“Here’s to all you crazy dreamers, dream your crazy dreams, don’t let them slip away, there’s more to life than living day to day.”
Not a review (as i don’t have the album, yet) but more of a heads up that Elephant Micah (who i last wrote about here) has a new album out on 31st January. It’s available on vinyl too and you can order if from his webpage here as well as grab a free track called ‘If I was a Surfer’. If this song is representative of the album then we’re in for a real treat. Amazing song from one of America’s most gifted talents. He never releases anything less than brilliant as far as i’m concerned.
Rather than put this particular list in any order of preference or to only choose a certain amount of albums, i’m just going to list the albums that have really struck me as my favourites of 2011 and let you be the judge. All i will say is that i think it’s been a pretty good year for music, especially at a roots and small, indie label level and i personally hope this trend continues into 2012 and beyond. It’s further proof that if you are making good music and bringing it to your live shows, word of mouth still counts for a lot. To be taken to the bands website to purchase the albums just click on their name. Please note, i’m not trying to review these albums here, there are far better places across the net to find those and i will often copy and paste quotes from them, but hopefully by listing my own personal favourites it helps spread the word that little bit further. Please, if you like any of these suggestions, go and buy the album or go and see them play if they come through your town and really help support them as well as your local promoters. Anyway, here goes and in no particular order my 2011 picks are….
Sarabeth Tucek – Get Well Soon
An album that gripped me on the very first listen. Sarabeth’s voice is crystal clear and each word clearly defined, it reminds me of Karen Carpenter’s in many ways, perhaps some Aimee Mann too. Having spent a few years drinking too much, getting arrested. spending time in jail and then the the death of her father, all that sadness, grief and regret all seems to spill out into this album. There’s heartbreaking ballads like the title track through to Crazy Horse influenced songs like Wooden and Exit Ghost. If i was really pushed into saying what my album of the year is, i think i would say this one. It’s certainly the album i’ve listened to the most, that’s for sure. ‘I knew I was sad /I recognised it was bad/but now looking back/I see my mind, it was cracked’ are the lyrics to the beginning of the title track and they get me every time. Put simply, a stunning album.
The Milk Carton Kids – Prologue
With Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan having both released solo albums as well as an album together under their real names they seem to have now settled on The Milk Carton Kids which incidentally is a name of one of their songs. Kenneth’s facebook status at time of writing reads Home = 98 Away = 247 #NightsInMyOwnBed2011 which goes to show how hard these two work and they’ve already got a headline tour booked for January! It would seem all that hard work is paying off having just finished a tour supporting Over The Rhine and i’m hoping they get some European dates in 2012 too. Quite simply one of the best albums i’ve heard in a very long time and i think 2012 is going to be a very big year for these. Check them out.
Good Luck Mountain – Good Luck Mountain
You have to have a pretty cold heart not to be moved by this incredible album. Mike Ferrio’s previous band, Tandy came to an end after his great friend and band member Drew Glackin tragically passed away aged just 44. Good Luck Mountain is an attempt to deal with this tragic event and to say it succeeds majestically would be an understatement. As Mike said himself “When Drew died it really took the paint off me. I couldn’t seem to do anything but think about it and grieve. I missed singing and laughing with Drew. It was a big silence. After a while I began to be able to hear his voice and his laughter again and after a while the songs started coming” Do yourself a favour and buy this album immediately, your life will be so much better for it.
Cahalen Morrison & Eli West – The Holy Coming Of The Storm
Taking bluegrass to a whole, new level. While we all love to hear the old classics you can start to hear them being played by a million different bluegrass bands too often so it’s brilliantly refreshing to hear a band write and play their own songs in this style and ones that can sit proudly alongside the old ones. This is their debut album and you’d think they’d been at it for years. Talent.
The Brook Lee Catastrophe – Motel Americana
A late contender for album of the year in my opinion. Represents everything that’s great about Americana, brilliantly written songs about girls, love, heartache and everyday, small town life played with heart and soul. As well as the usual cd/mp3 option there is also vinyl which is limited to just 200 copies which i highly recommend. This band are going places and are worth keeping your eye on.
