Nineteen songs; varying shades of Haloweenness. You will find a range of styles here (yes, including Salem), but you will not find “Monster Mash”, sorry. Nor will there will be any Kanye West (sorry “Monster” fans), but there is one rap verse.
Similar to his Found Songs LP from 2009, Ólafur Arnalds has released Living Room Songs, a project recorded over the course of one week from the bedroom of his Reykjavík apartment, and released for free as each song was finished.
This time, however, he included videos of each recording to accompany the music. The album will be packaged and released in high-quality form later this year. You can pre-order it here, and receive a free postcard.
Enjoy the album on his website, and have a look at the genesis of these beautiful compositions below…
On October 10, 2011, Matthew Herbert will release his latest LP entitled “One Pig.” According to his label’s website, it is an album “made entirely from recordings of a modern pig’s life cycle from birth to plate.”
I was intrigued with the concept on a number of levels, so decided to give a listen to the meaning behind the project.
I left the video not wholly convinced of his motives. I think Matthew is purposefully standing in the gray area of the matter, and it’s a win/win for him in this case.
One one hand, he has an easy out as an artist to say he is simply observing and presenting his emotional reaction to a realism he has no control over. Editorially he gets to present the life cycle of a food product typically very distant from its consumers.
On the other hand, however, he is also sensationalizing the process to a degree. Even if his money is going to charity (not sure whether it is), having an EP of Micachu remixes crop up as a PR strategy suddenly turns an austere, introspective set of field recordings into a flavor of the month musical romp through the inevitable pipeline of hipsterdom.
Still, as I said, I am intrigued. Here is one of the Micachu remixes:
And here is an iTunes link where you can preview the album and preorder if you can unearth the beauty beneath its grating tone:
Cass McCombs’ album “Wit’s End,” came out back in April, and it’s been a slow burn for me. My apathy had nothing to do with how laid back, quiet, reserved and melancholic it was, because I rather like all of those qualities in an album. I think it may have been the general coating of malaise spread over top of everything, a suffocating feeling like sleeping with a garbage bag for a blanket.
However, in returning to the album a couple of months later—and a couple of months wiser—I now find beauty in the despondence, comfort in its distance. And the above video for lead track and single, “County Line,” expresses that tone perfectly. What I first construed as depressed alienation I now embrace as the echo of a comforting voice across a windless field.
I intend to wrap myself up in this album for a little while, and see how it fits. The good news is that it’s not a garbage bag for a blanket after all, more like a coarse but cozy wool. Hard to sell that to you as Summer breathes down our neck, but the nights can get chilly.
Timber Timbre are back on April 5, 2011. I was a big fan of their self-titled debut, and hope the trend of macabre folk creations continues.
It also look like they’re coming to a town near you, so if you haven’t heard them live, or at all for that matter, get out from under your dusty blankets and go!
I’ve decided against my lesser judgment to omit letter-by-letter descriptions, because honestly, this is all about the music. I’m not trying to give you color commentary here, people. The list is a little late in the month, but better late than never.
I’m sure some of you will agree with certain letters, disagree with others, and hopefully have not heard of a few of these bands. It was a great year for music, and unexpected letters ran deep, making the selection hard in places (the letter “W” for example).
Alex Ebert, of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros fame, has put out a (solo?) track exclusive to Sirius/XM’s radio channel XMU. It is called “Truth,” and it’s pretty damn amazing. The best quality of this track I could find was ironically on Youtube.
“The truth is that I haven’t shook my shadow, and every day it’s trying to trick me into doing battle.”
“Truth,” feels like a folksy Spaghetti Western track with soul and funk. It’s down-tempo but bad-ass at the same time, is that possible? I can’t stop listening, and I especially love the change-up right around the 2:30 mark of the track. Enjoy!
So speaks Sharon Van Etten at the end of “One Day,” the second to last song on her sophomore LP, “epic”. This quote captures the essence of Sharon’s music perfectly, because I heard no such flub, and I’m betting neither did the producer who recorded that track. The thing is, Van Etten is not so much self-depreciating as she is self-critical. Her music may not possess the obsessive perfectionism of, say, a Grizzly Bear or The National album, but she is her own worst/best critic, and we feel the restraint even though it does nothing to harm her songwriting.
After experiencing, and reviewing her first album, I wondered what an unrestrained, heart-healed Van Etten might sound like. On her second effort, I see flashes of that future, but you can rescue a person from heartache, but you can’t take the heartache out of a person. I paraphrase, but that’s the long and short of it, here. How’s about I try to actually speak about the album itself, and not my own metaphysical whatever-you-call-them…
Like sleeping-in beneath an electric blanket on a chilly afternoon, Sharon Van Etten once again blesses us with seven stripped down tracks of varying shades of blue. In fairness, we are given two more spirited tracks up front before Van Etten retreats back under the sheets.
This is comfort food for the soul, what some may call beautifully hopeless music making, though never random. And in Van Etten’s own words: “I’ll be fine with that.” Most of the runtime on “epic”, is spent ruminating on past heartbreak and laying plans for future prosperity. If we follow this chronology, we should look forward to her third album involving a new love, new hope, with occasional flashbacks to sadder times.
