Larkin Grimm - Parplar [2008]

You proposed to raise this disc, the wait I end, now it can enjoy, do not forget to comment!.

"Larkin Grimm is a force of nature, a self-made woman with an elemental voice from somewhere under the earth. Depending on her mood, she moans like a woman-in-full, wails like a banshee, or coos like a crazed little girl. Born 26 years ago in Memphis, Tennessee, to hippie devotees of the religious cult The Holy Order Of MANS, raised by multiple “parents in the commune environment of the cult until age six, Grimm spent the remainder of her youth in the Appalachian mountains of Georgia after the cult disbanded. With five siblings and challenged economic circumstances, she won a full scholarship to Yale to study art. During her time at the Ivy League university, she also traveled in Thailand, Guatemala, and spent a few months hitchhiking and living by herself in a tent in Alaska. After temporarily dropping out of school to hang out for a couple years with eco warriors, vagabonds, and sexual deviants in Olympia, Washington, Grimm returned to Yale, where she was a member of Dirty Projectors for a while. Upon graduation, she moved to Providence, where she was an active participant in the city’s noise scene and made a few albums of improv/free-form songs for Secret Eye Records. Grimm books her own tours, travels light by herself, and lives in a tent during the warmer months. She has no permanent address and doesn’t want one. Grimm’s taste for music comes from her old-time fiddler and singer father and her folksinger mother. She naturally developed into an absolutely gifted singer, fingerpicker, and multi-instrumentalist. She’s shared bills with Devendra Banhart,Spires That In The Sunset Rise, Espers, Brightblack Morning Light, Entrance, Viking Moses, The Microphones, and Old Time Relijun. Parplar was co-produced by Michael Gira and was recorded at Old Soul Studio in Catskill, NY, and Seizure’s Palace in Brooklyn, and mixed at Trout Recording. Grimm truly rises to the occasion on the album, which features absolutely stellar vocal performances of songs that are soulful, whimsical, sensual, and bizarre. The production is as varied and unpredictable as Grimm herself. The list of guest musicians includes Young God’s new luminaries Fire on Fire, members of Boston’s Beat Circus, and Old Time Relijun, as well as various revolving members of Angels of Light."

boomkat

Parplar [2008]

The Last Tree

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

Ignatz - III [2008]

With his third full album ‘III’, Bram Devens alias Ignatz, has once again surpassed himself.

In his usual brain-melting futuristic blues folk psych, he’s calling the ghosts of Bukka White, Sleepy John Estes and Robert Pete Williams, as seen by a adolescent Lou Reed.

‘III’ suggests a fictional, unclear and vague story about the deaths of musical genres. It’s breath cold, raw made of carbon and gas. The smell of a wet dog or a badly dried towel. The musical assiociations are reduced to a minimum, unless they contribute to the fictional line, where the tragic is enclosed in the crackling, atonal and repetitive melodies.

This album breathes a more sentimental atmosphere than it’s predecessors by Ignatz’ wailing voice, not unlike Skip James. A tormented soul that after the last song is over; liberates the listener from a personal journey and leaves him dazzled. ‘III’ projects the times of the Alaskan Klondike gold rush and the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog to the modern times, dominatd by technology. So, this album bears testimony to a sincere melancholy that popmusic these days hasn’t know in a while.

Ignatz forces us to look at the pure essence of his music: to translate raw emotion into sound and to reach an essential beauty.

text by K. Berckmans

www.ignatz.be

III [2008]

Ignatz: The Water

Buena Vista Social Club - Live At Carnegie Hall [2008]

Review by Michael Quinn
13 October 2008

With sales of more than eight million copies of their eponymous 1997 debut, Buena Vista Social Club must be a strong contender for the most popular World Music act ever. Admirers of the crack Cuban collective will have encountered substantial parts of this recording before in Wim Wenders' acclaimed documentary profile of the group. Even so, this two-disc release of their only visit to New York is not to be missed.

Caught live at the city's legendary Carnegie Hall in July 1998, this truly historic concert marked the American debuts of the band, all of them at the time well into their 70s, 80s and 90s. A decade on, the impact of musicianship as considered, consummate and casually thrown off as this remains magical and mesmerising. This is the real thing, and how – music-making of a standard rarely achieved in any genre that communicates with a joyous, life-affirming vitality that is simply impossible to resist or refuse. It's a shot of pure musical adrenalin that hits the mark every time.