Jjango Cleefworth Morriconez – The Poquito Pioneer
‘The meandering green 74’ Oldsmobile resident travels through the deserts of the waning west and teetering bordertowns. He finds refuge among the roadside vendors and immigrant folktales on his way to the home of his youth in the Salton Sea‘
Certainly the most atmospheric pieces of music i heard this year are these two gems. Essentially the same person (J.W.S) but two different concept albums which were created somewhere out in the desert of New Mexico. Having been delivered to me wrapped in a map of that area and a note written in orange crayon, nothing could have prepared for what i was about to hear. I’m not anywhere near a descriptive enough writer to express how good these two albums are. I say albums, i suppose they could be the A and B sides of one album but the mixture of sounds, anything from field recordings to synths, all with a slight cosmic, tripped out country tinge to it all, they mess with your head somewhat, they scare me a little bit if i’m honest but if you follow the concept then that’s not surprising. If you want to listen to something a little bit different, totally unique, a little bit creepy but but also incredibly beautiful then i HIGHLY recommend these two albums. Just stunning! (Word reaches The Lonesome Drifter that these are both available for free for a very limited time only over at the website. However, i still say pay the few $’ he’s asking and receive the real thing)
Jeffrey Wentworth Stevens – Highway Driveway
‘ A townman’s roadtrip from driveway highway to highway driveway. Sun rising and sun setting euphoria as he wanders across the lost western expanse of the Sonoran desert on Dwight D. Eisenhower’s gas strewn trails‘
An absolutely classic that never received the plaudits it really deserves. A variety of styles throughout the album which i think works tremendously well but given that she grew up in Israel, Holland, Paris and now resides in New York it’s no surprise there’s elements of Jewish folk and something rather ‘French’ sounding throughout it all, whatever that means. However, it’s her dreamy voice which stands out and no matter what kind of day you have had, this album and her voice always makes it much better.
Jonny Kearney & Lucy Farrell – Kite
Given that i played their debut EP ’The North Farm Sessions’ to death i thought i was perhaps expecting too much of their debut album, Kite, but if anything i wasn’t expecting enough! Produced by Adrian McNally (The Unthanks) it’s a fine, fine debut with a perfect mixture of their own songs and a couple of covers with Lucy leaning towards the more traditional sounding songs and Jonny a little more contemporary but together they have released one of the years best albums in any genre. 2012 is going to be their year. Watch this space.
An album i first came across over at Songsillinois.net and he sums it up nicely saying there is a certain James McMurtry similarity going on here but i think also some Springsteen too. Really deep, powerful songs that i think John Conquest of Third Coast Music summed up perfectly, writing “Bell’s mature talent makes a good case for the argument that people shouldn’t start writing songs until they’ve been around long enough to know what the fuck they’re talking about.” Can’t argue with that really.
Eilen Jewell – Queen Of The Minor Key
An album that get’s better with every listen. Eilen has come a long, long way since here excellent debut, Boundary County but i think this latest album really highlights her diversity. Backed magnificently by one of the best bands you will ever hear there is everything from surf to rockabilly but of course inside it all is still the country girl shimmering away as good as anyone. Queen of any key if you ask me. A must have album.
I could try and come across as all cool and hip and say i’ve been into The Shivers since blah blah blah but i won’t, because i haven’t. In fact i only knew of them a couple of months ago when instead of agreeing to pay £28 to go see Gillian Welch i paid £5 to go see these and i came away with the vinyl, a new favourite band and a night that will live long in the memory. Everyone should dig The Shivers because they are as honest as they come and they hit that spot not only once or twice but in pretty much every song they create. Dig, dig, DIG!
Jeffrey Foucault – Horse Latitudes
Lush, country/folk ballads as good as anything i’ve heard this year. It also features the immense talents of Eric Heywood (Ray Lamontagne,Son Volt) on pedal steel, it’s delicately played alongside Jeffrey’s guitar and soothing, husky voice making for an exceptional album that i think many readers of this blog will love. Go get it now!
The Lucky Strikes – Gabriel Forgive My 22 Sins
A concept album about a boxer who is living with the guilt of once throwing a fight, based on a true meeting with the boxer in question by all accounts. All that aside, it really is a masterpiece of an album and one i’ve gone back to time and time again since it’s release earlier in the year. With Matthew Boulter’s incredible voice leading the way this band can do no wrong for me. When i had the pleasure of booking them to play my hometown, they played like they were in an arena of 50,000 people instead of the 45 or so who were in attendance so for that alone they are in my list but that’s not the main reason they are. This great album has everything. Soaring vocals, full on rock at times, beautiful, well crafted ballads but most of all every time i play it i smile from ear to ear, it’s just one of those albums that does that.
Israel Nash Gripka – Barn Doors and Concrete Floors
Israel is someone who i think is going to break through into the mainstream very, very soon. This Steve Shelley produced album kind of follows on from his debut, New York Town with it’s Country/Rock swagger. Songs of temptation and redemption counteract one another perfectly with many foot stompers and big choruses to sing along to. Much of the music press compared him to The Rolling Stones in country mode mixed with some Ryan Adams. I’d say that pretty much sums it up. Great album and a must see live band. Take your ear plugs!
