Archive

Kelley McRae - Highrises in Brooklyn

Published
by
Olivier
on July 2, 2008
in Acoustic, Alternative, Folk, New Album Alert and Singer Songwriter
. 0 Comments

This will be part of a short-post series, as most of my days have been filled with family, business, and wild life ! So I would like to beg my pardon to the artists for not taking time to probe my mind and writing longer posts. Be sure that I ‘ve taken time in months of listening ( with heart and soul) before suggesting any of the following artists and i’m quite sure most of you will be touched by those talented songwriters.

So the first of this series is the unqualified Kelley McRae ! First ; because, she will speak for me : both her portrait ( … )

and performance !

What else ? Kelley McRae released her first full length ‘Never Be’ - produced by J.D. Foster (Calexico, Laura Cantrell, Richard Buckner) in 2006 : a beautiful collection of honey-sweet harmonies including numerous treasures (Johnny Cash, Stone Cold Sober, Time, Never Be…).

That’s It ? No. Fasten your seatbelt : Kelley forthcoming album ‘Highrises in Brooklyn‘ will be released this August 19th and be produced by Brian Deck (Iron and Wine, Modest Mouse, Josh Ritter, Counting Crows). I didn’t get the privilege to hear more tracks than the ones already available on her myspace page but she’ll confirmed me that ‘Long Walk Home’, the song performed on the above video at the Forcastle Festival will be part of it. Forgive me for the low audio quality of this sample - audio track extracted from the video- but it’s a permanent loop for couple weeks !

 
 Long Walk Home - Kelley McRae at Forecastle Festival [3:03m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 
 Time - Never Be - Kelley McRae [4:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Artist : Kelley McRae - be sure to visit Kelley’s official website as Never be is fully streamable.
Label : SonaBlast
Where to Buy : The Connection, CdBaby.com, Amazon

Guggenheim Grotto - Fee Da Da Dee

Published
by
Trini
on June 30, 2008
in New Album Alert, News and On iTunes
. 0 Comments

I recently was in Dublin, as some of you may already know, I had the privilege of listening to the entire new Guggenheim Grotto album. I was completely blown away. It is absolutely beautiful. From start to finish I felt as if I was taken on this mystical journey of emotions and in the end just felt complete. “Waking up in America” was recently released as a single but is not on this new album. “Fee Da Da Dee” is the first track off the new album. It is one of many of my favorites on this album. To my surprise I just received this little piece of information in my email box:

Irish Single Fee Da Da Dee released 11th July

Our NEW single Fee Da Da Dee will be available to buy exclusively from iTunes Ireland on the 11th of July. We’ve also added Fee Da Da Dee to our music player on our site so if you pop over to Guggenheim Grotto you can listen to it right now.

I’d love to know what everyone else thinks of Fee Da Da Dee. I just absolutely love it!

Guggenheim Grotto Music Player

Jolie Holland

Published
by
Josh
on June 28, 2008
in Folk and blues
. 0 Comments

Jolie Holland’s future career shows a considerable amount of promise.

She blends together a mix of folk, jazz and blues that casts a slow, woozy spell over it’s listener. The categorization of her genre may not be as easily described as it’s effects, but its all beyond infectious. A quick listen on Thursday was quickly heightened to an all-weekend binge after finding everything she’s ever publically released.

There’s a clear progression in her music that was released over the span of just a few years–from solo singer/songwriter to beautifully accompanied songs that still stay true to their more simplistic roots. It’s a bit of an up and down adventure if your more inclined to one of her styles than another, but it’s all wonderful stuff. So dust off those red-plumed adventuring caps and let her sail around your room for an hour or two.

 
 Jolie Holland - Amen: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 
 Jolie Holland - Mehitabel's Blues: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Kate Tucker & the Sons of Sweden

Published
by
Laura
on June 28, 2008
in On iTunes
. 1 Comment

Been absolutely loving the self-titled album from Kate Tucker & the Sons of Sweden. A friend put a song of theirs on a mix CD for me a few weeks ago and I was immediately drawn to the track “In Your Dreams”. I decided to investigate their tunes further and I am so glad I did. Kate has such a stunning voice and the whole album is just solid. This is definately one of those albums to listen to on a rainy day or a Sunday morning.