Produced by Ry Cooder, the Carnegie Hall concert thrillingly caught the Buena Vista Social Club at the very height of their powers, and at the very end of their colossal achievements. The band never played together again and within all too short a time, key contributors like Ibrahim Ferrer, Rubén González and Company Segundo had died.

But the legacy left behind remains vividly alive, as this 16-strong collection of the group’s most popular pieces amply demonstrates. Yet while tracks like Chan Chan, Orgullecida, Candela and Veinte Años retain the capacity to leap vibrantly out of the speakers, what continues to amaze and astonish in equal measure is the sheer technical virtuosity of the playing, the impeccably attuned sense of ensemble, and, above all, the unfettered and infectious joy in making music.

We may never see or hear the likes of Buena Vista Social Club again, but what relatively little we have on disc will endure and abide. This startlingly good, beautifully recorded one-off provides a covetable reminder of a peerless musical phenomenon at its glorious peak.

bbc.uk.

Live At Carnegie Hall [2008] (part1/part2)

Buena Vista Social Club - Candela

Sing a Song for You - A Tribute to Tim Buckley [2000]

Album Tracklist :

Disc 1 :

1. "Sing a Song for You" performed by Moose - 3:30
2. "Morning Glory"† performed by Simon Raymonde, Anneli Drecker - 4:19
3. "Dream Letter" performed by Brendan Perry - 4:20
4. "Love from Room 109 at the Islander" performed by Mojave 3 - 4:30
5. "Because of You"† performed by The Friendly Science Orchestra - 5:36
6. "Cafe" performed by Mark Lanegan - 5:38
7. "Buzzin' Fly" performed by Shelleyan Orphan - 5:39
8. "I Woke Up"† performed by Mike Johnson - 3:06
9. "Blue Melody" performed by Cousteau - 5:20

Disc 2 :

1. "I Must've Been Blind" performed by Heather Duby - 5:34
2. "Sweet Surrender" performed by Dot Allison - 6:01
3. "Pleasant Street" performed by Geneva - 9:15
4. "Strange Feelin'" performed by Lilys - 3:27
5. "Happy Time" performed by The Mad Scene - 3:54
6. "Phantasmagoria in Two" performed by Neil Halstead - 4:37
7. "Once I Was" performed by Tram - 3:56
8. "Song to the Siren"† performed by The Czars - 7:50


Descarga : Sing a Song for You - A Tribute to Tim Buckley [2000] (part1/part2)


Tim Buckley - Song To The Siren

Maserati - Inventions Remixes [2008]

Inventions Remixes begins with Thee Loving Hand (Tim Goldsworthy of The DFA, Hercules and Love Affair) stripping "The World Outside" to almost nothing, rebuilding it as a vintage European disco track from the ground up. Starting with a steady, far-off kick drum and a rogue, in-your-face hi hat, the song's seemingly disparate parts eventually lock into the kind of dirty disco that has made Goldsworthy a club legend. Equally club-friendly, !!!'s Justin Van Der Volgen brushes away the grit of the original "Inventions" and painstakingly buffs it to a shine as slick as black ice. The side-long trance mix maintains the sweaty atmosphere of the original, but removes the top-down drive in favor of a midnight jog. Strictly limited to a one-time pressing of 1,000 copies, Inventions Remixes is both an addendum to the successful reboot of Inventions For The New Season, as well as a testament to the broad spectrum of influences that flow in and out of Maserati's music.

TRACK LISTING :

1. The World Outside (Thee Loving Hand Remix)
2. Inventions (Justin Van Der Volgen's "Enjoy Your Prog" Remix)

Temporary Residence Limited

Inventions Remixes [2008]

Maserati "Inventions"

Wondrous Horse - Cavallo Meraviglioso [2008]

Para distinguir la real naturaleza de los elementos que Wondrous Horse presenta en vías del trayecto recorrido dentro de las atmósferas llenas de implementos que se interponen en una danza sonora con la propiedad de traer consigo diversidad en los detalles impresos del unisono, folk de la tierra bajo el eclipse de sol, palabras de espíritu errante, ritmos y rituales minimalistas que evocan desafíos importantes de la conciencia sin prejuicios, y, paralelos los pies del usuario a los del congelador en torno al perfecto ciclo orgánico residido, se alejan por diferentes estados de vigilia bajo el efecto narcótico que representa la voz mágica invitándolo a frenar su galope y disfrutar del etéreo dilatado de imágenes de su bosque.