Case Hardin – Every Dirty Mirror
When it comes to UK Americana, ukericana? they don’t come much better than Case Hardin. Reviewers across the music press said things like ‘Self-confident and unafraid to experiment, Every Dirty Mirror touches base with a range of sounds found in the post-Uncle Tupelo soundscape’ and ‘echoes Dylans Desire period in both scope and atmosphere and marks out Gow as one of our finest storytelling songwriters.’ Not a bad track on the the album. Highly recommended.
Hiss Golden Messenger – Poor Moon
Featuring contributions from Terry Lonergan, Nathan Bowles (Black Twig Pickers; Pelt), Hans Chew (D. Charles Speer & the Helix), Matt Cunitz (Brightblack Morning Light), Tom Heyman (The Court & Spark), and others, Poor Moon represents both an elaboration and inversion of previous Hiss Golden Messenger efforts, proposing an America at perpetual sundown, wracked by devotion, wrecked by celebration. Named in homage to the Canned Heat track penned by the immortal Blind Owl, Poor Moon conjures the unsteady experience of soul at home in the wild, and it stands as a captivating document of Southern songcraft. Paradise of Bachelors
King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – Diamond Mine
Both share a taste for a rather languid tempo, that of small-town life and the more tender, bittersweet emotions; and theirs is a pairing that’s complementary, Hopkins colouring in the spaces around Anderson’s wearied voice, guitar and woozy accordion. BBC
An album that seeks to explore the folksinger’s contradictory status as an outsider, often recording and touring alone, a situation seemingly at odds with folk’s suggestion of community. The result is a record fraught with geographic dissatisfaction, heartbreak, ghosts, isolation and drunkenness. Sitting uncomfortably somewhere between auto-biography and allegory the songs take in real life events and fantastical narrative concerning relationships, the dangers of being eaten by the dead and the difficulties of communicating when at sea. Armellodie Records
Danny Schmidt – Man Of Many Moons
Having now released numerous albums and all of them received really well across the music press, it’s still surprising that Danny Schmidt is not a household name. Talent oozes from every single part of this man. Writes a song as good as anyone around, plays the guitar like he was born with it in his arms and sings beautifully with his slightly whispered tone. If you don’t yet know Danny Schmidt,please correct that wrong asap because your world will be all the better for it.
There are many more great albums i heard this year but these are the ones that really stood out for me.I will also be playing a track from each one of these album on my radio show THIS Saturday from 10am (UK Time) on Radio23.org and a podcast will be available to download afterwards from my blog. Hope you enjoy and hopefully you may have found something you’ve never heard before and you then also spread the word.
My tip for next year is concept albums, they’re going to be everywhere. Happy 2012!
How Lucky Jim is not a household name by now is beyond me. I can’t fathom it all. Having wrote about him here 3 years ago and interviewing him for his outstanding album True North, i was convinced that his time had finally arrived. In fairness it should have been with his previous releases when he was signed to Skint records that he became a household name but for whatever reasons it just didn’t happen regardless of those albums receiving great reviews across the music press. He has now bettered all those albums in my opinion with his latest effort For The Love Of Emily. Now with a great, new band behind him this album hits you deep in your soul from the very first track, Belfast (which funnily enough i believe is about Edinburgh) through to the perfect ending track Good Ship Emily, but at this moment i cannot pick out anything even resembling a bad track, they’re all top drawer. Gordon Grahame, the main man behind Lucky Jim is a really great songwriter, sometimes a little abstract which can you leave you guessing at what the song is really about but i always like that in a songwriter as it leaves the songs open to many interpretations.
Given the rather romantic nature of the album the use of strings are balanced perfectly alongside the great musicianship at work here. To me the album sounds as if it’s full of fresh optimism which i guess you would fully expect when you have put a new band together. It gets better with every listen and has been on a daily spin for the last couple of weeks.
So this is not so much of a review but more of a heads up that Lucky Jim have done it again and released ANOTHER album of supreme quality and surely this can’t be ignored for too much longer by the masses can it? Please help spread the word, tweet, re-blog, facebook it, run down the street stark bollock naked if you must and help get this album the recognition it truly deserves. Here is a little taster. Enjoy. Buy from itunes, amazon etc
One of the best discoveries for me over the last couple of years is Mark Wynn. Apparently he’s from York but looking at his tour schedule i’m not sure how much time he spends there, he is constantly on the road playing shows the length and breadth of the UK and often travelling pretty big distances between one show and the other and then back again. His latest, self released offering is Stories, Rags & Stomps, a 9 track country/blues album that is as good as anything i’ve heard all year. His previous album Lovers, Losers & Wasters is an album i have played hundreds of times and this carries on in very much the same vein.
