songs have a folksy feel, but their sound is constantly evolving and by the end of their performance they had shifted into a more indie rock vibe. After the main act finished we went to In & Out (there is no better place on the West Coast for an interview at 1AM). We talked about their visit to this year’s SXSW, poignant because their friend Mason Endres had been involved in the drunk driving incident outside of Mohawk that left three festival-goers dead. Mason survived but didn’t make it to the band’s shows, so without hesitation the whole ensemble visited Mason in the hospital and sang her favorite tunes. The authenticity and joy they radiate is a key part of Jared & The Mill’s brilliance.
A few picks for their musical dream collaboration included the Fleet Foxes, Brian Wilson and Andrew Bird. They fantasize about performing at Red Rocks Amphitheatre and have a long-term goal of being the first band to perform in outer space. They have been working on reshaping their sound, which for them is a constant activity.
With beautiful lyrics, nearly perfect harmony, intense stage presence, and endearing personalities, the boys enchanted the audience. Their incredible talent and ability to “instill a sense of family” in the crowd make it hard not to be swept away by their sincerity and ease. Meeting Jared & The Mill made my weekend and I can’t wait until the next time our paths cross.
“I can’t wait ’til we’re afraid of nothing,” sings Sharon Van Etten, in her silvery and harmony-braided way, on the opening track of her new album Are We There. “I can’t wait ’til we hide from nothing.” The song– “Afraid Of Nothing”– has a sweeping clean-slate quality to it: it’s a fresh start, a New Year’s resolution. Maybe it’s the lyrics, or maybe it’s the flourishing, diva-esque piano chords, but there’s weight to this beginning. With its very first chords, Are We There establishes a low center of gravity. These songs are sturdy, they’re in it for the long haul.
That’s the power of skillfully deployed vocal acrobatics and complete mastery of your subject matter. Big, theatrical romantic breakdown has long been at the core of Van Etten’s musical landscape, and her sharpest tool is a voice that can be bent but never broken. Her albums–there are four of them now, beginning with 2009’s Because I Was In Love–are stories of how she uses the latter to navigate the former, a journey that the title of this latest record suggests is still ongoing.
And on Are We There that path is as satisfying and surprising as ever. Van Etten’s major themes haven’t changed much, but her aesthetic has expanded in every direction. On some tracks, like this album’s opener, she traverses an Adele-esque range and corresponding sense of drama–her sadness so straightforward it’s almost cloying–but elsewhere, her voice is stretched to its strange outer limits as pain gives way to blood-letting.
Just look at “Your Love Is Killing Me,” only three songs into this thing. It is possibly my favorite cut on the album, and it’s a great example of the far end of Van Etten’s sweet-spooky spectrum. The song begins with a vaguely militant beat that reappears in the chorus as triplets of crisply pissed off snare rapping. Then there’s her voice, so stridulent at its apex that she barely sounds human. “Break my legs so I won’t walk to you. Cut my tongue so I can’t talk to you,” she sings. This goes on: “Burn my skin so I can’t feel you. Stab my eyes so I can’t see… you like it when I let you walk over me.” Behind the exorcism, behind the declarations of brokenness, there’s powerful orchestration–swirling guitar lines, cycling piano chords–backing up these words.
Van Etten’s speaking voice is downright cute, and sometimes, listening to her talk, it’s easy to imagine that she sings love songs of the quietly forlorn, tea-drinking-while-moodily-gazing-out-windows-onto-overcast-skies variety. And though there’s plenty of sadness on Are We There, it never sounds neutered: even the songs that never rise above a whisper come with the reminder that they know how to snarl.
Are We There ends on another highlight: the deceptively simple, deceptively sweet “Every Time The Sun Comes Up.” Van Etten arranges the lyrics into a sing-song-ish pattern, like a riddle, and the mood straddles optimism and gloom. There are flashes of self-contained thoughts, like the coyly meta “People say I’m a one hit wonder, but what happens when I have two?” Then the song settles into a kind of moody anti-love song, with “I washed your dishes then I shit in your bathroom.” Listening to the song feels like being inside Van Etten’s head, trying to follow a string of thoughts and fluctuations that aren’t explained or organized into a performance. It’s the most interior song on the album, and in a way, it’s also the most obscured. The journey from the album’s opening track “Afraid Of Nothing,” which is a performance not only in its theatricality but also in the sense that Van Etten has a specific audience–the complicated, ever-present love interest that has ravaged and fascinated her music since she began playing publicly.
But by this album’s end, we feel that Van Etten isn’t on stage anymore, but is right beside us, spilling her guts in a less organized, and perhaps more mundane way. That doesn’t make her guts uninteresting–the evocative snippets that we get on “Every Time The Sun Comes Up” are some of the most intriguing on an album full of compelling lyrical lines. Mundanity, in Sharon Van Etten’s case, is anything but.
Are We There dropped on May 27th via Jagjaguwar. Go hereto buy it via iTunes. Watch the great and profoundly depressing video for “Every Time The Sun Comes Up” below:
Ticket Giveaways
Each week Audiofemme gives away a set of tickets to our featured shows in NYC! Scroll down to enter for the following shindigs.