Welcome one and all to the world of Wondrous Horse! Cavallo Meraviglisio is the debut offering of the transatlantic (Italy/U.S.) duo of Vanessa Rossetto (Pulga, The Mighty Acts of God, etc.) and Salvatore Borrelli ((etre) & Harps of Fuchsia Kalmia). These two musicians continue to evolve in fascinating ways, and the sounds to be found on Cavallo Meravigliso may come as a surprise to some, which makes it all the more exciting to hear.

An avant folk tour de force combining elements of electroacoustic music, glitch and many other experimental forms, Cavallo Meraviglisio gallops upon the scene assured and ready. Performing with an arsenal of instrumentation at the ready (violin, viola, balalaika, theremin, guitar, dulcetina, concertina, autoharp, bells, xylophone, voice, baritone guitar, tablas, darbukas, turkish saz, xylophone, esraj, dulcimer, resonant ukulele, celtic "droned" harp, banjo, kalimba, shruti box, irish bouzouki, lap steel guitar, toys, & drum machine since you asked) the duo have crafted a recording that successfully combines the myriad of influences of its creators into an organic and unique whole.

It takes a wondrous horse such as this to take the intelligent listener on a trip through such a unique and appealing sonic journey, so hop on and ride away today!

Special Guest on “Questi Orizzonti Scomparsi”: Valerio Cosi

museumfire

Cavallo Meraviglioso [2008] (part1/part2)

E N J O Y !

Rachel Goswell

Rachel Goswell (born May 16, 1971 in Fareham, England) is a singer-songwriter who was a vocalist with shoegazing pioneers Slowdive. Following Slowdive's dissolution, Goswell joined Slowdive alumni Neil Halstead and Ian McCutcheon to form Mojave 3, an indie pop/dream pop outfit. This new band also included Simon Rowe (of Chapterhouse fame) and Alan Forrester.

The year 2004 saw Goswell release solo recordings with co-writer Joe Light and producer David Naughton. Nine months after Mojave 3 released Spoon and Rafter, she released The Sleep Shelter EP. Waves Are Universal, her first full-length recording, appeared a month later. In 2005, a limited edition remix 12" (now available as a download) entitled Coastline / Plucked was issued. This recording, released on Valentine's Day, features two mixes apiece from The Earlies and Ulrich Schnauss.

Goswell was married to Cuba's Christopher Andrews from 1994 until 2000.

While on tour with Slowdive in 1993, one of her eardrums burst, and it has troubled her ever since, in the form of persistent infections, partial deafness (which she employs a hearing aid to correct) and ataxia. This has prevented her from performing on occasion, and she was absent from the last Mojave 3 album, 2006's 'Puzzles Like You'.

wiki.

Waves Are Universal [2004]

EP 02 - Coastline Plucked [2005]

EP 01 - The Sleep Shelter [2004]

Mojave 3 - Some Kinda Angel

Windy & Carl - Songs For The Broken Hearted [2008]

songs for the broken hearted

Cover Imagethis is an album about love. everyone has known love, and everyone has known loss. love is not just about warm fuzzy feelings, although that would be the part people say they like the best. and in any span of time, love changes and means different things to different people.

i never thought this would be an album. we started these recordings the same weekend i started I Hate People. it was a dark time, and when the tapes were taken off the reels i really thought that was the end of them. they were just going to sit and rot away somewhere.

but between christmas and new year of 2007, carl pulled them out and decided to finish them. he became obsessed with them somehow, i suppose in much the same way i had become obbsessed with finishing my own album earlier in the year. he worked every night for weeks, and as i wandered around the house i heard those songs everytime they played. and some of them made me cry, everytime. they sounded sad to me, because they were started in such a sad time. carl kept talking about wanting to have a new record out for 2008, and i told him only if it was named Songs For The Broken Hearted. he said fine, he just wanted it done.