Resembling a young, skinny Keith Richards, Mark writes songs with titles like Friday Night (fallin’ down), Wreckheads and World Can wait which come across like a direct response to his life on the road and the people he meets rather than a sad attempt to appear cool and showing how ‘rock n roll’ he is. A quite brilliant songwriter with a sharp eye for the easily overlooked he reminds me of a young Townes van Zandt, a certain vulnerability belies his incredible talent but he can you stop you dead in your tracks with many of his songs, I Don’t Mind, Factory Girls and the rather reflective Sad Stoned (fallin in the street) are all worthy of your full attention. With the amount of gigs and the variety of venues he plays you just know that many of the characters and the stories he sings about are true. Too many late nights and not enough early mornings i suppose are the key ingredients to writing songs as good as this. Not in it for the fame but like most musicians wouldn’t mind making an ok living from it, songwriters like Mark Wynn deserve to be heard now and not in twenty years time like the aforementioned Mr van Zandt and many others like him. Discover him today and be thankful that you did, there’s not many like him around.
You can buy his album(s) either as a digital download or as a cd for no more than the change in your pocket here and i urge you to do so. In the meantime here’s a little taster.
Over the last week or so, having been inspired by one of my favourite t.v shows, Who Do You Think You Are?, I have been trying to compile my family tree. Not only is it highly addictive but also a stark reminder of how fragile our existence really is, what seem like very small, almost forgotten moments in someone’s life at the time of occurrence, in the end are just as important as any other, everything has an effect on the future of not only them but also, ultimately, us which leads me nicely to the new album by Red Heart The Ticker.
A husband and wife team of Robin MacArthur and Tyler Gibbons from Vermont, their last album Oh My! Mountains Below received high praise from the likes of Paste magazine, Pitchfork as well as many blogs like Songs Illinois and was one of my favourite albums of that year (2008). That album was made shortly after Robin’s grandmother had passed away and as Songs Illinois mentioned, it’s at times sombre but does have moments of happiness. Robin’s grandmother was folk singer Margaret MacArthur and it’s this new album, Your Name In Secret I Would Write which is dedicated to her (and their daughter, Avah) as it’s an album of traditional folk songs that she (and others) used to sing.
Margaret MacArthur moved, in the 1940′s to an 1803 abandoned farmhouse in southern Vermont and it was there that she started singing the old folk songs from that area. Initially she recorded fifteen songs in her kitchen and sent them to Moses Asch of Folkway Records after he requested them after seeing Margaret perform somewhere. These recordings became the first of nine albums Margaret recorded.
Fast forward seventy or so years later and in the very study where Margaret passed away, Robin and Tyler are sat with microphones at the ready along with these folk songs, a 1961 Martin guitar played by Margaret on some of her recordings, a fretless banjo built by Robin’s grandfather, a viola belonging to Tyler’s father as well as an electric fender belonging to Robin’s father which given the nature of the album all seems rather appropriate, the songs given new life but commemorating the old. This is not an album made by a band looking to jump on the latest folk trend but by a family member paying homage to her grandmother as well as keeping the songs alive.
Songs that really leap out on first listen are Lakes of Champlain and the heart wrenching Stratton Mountain Tragedy, the latter a song about a dying mother who wraps her child in her clothing during a winter storm hoping her child somehow survives. It ends well, she does. But the entire album plays out like a lament to those who have passed away, a deep respect to family and friends, alive or dead, a thank you to the landscape and the mountains that surround them for influencing such passion in these people but also to the future generations who may one day, maybe in a small, almost forgotten moment hear these old songs and then choose to give them new life again just like Robin and Tyler have done and therefore keeping the musical family tree alive whilst also been reminded of the importance of their ancestry.
I think Grandma would be proud and if you listen very carefully i think you can hear her singing along.
The album is due for release on September 20th on Auger Down records on both cd and vinyl but i have kindly been allowed to choose one myself to offer you now as a taster before you buy. Enjoy.
A while back our very own Sandy wrote about Wentworth Kersey in his ‘Song o’ Day’ series. Since then i’ve tried to keep half an eye out on their endeavours but it’s harder than it appears when each release comes under a new pseudonym. For example, the album before this new one, came out under the name George & Caplin and if i remember correctly it was sent to me with what looked like an old newspaper from some old, forgotten town and inside the cd case was a library card saying there was no return due date. All very baffling. In all honesty I should have blogged about it because it’s an amazing piece of work but for whatever reasons I didn’t but it’s never too late to pick up a copy?
