Horse Feathers - House With No Home [2008]

It’s funny how music you’ve never heard before can elicit overwhelming nostalgia. From the moment you hear Portland-based Horse Feathers singer Justin Ringle’s croon on their latest album’s opener “Curs in the Weeds,” it’s hard to forget times of serene happiness in your life. It’s hard to forget times of youthful bliss, and it’s downright disturbingly difficult to forget the impact of young love — or maybe it’s just me.

Whether or not the lyrical content of House With No Home matches any of these memories is irrelevant — Ringle’s mumble conjures up surreal scenarios of Tracy Chapman doing Sam Amidon, minus any vocal enunciation; rather, it’s the otherworldly music that causes one to get lost in cerebral trauma while driving home alone at night. To be direct, the sound of this album is nothing short of beautiful. Peter and Heather Broderick’s string arrangements mimic Aaron Copland’s most tender moments, and over Ringle’s guitar strumming, the impact is enough to cause the White Witch’s icy heart to melt.

Listen to “Rude to Rile” and you’ll find a masterpiece of violin, cello, and percussion. I’ve listened to this track over and over again, and I felt as though my life story was being told: "He just waits/ And he hopes and he prays/ But the more she is loved she hurts." It makes me wish I had written it, because it feels like I mean it. Yet strangely, it still feels like it could be an old Appalachian folk song; I don’t know how, but it does. And it’s not as though love lost is my life story, but for a few minutes I’m convinced that it is.

source

House With No Home [2008]

Horse Feathers: Live at Pop Montreal

Violeta Parra - Recordando a Chile: Una chilena en París [1965]

Violeta was feeling more estimated abroad that in your own country. Among 1961 and 1965 she resided in France, continuing with your intense artistic activity and constant recitals, always trying to spread the Chilean folklore. Your residence in Paris served her to launch to the world of the disc your children Ángel and Isabel, with the motto of The Parra of Chile, and to continue with hisyour recordings "the notable disc Recordando a Chile" (Una Chilena in Paris) she includes two songs compound and sung in Frenchman, besides other very important topics of your career, since "Paloma Ausente" y "Arriba Quemando el Sol" ; she recorded, in addition, a series of songs for the stamp Arión, in 1962, which they would arise in diverse summaries with posteriority). It is a stage of great nostalgia, as it is testified by songs as felt(as been sorry) as "Violeta Ausente".

In 1964, the Chilean one she achieved a historical brand on having turned into the first Latin-American one in exhibiting individually in the famous museum of the Louvre. She wrote also a book (Poesía Popular de Los Andes) and the television of Switzerland filmed a documentary on your work (Violeta Parra, Bordadora chilena), that was constituted in one of the scanty audio-visual sources that today remain of the artist.

In this period she forged a firm relation together with the musicologist and Swiss anthropologist Gilbert Favré, the great love of your life, and addressee of your more important compositions of love and dislike ("Corazón Maldito", "El Gavilán, Gavilán", "Qué He Sacado con Quererte", among different many).

Your more combative texts arose in this epoch: songs since "Miren Cómo Sonríen", "Qué Dirá el Santo Padre", "Arauco Tiene una Pena", "Según el Favor del Viento" they would form the base of the musical current known as the New Chilean Song. The songs would be gathered in the numerous editions of Songs Met again in Paris.

Recordando a Chile: Una chilena en París [1965]

Que he sacado con quererte

Sir Richard Bishop - Improvika / Fingering the Devil (Special Edition) / While My Guitar Violently Bleeds [2005-2007]

IMPROVIKA (CD - Locust Music, 2004. LP Issued by Bo Weavil, 2005)
"The nine compositions of “Improvika” are influenced by folk music of all corners of the world with the music of India and the Middle East playing particularly prominent roles. This is not, however, post-modern pastiche or multicultural collage. Quite the contrary, it is something that synthesizes all these disparate elements into something wholly new. Bishop has a somewhat improvisational rhythmic language that is all his own as well as a compositional sense that (even if these pieces are, in fact, improvisations as the title might suggest) carries this album easily through its 45 minute running time." - Nick Hennies (Foxy Digitalis)

FINGERING THE DEVIL (CD/LP - Southern Records, UK, 2006)
"Bishop’s seamless blend of gypsy jazz and flamenco guitar embraces the duality of nomadic life, its exuberance and world-weariness. Overall Bishop’s pace is slightly slower here than on his previous full length "Improvika" except on the album’s galloping closer “Howrah Station.” In “Dance of the Lotus Eaters,” he scatters his notes sparingly in sections and coaxes the steady growth of melodies from single chords, rather than frantic runs across the fret board. Bishop also embraces these gentle melodies more fully, shying away from the experimental atonality of "Improvika"’s “Cryptonymous.” This release is full of patience and powerful lyricism." - Jamie Townsend (Foxy Digitalis)

