Music Reviews: Category Archives
“Folk” Archives
Sing On In Silhouettes
by Crepusculum
Crepusculum (aka Fred Baty) released his debut, The Sky Diaries EP, back in 2006. It was a pretty enough release, blending deft and intricate acoustic guitar compositions with electronics and field recordings. If nothing else, it was evidence that Baty was someone to keep an eye on. And with Sing On In Silhouettes, Baty’s second release on 12rec and his first full-length, he has delivered in spades.
Simply put, Sing On In Silhouettes is a much more confident and mature release than The Sky Diaries EP. Not only are the songs more involved and complex, but Baty’s arrangements and songwriting display a considerable grace and organic restraint. On songs like “A Fledgling Firework” and “Early Days”, it sounds less like Baty labored over them in some studio, but rather, let the songs develop and evolve naturally—always a hallmark of a talented musician (and it’s especially impressive considering Baty’s young age).
Wind’s Poem
by Mount Eerie
My second son was born just two weeks ago and therefore, thoughts of mortality and life’s fleetingness ought to be the furthest thing from my mind right now. However, I’ve been wrestling my way through Mount Eerie’s Wind’s Poem—and my subsequent review of it—for the last few months, and mortality and life’s fleetingness are essentially all that this album is about. So here I go again, launching myself headlong into the void after Phil Elverum.
Elverum has always been one of those artists that has existed on my periphery, and though I’ve been somewhat familiar with and intrigued by his work, I’ve never been all that pressed or convicted to delve too deeply into his considerable discography. But perhaps it was the evocative title, or the eerie (NPI) album artwork depicting snow-covered evergreens set against a murky winter sky. Or maybe it was the news/rumor that this was Elverum’s “black metal” album (not that I’m a black metal fan, mind you, but the combination of Elverum and black metal struck me as humorous, if not intriguing).
Whatever the case, I ended up getting Wind’s Poem... and I haven’t been the same since.
The Length of the Rail
by The Balky Mule
Sam Jones, the man behind The Balky Mule, will write songs with whatever he can get his hands on. The initial inspiration for the songs on The Length of the Rail, his second under the name The Balky Mule, came from rescuing odd instruments from boot sales and recording snippets and vignettes, which he would later cobble together into a sort of mishmash singer/songwriter style.
Jones did time in the infamous Bristol shoegazer scene of the early ‘90s, contributing to bands such as Flying Saucer Attack, Crescent, and Movietone, and perhaps it was with those psychedelic noisemongers where he learned such interesting and eccentric arrangement techniques. He strings together bleepy analog synths, woozy organs, claptrap ramshackle percussion, and intermittent guitar strums to create a dense and fascinating tapestry.
Marching Thru The Wilderness
by State Bird
This year’s Cornerstone Festival was the first one I had attended in five years, and as such, there were some notable differences between my experience this year and my experiences from years past. Perhaps the biggest difference was that my primary focus this year was not on the music side of the festival, but rather the film side. As such, the number of concerts that I attended can be counted on two hands—a mere fraction of the concerts that I’ve seen in the past.
Even so, as I made way through that paltry number of shows, there were still things that I was hoping for. Namely, a band that would come completely out of the leftfield, that would leave concertgoers picking their jaws up off the muddy ground—or at least scratching their heads full of rarely washed, nappy, campsite hair.
In years past, that bill was filled by such acts as S.S. Bountyhunter, Danielson, Fine China, Soul-Junk, and Psalters. For Cornerstone 2007, it was State Bird. And for a while, during their late night show full of insanity—Native American stylings, conga line—it was like those five years had never occurred. I was back in those Cornerstones of yore, and I couldn’t wait to run back to my campsite and grab all of my friends to herd them back to the Encore Stage.
Next Door Conversation
by Jerry Johansson
Much has been made about the universality of music, how it’s the one form of language that all of humanity can hold in common. Which, if that’s true, means that it’s at least theoretically possible to draw parallels between even the most disparate of musics: Tuvan throat singing and Kentucky bluegrass, for example, or Indonesian gamelan and Gregorian chant.
Unfortunately, most attempts at such parallels usually seems to result in so much dopey New Age pap. And the reason for this, I think, is that those musicians simply try too hard. Rather than trust that the listener will make the connections on their own (even if only on a subconscious level), or that the music will ultimately reveal them as it takes shape, musicians begin making one-for-one connections that ultimately end up robbing the music of any mystery or intrigue. And in their place is usually some tacky musical metaphor for humanity’s interconnectedness, the circle of life, blah blah blah.
Tuned To Love
by The Loose Salute
A friend recently gave me a bit of a ribbing because we’re in the middle of the summer, and here I am reviewing all of this ambient music (such as my recent fixation on Dreamland Recordings’ output). To their mind, ambient music falls more under the category of “winter music”, and is not at all suitable for warm summer evenings. So I offer up for them The Loose Salute’s Tuned To Love, which, if nothing else, is a considerably more July-minded collection of songs.
If you want to get a good idea on where the band is coming from musically, just look at their pedigree. The Loose Salute was formed by Ian McCutcheon, drummer for Mojave 3—which, as you might know, have expressed a considerable affection for the likes of Bob Dylan, Nick Drake, and Neil Young throughout their discography—and Lisa Billson, who was discovered by McCutcheon while singing Dylan covers.
Suffice to say, there’s nary a wintry wash of ambient sound to found anywhere in Tuned To Love, the group’s debut full-length. However, neither is it consistently super-sunny, up-tempo, lighter-than-air sort of album, the sort that people normally think of when they hear an album described as “summery”.