so in early 2008 he gave me a cdr with what he felt were finished tracks, and asked me to write words for them. i had no ideas, i just kept crying when they were on. it really did not seem important to me to get them done because they only reminded me of things..........and then, one night, i started writing. i wrote words for 4 or 5 songs that night, and started singing the next evening. and we did rough mixes that i listened to for a week or so, and then i pulled out my journals, the gang of them that i had been filling since the fall of 2007, and i picked a few pieces that seemed like they would go with the music. i rerecorded some of the tracks with the new words, and resang some vocals i thought could be better. and the songs went from being all sad to being a reflection of how love works. how we are affected - by ourselves and others. how love makes you swoon and lonliness makes you cry. how when you love someone in this world you love them no matter where they are, and the connections you feel to and with them. love can make you blind, both when things are good and when they are not, and how do you react to being blind? what choices do you make and how do they change the world around you............

source

Songs For The Broken Hearted [2008]

Undercurrent

The Spinto Band - Moonwink [2008]

The Spinto Band aren’t a difficult band to want to love. Since they formed in 1996, they’ve consistently delivered a contagious celebration that is playfully puckish and totally bereft of pretension. Moonwink, remarkably the band’s sixth album proper, is their latest 11-track collection of sugary, woozy, cutesy three-minute pop ditties.

First single “Summer Grof” (in the band’s words “a vague tribute to the great comedienne Janeane Garofalo") captures this exuberance perfectly. Jaunty hand-claps give birth to saccharine keyboards and jangly guitars. Add an addictive chorus of “I won’t lie, I won’t lie, I won’t lie, I won’t lie, I won’t lie” and you’ve got a superb indie anthem. It’s a shame that it arrived in October and not July, because “Summer Grof” could truly have ruled the summer.

Since their days as Free Beer, the Spinto Band have made music that is at once outlandish, kinetic, and luminous, and this latest record is no different. Often there are flashes of brilliance (notably “Summer Grof”, “The Carnival”, and album closer “The Black Flag"), but vocalist Nick Krill, keyboard player Sam Hughes, and guitarists Jon Easton and Joey Hobson are so keen on repeating themselves that much of their work, and a lot of this album, often frustrates.

The two opening tracks, “Later On” and “Vivian, Don’t”, offer the same rich, textured guitars, unconventional orchestration, and multiple-part vocal harmonies that made 2006’s Nice and Nicely Done such a critically acclaimed and (comparatively) commercially successful album. The familiar hyperactivity continues through “Pumpkins and Paisley”, an irresistible, relentless, flat-out indie-pop tune that ramps up the keyboards and the “la la las” to become the most morish, adorable song on the album.

source

Moonwink [2008]

The Spinto Band / Oh Mandy (Live @ Night & Day Manchester)

Euros Childs - Cheer Gone [2008]

While Childs' former band, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, managed to balance a debt to Canterbury scene legends like Kevin Ayers and Robert Wyatt (Childs appeared on Ayer's 2007 comeback album, Unfairground) with what some might call 'twee' folky cuteness, his solo work has shown a greater leaning towards to the USA. Last album, The Miracle Inn was filled with Beach Boys sunshine, and on this, album number six - he wheels in a hefty slice of pedal steel Americana. Mind you, the core of Cheer Gone still contains the mildly fey, winsome vocals and rather childlike worldview that all adds appeal.

As the title i mplies, some of this material is a little sad, Autumn Leaves (with the aforementioned pedal steel shining out) drips melancholy while My Love Is Gone is predictably maudlin too. But Childs' Welsh tones, a little like fellow countryman, Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals, always hold some positivity.

It's a minor pleasure maybe, but a pleasure nonetheless, and fans of his last release will be satified.

bbc.uk.

Cheer Gone [2008]

Euros Childs - Y Mwnci Drwg

Los Campesinos! - We Are Beautiful We Are Doomed [2008]

It's perhaps testament to the rich creative vein of form Los Campesinos! find themselves in. Bolstered by a growing army of devoted fans and a barrage of successful gigs, they're back - barely eight months since the release of the goosebump-donator of a debut, ...Hold On Now, Youngster.

For those yet unfamiliar with Los Campesinos!, the Cardiff-based seven-piece's cocktail of synths, violins and itchy guitars leap from the speakers to create indie jubilance, and near-perfect pop songs. No refined coyness here - these rascals are face-slappingly brazen.