Kate Tucker & the Sons of Sweden hail from the Northwest corner of Seattle Washington amidst the fisherman and sailors of Ballard. They play lush indie pop with shimmering melodies, sparkling soundscapes, and beats like a train on a track.

Seattle Sound Magazine named them as one of 10 bands to watch in 2008.

You can buy their music on

myspace

iTunes

CDBaby

 
 Kate Tucker & the Sons of Sweden - In Your Dreams: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 
 Kate Tucker & the Sons of Sweden - In The End: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 
 Kate Tucker & the Sons of Sweden - The First Day of the Year: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Take Away Shows - Bon Iver

Published
by
Laura
on June 19, 2008
in Live Performance
. 3 Comments

Yes, I know we tend to rattle on about how much we love Bon Iver here at YCD, but I couldn’t resist doing it one more time.

The fine folks over at La Blogothèque have Bon Iver featured. Go check it out and watch some amazing live performances by Justin & co….I especially loved the performance of “For Emma”…I had a good laugh when they started following the tourists down the street.

The videos are in 2 parts so make sure you visit both pages:

Part 1

Part 2

Eef Barzelay

Published
by
Geordie
on June 16, 2008
in Alternative, Country, Indie, New Album Alert and Singer Songwriter
. 0 Comments

You may be wondering why i’ve been so prolific in blogging the last week or so or maybe you haven’t, maybe you have not even noticed and are too busy to care but the truth of the matter is i had a small operation last week and so therefore have had a bit of time on my hands to listen to a lot more music than i have been able to recently which is about time to be honest as there doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day recently.

Eef barzelay incase you are not aware is the lead singer of the brilliant and criminally overlooked alt/country band Clem Snide. They have been going on and off since the early 90’s (where the fuck did they go?The 90’s,not Clem snide) and Eef has released a few solo albums. His latest, lose big could be a midway contender for album of the year. Seriously not a bad track on this album, Songwriting to match anyone in this category or any other for that matter. His voice has an air of familiarity to it but can’t put my finger on it, i keep thinking Conor Oberst but not sure. Quite a diverse album is this, from the first track could be worse which is something that pehaps would sit gently on a Clem snide album. One of the stand out tracks is The girls don’t care which from the very first note with it’s heavy funky as hell bass line could be dropped into any dance club and it would get people moving, wouldn’t surprise me at all if someone does a re-mix of it, I might do one myself ! The soulful tone is maintained throughout the album but the real killer song on it for me is True freedom, a stop everything and listen track, stunning. Pick this album up asap, i have heard some superb albums so far this year and i keep saying to myself ‘album of the year so far’ but i will tell you hear and now, this one is taking some beating. It just flows effortlessly from one song to the next and when it’s finished you just want to go back and play it again and again. I have also added a track form his 2006’s Bitter honey, enjoy.

Eef Barzelay - True freedom

Eef Barzelay - Well

 
 Eef Barzelay - True freedom [5:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 
 Eef Barzely - Well [3:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Accidental

Published
by
Geordie
on June 16, 2008
in Acoustic, Folk, Indie, New Album Alert, News and On iTunes
. 0 Comments

The Accidental are a band made up of various members of other bands. We have Stephen Cracknell from The memory band, Tunngs lead singer Sam Genders, Hanna Coughlin from The bicycle Thieves and a superb singer that is new to me by the name of Liam Bailey. Together they have created and just released their debut album There were wolves. It’s basically a mixture of all those above bands sounds, whispered harmonies, couple of acoustic guitars, bit of piano,harp, bass and some accordian. This has fence collective sound all over it, not surprising giving that The bicycle thieves are on that label. Free download ‘Illuminated red’ wouldn’t sound odd on a James Yorkston album but as I say it’s a collection of sounds you would find in any of their other bands. Don’t get me wrong this is no bad thing, it’s superb from begining to end. I read in an interview they were trying to intergrate into it something similar to Panda Bear which you can hear at times. Often it sounds to me like it’s improvised in parts or at least the final cut is something that has been created from sitting down and just playing and see what they come up and then giving it a good polish. See what you think.

The Accidental -Time and space

 
 The accidental - Time and space [3:24m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download