WHILE MY GUITAR VIOLENTLY BLEEDS (LP/CD - Locust Music, 2007)
"The three long meditations that make up this release are violent in the sense of deep passion. For Bishop, these songs are a form of prayer, and as such are as deeply felt an acoustic set as you are likely to hear, one that does not fall into the traps of the pseudo-spiritual, but which maintains an emotional peak throughout. “Zurvan” is the most quiet of the set, an almost traditional blues-based instrumental that still explores some mighty deft territory, both musically and emotionally. It begins the record by reassuring the listener that s/he will be in good hands. “Smashana” dips into a more layered drone, with aspects of psych that help to deepen the piece, and to build off the first song. The real meat is the final, 25+ minute “Mahavidya,” which explores both fretboard and soul, and takes the drone of “Smashana” toward raga, and toward a mystic conclusion to the set." - Dave Segal (OC Weekly)

Sir Richard Bishop | By Appointment To Her Majesty, The Queen

While My Guitar Violently Bleeds [2007]

Fingering the Devil (Special Edition) [2005]

Improvika [2005]

Sir Richard Bishop Torch of the Mystics

Beach House

Baltimore is as musically diverse as anywhere else, but in 2008, indie rockers associate the city with colorful, energetic music, from the expatriated Animal Collective to Dan Deacon's Wham City crew. The music of Beach House, the Baltimore-based duo of multi-instrumentalist Alex Scally and vocalist/organist Victoria Legrand, is a shadow narrative running parallel to this trend: Their delicate, lovelorn pop comes in the form of deathly waltzes and dark pastoral dirges on which Legrand sings about desire, loss, and dreams as if telling a ghost story, splitting the difference between lovely and creepy.

For pristine pop, Beach House's self-titled 2006 debut was awfully raw: Legrand downplayed her classical piano and voice training in a humble negation of virtuosity. The organs sounded like something thick and coarse being pulled through a small, jagged opening; chord structures were simply suggestions; imperfections were kept intact. That balance of beauty and imprecision made inspired songs like "Saltwater", "Tokyo Witch", "Apple Orchard", and "Master of None" easy to fall in love with.

The duo's songwriting hasn't fundamentally changed on Devotion; they've simply cleaned up their act. These are crisper, brighter, bolder songs, retaining Beach House's sense of elegant decay while sweeping up the debris. "Gila" is a funeral on a sunny day; its shimmering organs are controlled, never bleeding chaotically as they did on the debut, and are complemented by frilly but steadfast guitar. "Turtle Island" reaffirms Beach House's preference for simple, skeletal percussion, but its dense melody is a marked advancement. The result of this pre-spring cleaning is that Devotion lacks some of the immediate highs of the first album-- you no longer get the sense of rooting for an embattled underdog-- but winds up consistently stronger.

Even though it's tidier and more streamlined, the music surrenders none of its autumnal charm, and there's still a sense of eavesdropping on a private, ongoing dialogue between Legrand and a ghost. Of course, we only get to hear her side of the story. As on the first album, which began with the words "Love you all the time, even though you're not mine," she favors second-person assertions that speak of self-effacement, dependence, and sinister dream-world conversations. "Your wish is my command," she intones on "Wedding Bell", becoming a genie in a puff of smoke. And on "Gila", she sings in a world-weary wheeze, "Man, you've got a lot of jokes to tell." But instead of the punch line, we get the sort of jarring shift that characterizes dreams: "So you throw your baby's banners down the well."

"Invite your sister into the garden," she drones on the wind-up waltz "You Came to Me", concurrently inviting us into the murky depths of her romantic consciousness. There's a sense of latent danger in the invitation, like a siren song luring us toward sharp clusters of rock. Portals into mysterious spaces pockmark Devotion; none of them promise a way out. Perhaps this explains why an album that takes its title and concept from a superficially sweet concept has such a subtle bite: Legrand's devotion is a dungeon into which she tosses her own desires like coins into a wishing well, a one-way conduit from which only echoes return.

*myspace
*www.pitchforkmedia.com
























D I S C O S :

* Beach House [2006]
* Devotion [2008]


Apple Orchard (Slowdown - Omaha - 3/24/08)

The Sea & Cake - Nassau [1995]

Recorded by John McEntire at Idful Studios in Chicago, Nassau moves the band away from the more immediate pop leanings of their self-titled debut and sees them begin to experiment as a band in production and songwriting. Nassau was featured on many 1995 year end lists, moving the band into the spotlight and out of the shadows. Nassau lives up to the promise of their debut and raised the bar for things to come.

www.thrilljockey.com

The Sea & Cake - Nassau [1995]

















+++++++++++++++++++++++
The Sea and Cake- Parasol

Julie Feeney - 13 Songs [2007]

13 Songs [2007]

"Aching"