Ways To Make It Through The Wall gets WAB, WAD out of the blocks with typical breakneck speed, with a tsunami of instruments, voices and melodies vying for position.

The opening plaudits however all belong to Miserabilia, which features beautiful, addictive guitar melodies, driven by an unrelenting, pounding synth line. The songs centrepiece is built around the most spine-tinglingly amazing violin outburst since before violins were even cool. Fact.

It's a fact almost upended by the arrival of the title track, where piercing, scything, racing strings punctuate gritty guitars and glittering glockenspiels. And while we're on the subject of violins, in a recent interview, Tom Campesinos! remarked "I think my favourite [song] is You'll Need Those Fingers For Crossing because it's got a great violin part" - he's not wrong; it's heart-warmingly beautiful.

source

We Are Beautiful We Are Doomed [2008]

'Knee Deep at ATP' by Los Campesinos! on QTV

Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping + Id Engager EP [2008]

Kevin Barnes is a married white man whose alter ego is a black transsexual named Georgie Fruit. Transformations come easily to the Of Montreal frontman: Over the past 11 years, he's seamlessly morphed from low-fi indie rocker to quirky prog-pop star, and now on Skeletal Lamping he's a glam-funk warrior, drenched in the sounds and sexuality of Prince, Freddie Mercury and Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowie. ("We can do it soft-core if you want/But you should know that I go both ways," he trills on "For Our Elegant Caste.") A soulful romp through psychedelic melodies and sprawling noise-scapes, Skeletal is also a whimsical, Girl Talk-style pastiche, with 15 tracks that consist of a multitude of song fragments. The nine-part "Beware Our Nubile Miscreants" opens with peaceful strings before jolting into a tuneless vamp, then snapping into an echo-soaked wail. And Barnes' lyrics are just as seductively schizophrenic: "I want to ... make you paranoid and say the sweetest things," he sings on "Gallery Piece." And somewhere in the glorious friction between these contradictions, he's in ecstasy.

rollingstone

Skeletal Lamping [2008]

Id Engager EP [2008]

of Montreal - "Suffer for Fashion" Polyvinyl Records

Vic Chesnutt, Elf Power, The Amorphous Strums - Dark Developments [2008]

Vic Chesnutt is somewhat of a dark horse. One of those that races like beer bubbles beneath the radar. The Southern-fried songwriter has released competent material for over a decade, despite few people noticing. Last year, Chesnutt released a beast of an album with post-rock legends A Silver Mt. Zion titled North Star Deserter and no one noticed; same goes with his influences on scores of artists, including Michael Stipe. But throughout his career, a few simple syllogisms have carried through each album, regardless of its context. Despair is one, usually coerced by drugs or alcohol of some sort, and another is political disenchantment. But few are better than Chesnutt at coiling stories together from these black muses, and Dark Developments is no different. Yes, we have fellow Athens, Georgia/Elephant Six members Elf Power and sometimes accompanying band The Amorphous Strums contributing here, but start-to-finish this is a Vic Chesnutt sonic dystopia. And if you’re familiar with the man at the helm, this collaboration will excite. If this Georgian songwriter is foreign territory, best not start with Dark Developments (suggestions where to start are welcomed in the comments below).

source

Dark Developments [2008]

Vic Chesnutt with Elf Power "Everything i say"

Sun Kil Moon - April [2008]

Is there such a thing as closure? Crime writer James Ellroy’s mother was murdered when he was 10 years old, and Ellroy has spent his entire career writing his way out of it with no expectation of emotional settlement. It’s made him who he is. Chances are Mark Kozelek—formerly of Red House Painters, currently of Sun Kil Moon—will also write his way through memory and fate until the end of his days. His Ohio childhood, his classic-rock album collection, his love for the guitar, his friends and especially the death of loved ones—including the tragic passing of an important early muse—have made Kozelek the songwriter he is. He takes solace in the beautiful landscapes that surround him. He travels to faraway cities and dreams of home, and then he comes home and dreams of elsewhere.