As of right now, I’m just happy to be under the covers of more Van Etten music. I may be blissfully married with two beautiful baby girls, but that doesn’t stop me from escaping to the land of melancholic melody whenever I get the chance. If the music is soothing, unpretentious, and well-written, why should it make me sad?
Vocally, I sensed an undercurrent of Ricky Lee Jones, but can’t pinpoint exactly why. Perhaps it’s the emotion of her delivery, the embrace of her quirky but voluminous voice. When “Don’t Do It,” began to play, I felt for a moment my iTunes had skipped to an old Songs:Ohia track, but then her whispering croon came in and I had to smile. It turned out to be my favorite track on the entire album, not surprisingly. The crescendo of this song and its bridges (and repeat climaxes) are true things of beauty. It is a pitch perfect journey through a more fully arranged Sharon Van Etten creation, and all I can say is: “We want more!”
Sharon has brought her vocal prowess more to the foreground by creating a selection of songs that push her range a little further. I am beginning to think she is an even better vocalist than she demonstrates, here, however. That is not to say she sings poorly, but that there are moments on “epic” where you wonder how far she can soar if she unlatched the restraints of heartache and let go. I am no therapist, but this did feel like a “healing” album in a way.
My second favorite track on the album has to be the lead song, “Crimes”. She is setting the compass for where she’s at in life. The song is about investing in a relationship that didn’t pay off, and how it would be a crime to ever be in love like that again. This album seems to depict that sentiment.
Sara Magenheimer and Eben Portnoy holed up in a barn in Massachusetts in the dead of winter for two months, in what ended up being a bit of a musical cleanse. They went into the barn as Fertile Crescent and came out (re/unborn?) as Woom. The album I am reviewing is a product of this retreat. It is called “Muu’s Way.”
How to describe Woom in a way that actually means anything? I’m so (un)happy you asked me that question. It’s scarcely worth doing a comprehensive sounds-like study here (though Deerhoof, The Acorn, and Cocorosie spring to mind), so in the spirit of the band and their style of songwriting, I’ll do it with a bit of poetic hyperbole:
Imagine, if you will, a beautiful girl beckoning you to come closer. She has a secret, and she is so sweet looking you want to squeeze her. Your ear is close to her lips, you can feel her breath (it smells like mint leaves and sea breeze) and just as she’s about to coo something meaningful into your ear, a car horn blares, and the girl is gone.
Okay here’s a simpler one: “Someone spiked my Shirley Temple,” I cried, “but I can’t stop drinking it. I don’t even drink!”
Woom is a band who does a lot with negative space. So much so that I was surprised to discover the ten track album barely crossing the thirty minute mark. They have the clickety-clack thing down pat. They’ll tap a pencil on a plastic cup to create a percussion bed, no problemo. Sara and Eben run this show with their voices more often than not, after all. Leads and harmonies linger longer than the bleeps.
The staccato nature of the songs also linger, for better or for worse. It is a bit of an anti-momentum LP which doesn’t allow you to let it fade into the background. Which is great if you don’t aren’t seeking full contentment. I personally like holistic experiences, however, and Woom certainly show their under-feathers more than once, giving me hope that this album is the beginning of a continued refinement.
That’s not to say this is a train wreck by any means. But it’s a slippery slope. Cocorosie, for example, haven’t repeated their debut success to date. But with Woom, whenever the train is about to derail into an art college dorm room jam session, they bring us back. “OK… OK… OK…” we hear at one point, as if they knew they were misbehaving.
As we meander through the album (and meander is the best word for it), we hear stories both poetic (“Circle on the surface, black blood on the white snow. It’s coming and coming and coming down, a strange style of voices.”) and literate (“Rafael, pull off the black balaclava. Put your ass down on the sofa. We’ll have some coffee and talk.”). It’s a mix I like, and this from a guy who doesn’t like mixed drinks (see above).
Standout tracks include “Quetzalcoatl’s Hip,” a quirky, seaside hymn about bottled ships and burials including a steel cameo near the end. I can’t help but think the title has a bit of wordplay in and of itself.
“Back In,” plays like an unplugged song The XX might have written if they stopped flirting with one another for more than two seconds.
Lead track “Backwards Beach,” beaches us onto the sandy shore of Woom Island in a wash of electro-sea swells, only to land on a beach haunted by sunny, strummy jangles and palm trees swaying to a sing-song breeze.
“Under Muu,” is a wonderful instrumental worth noting. It really reminded me of something The Acorn might have written and played, and I wouldn’t complain about an all-instrumental album from WOOM in this very tone; it’s excellence incarnate.
“Judith,” ends the album on an experimental note, with bleeps and glass breaks held together by the vocals like a piece of perfume-scented scotch tape. With this closing track, Woom appropriately remind us (and themselves?) who they are, and most importantly who they are not.
Personally, I do like them for who they are. But I want to love them for who they might become. We’ve reached a cruising altitude together, but are you equipped to take us out into space on our next expedition? Until then, I’ll sway and twitch to Woom’s sweet, strange take on music-making, and wander their melodic madness, one clickety-clack at a time.