Instead, you’ll find a batch of homespun, country-inflected ballads that straddle the line between folk and rock musically, while lyrically spends as much time having good times with good friends as it does lamenting over past relationships and broken hearts. While it comes off as somewhat clichéd at first, it becomes increasingly comfortable upon repeated listens—like that chair out on the porch you always find yourself returning to on warm summer evenings, hanging out until the wee hours of the night with friends, sharing smokes and beers.
And yet even as comfortable as it might be, some delightful surprises pop up here and there.
We Walked In Song
by The Innocence Mission
We’re well into June, and the days are constantly getting warmer and brighter. And so it’s as fitting a time as any to be listening to Pennsylvania’s The Innocence Mission. The group has been around since 1986, and have made a career of releasing bright, shimmering folk-inflected pop built around the husband/wife duo of Don and Karen Peris, and their gossamery guitars and cooing vocals, respectively.
Focusing too much on the light, airy elements of their music, though, might lead one to think that The Innocence Mission is all fluff and filigree. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even when singing age-old (and cliched) lullabies, as they did on 2004’s Now The Day Is Over, the group imbues their effortless compositions with a core of simultaneously heart-wrenching and heartwarming beauty.
The same is true on We Walked In Song. The music is as pretty, graceful, and deft as ever. Karen Peris’ voice might be something of an acquired taste, but once you get past that, it’s the kind of voice you want singing you to sleep. And her simple-yet-poetic and evocative (and sometimes slightly surreal) lyrics bring forth all sorts of longings and nostalgia. Backing her are musical arrangements that seem deceptively simple and plain, built around Don Peris’ graceful, effortless guitar.
Eleven Continents
by Ryan Francesconi & Lili De La Mora
Ryan Francesconi has long been a favorite here at Opus, due the delicate and intricately detailed electronica that he’s released under the “RF” moniker. However, his latest release—a collaboration with The Year Zero’s Lili De La Mora—finds Francesconi removing virtually all electronic elements from his music. There’s nary a hint of glitch, glurp, or digital processing to be found on any of the tracks on Eleven Continents.
But that’s about all that’s changed. Francesconi’s acute attention to detail is still very much in effect. And even though it’s a largely acoustic album, and largely removed from Francesconi’s usual sound palette, the overall tone of Eleven Continents is very similar to that of Interno or Falls. Francesconi is still as instrospective and elegiac as ever, perhaps even moreso. And even though the music is, technically, more stripped down than Francesconi’s usual output, one would never mistake it for being bleak or barren.
Shades Of A Vast Moment
by Void's Anatomy
The music on Void’s Anatomy’s debut album, Shades Of A Vast Moment, often reminds me of a darker, more dolorous version of Amy Annelle’s fractured folk-pop. Like Annelle, singer/songwriter Marie Jorge has a voice that is surprisingly strong for all of its breathiness, and it has a unique way of wrapping its tendrils about the fragments of your subsconsious, regardless of whether she sings in French and English.
But whereas Annelle’s songs ramble, tramp-like, through broken, faded snapshots of Americana, Jorge’s songs pirouette on the edge of an abyss, her delicate voice seemingly quite outmatched by the long, dark night of the soul that she faces.
Jorge sings “Words we speak are empty/No light, no solace to share… Up to now, there is nothing left/Outside the wind is killing what’s left” on the opening track, setting the somber tone that permeates much of the album. A light piano melody dances its way through the song, but its lightness seems almost morbid and even mocking when compared to the song’s mournful cello and synth strings.
The lethargic guitars, languid keys, and conversational snippets that make up the musical backdrop of “Life Sleeps” is quite appropriate for Jorge’s tale of spiritual unrest and exhaustion. The song captures tiny details—a pile of unmade clothes on the bed, for instance—but the ennui dispels any notions that the song is purely observational.
“Consuming ads makes me want to throw up/And I’m tired to see within or without/Between flashes of your face”, “Blaming others is an easy way out/I’m tired to drink words that bypass the heart/Fading essense outrunned by doubt”—the ennui in Jorge’s song is almost palpable, with a faint echo of heartache about it all.
The Night’s Bloom
by Pinetop Seven
Perhaps in 50 years or so, when yet another gaggle of music journalists and critics has decided to compile their list of the America’s greatest songwriters, Darren Richards will finally get his due.
As the arguable bandleader/frontman of Chicago-based Pinetop Seven, Richards has penned several releases’ worth of evocative music that blends elegant chamber pop, stompin’ jazz, rock n’ roll, Americana, and wistful country/western sounds. Sadly, most of his work has probably gone under the radar, as folks focus more on the Okkervil Rivers, Califones, and M. Wards of the world.
Despite being based in Chicago, Pinetop Seven’s music seems to gaze longingly somewhere off to the west, or rather, the West—the romanticized, mythologized stomping grounds of the restless and the lonely. Where damaged souls and broken individuals wander off to gain a new start amidst dusty desert roads and abandoned, barely-standing farmhouses only to find that their wounds and demons are not so easily healed or shaken.
The Night’s Bloom is the group’s latest long-player (that is, if you don’t count 2006’s collection of oddities and outtakes, Beneath Confederate Lake), and it’s a vital collection of everything that’s beautiful and evocative of the group’s spooky, forlorn music. As hinted at by the somewhat ominous title, there is darkness and sin and death and regret at work throughout the 13 tracks—and Richards mines it for many a rich storytelling gem.
However, what is perhaps the music’s ultimate saving grace is that Richards isn’t at all interested in being dark and foreboding just for the heck of it. That is to say, you won’t find much gallows’ humor at work here, nor any perverse tales of sinning, nor any celebrations of debauchery. No, Richards’ music is ultimately compassionate and humane, and when the final twist comes and a song’s protagonist is left in dire straits, Richards does it with a heavy sigh—even if they had it coming.