He’s always been obsessed by longing and desire. 1992’s accomplished Red House Painters demo-tape-turned-debut-album Down Colorful Hill was a Technicolor tragedy filled with tortured romances and aching childhood memories, a perfect fit for the boutique 4AD label that released it. The young man who composed that record has changed over the years. Nothing dramatic, no abrupt refutations of his past; just a deepening, a settling into the man he has become. Kozelek’s music is now warmer, more able to reconcile its classic-rock roots within its ethereal structures. The reverb canyons and domineering vocals have given way to richer guitar textures and sweet, anguished mumbles. His songs remain personal, as likely to express shockingly candid details as to wrap them in personal symbolism only he can unravel. When Kozelek sings “I promised always through me she would shine” on April’s 10-minute centerpiece “Tonight the Sky,” you picture the man alone, howling at the moon, shaking his fists in frustration at the universe.

source

April [2008] (part1/part2)

Sun Kil Moon - Moorestown

Okkervil River - The Stand Ins [2008]

The Stand Ins CD / LP (JAG124, released: 09/09/08)

OKKERVIL RIVER's new full-length album The Stand Ins is the sequel to 2007's critically acclaimed The Stage Names, which Pitchfork praised as "...one of the year's best," with The New York Times proclaiming, "This band's musical arsenal keeps getting fuller."

The Stand Ins was recorded in Austin and produced by longtime collaborator Brian Beattie and Okkervil River. The album features 11 songs and includes the track "Lost Coastlines," on which Sheff and recently departed Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater share a duet on the joys and hardships of trying to keep the band together. Of the process Will Sheff explains, "We had so many songs we were excited about that we briefly threw around the idea of just putting out a double record. Instead, we decided to take a group of songs that fit with each other and turn that into The Stage Names, setting the rest aside for a future release, a The Stage Names sequel." The Stand Ins is that sequel, part two of a staggered double album. Like artist William Schaff's embroidered artwork, which depicts what's happening underneath The Stage Names' front-cover quicksand hand,The Stand Ins picks up exactly where Part One left off but also delves deeper into the story and theme of The Stage Names. It is a full-length, fleshed-out, deeply ambitious labor of love.

"Sheff sings like he's on fire but writes like a novelist, reeling off memorable images with an ease that belies his craftsmanship." -- Harp

jagjaguwar

The Stand Ins [2008]

Lost Coastlines

Lambchop - Oh (Ohio) [2008]

From the front, the house in the quiet Nashville suburb where Kurt Wagner has lived the last thirteen years looks the same now as it did when he first moved there. The pillared porch still faces out over a patchy lawn to a small industrial warehouse on the other side of the road. The chair in which Kurt has composed so many of his songs stands to the left, an ashtray overflowing with butts nearby. His beloved veteran pickup truck remains in the drive, while sounds from nearby traintracks occasionally punctuate the birdsong. Inside, though the front room is much as it was – shaded from the sun, comfy armchairs showing their age –back where the small kitchen used to lead through a rickety screendoor to a second porch and yard there’s now a whole new living area, freshly sanded floors reflecting the golden Tennessean light. What used to be a splintered deck is now a grand veranda. And while the staccato tap of their toenails on the boards sounds the same, his dogs are different too: Lucy and Jack long gone, replaced by Sydney and Louise.

So much has changed since Kurt first led LAMBCHOP out of the basement downstairs where they rehearse. Back then they were a ramshackle outfit, a charming drinking buddy collective taking the music they heard around them in Music City – the butt of jokes amongst the critical elite at the time – and mixing it with the music that they loved, Wagner topping it all off with his weird, abstract lyrics about a “soaky in the pooper” and cowboys on the moon. They were a curiosity: the fact that anyone would want to release the album they recorded as great a surprise to the band as anyone. Perhaps, if it had not been picked up by a small group of fervent fans and critics seduced by what the band archly called ‘The New Sound Of Nashville’, it would have been their only album.

Yet now, almost two decades later, LAMBCHOP return with their tenth, OH (ohio). The musical landscape could hardly be more different. Nashville is ‘cool’ again: Jack White has bought a home there, Kings Of Leon are a household name, Harmony Korine directs Budweiser commercials featuring LAMBCHOP’s William Tyler at Springwater (the legendary dive where LAMBCHOP and many other local bands cut their teeth), David Berman has revitalized his Silver Jews in the city (borrowing two members of LAMBCHOP, we might add) and Be Your Own Pet have cornered the teenage punk market.

more

Oh (Ohio) [2008]

is a woman