Then a few weeks ago i received through my door a package which contained a cd wrapped in a map of New Mexico and a tape, yes a tape in it’s original case and a note written in orange crayon asking me to listen and hopefully enjoy. Again, all very baffling but very amusing nevertheless.
But then i played it (the cd, i don’t have a tape player otherwise i would have played that instead) and what followed was a jaw dropping experience of an album that completely knocked me out. All the rather baffling cd cases, notes and maps all made complete sense, well it didn’t but here i was trying to work it all out but i feel i’m not meant to. Like Sandy said ‘while the sound is basically “folk” it is soo much more – it has so many textures, auras of rolling Appalachian valleys and a modern day Mexi-Cali conquistadors – all with a slight bit of ambient flowing through it all.‘ I can’t really say it any better than that.
Jjango (i never know what to call these cats anymore) wrote about this album”It’s a concept album about the meandering green 74’ Oldsmobile resident travels through the deserts of the waning west and teetering border towns. He finds refuge among the roadside vendors and immigrant folktales on his way to the home of his youth in the Salton Sea.”
This music could easily be a lost soundtrack to movie made years and years ago or it could be what music is going to be sounding like hundreds of years in the future, it’s timeless basically. While listening to it today on the beach full blast in my headphones i imagined myself travelling across the deserts of New Mexico (must have been the map) sometime in the future finding old bits of machinery or radios that only half worked, strange characters talking to me with suspicion while things crackled and hissed all round, maybe post apocalypse? The psychedelic nature of the album has your imagination running wild because the album slowly feeds you nuggets of sound, a distant voice or an echo but for me it’s the overwhelming beauty that makes this album so great, so, so beautiful. Sometimes just the horns is enough to be completely overwhelmed but when you add snippets of crackle and hypnotic sounds to such devastating effect it takes you places that most music doesn’t. So, i’m not going to try and work it out anymore, not sure i want to, i like the slightly confused feeling i get when i listen to it but I love the places it takes me more. Thing is, you can’t help but be baffled by all of this because to add to the confusion there is very little Youtube clips, hardly any internet coverage at all in fact. I’m not sure with all the name changes if Jeffrey (i can’t even be certain he’s really called Jeffrey) is deliberately trying to be elusive so as to give all this music even more of a slightly ‘out there’ feel or if it’s just me making more of it than it is. Either way, it all adds to the confusion for me but really, you need to listen and then make your own mind up but if i had to choose my album of the year now, it would be this one because it brings me joy on so many levels. Musically it’s outstanding, it is drenched in atmosphere and each listen brings me new pleasures and it continually keeps me guessing and taking me to new places. It’s such a forward thinking album with so many levels it’s very easy to go overboard and just make what is essentially noise but they, (he?) seems to know when enough is enough and has created something so astonishing it’s actually impossible to describe it in words, it needs to be heard for it to make any sense. It’s something rather beautiful and close to perfection.
I can’t think of any band or person making the music that Jeffrey, Jjango or whatever his name is these days, is. I know for a while this album was available for free here as well as Highway Driveway (double release alongside Jjango, just to add a little more bafflement) but not sure if they still are. It’s very difficult to put up just one track because these are albums that need to be listened to in their entirety but this one i guess gives you an idea of what to expect. If you like them, even they are free just buy them for the few dollars they’re asking as they are completely D.I.Y and would really appreciate your help. Enjoy.
One of the most anticipated albums for me this year is The Deep Dark Woods. Their 2009 album Winter Hours was in my top albums of that year and their new one, The Place I Left Behind is now becoming a firm favourite of 2011. There are many things to love about TDDW. Their consistency for one. In all their four releases so far they have yet to make a bad one, in fact it’s very difficult to put them in order of preference because they are all outstanding. Like some of the old songs they have covered in the past they make music that i think will stand the test of time, albums that you will return to time and time again. In fact, their albums are very much like that, they don’t always grab you on your first lesson but over a period of a few, but each one brings something new, a favourite new track or a missed lyric that makes you go back and listen again until you realise that you are listening to one of the best bands around. However, it’s impossible to miss, be it on first or last listen the sad, wistful voice of lead singer and main songwriter Ryan Boldt. Does anyone sing a murder ballad better? Also, everyone in the band can really play as the video below clearly shows (also on the new album). Not many bands are making music as good as TDDW as far as i’m concerned.
Now signed to the brilliant Six Shooter Records the new records is out on 2nd August (Canada) and Sugarhill records are releasing it worldwide on 18th October. Their next shows are Edmonton F0lk Festival and then various dates across Canada and beyond. Go see em.
If you really can’t wait for the album to be released you can stream it here.
