Album Reivew: Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s Wolfroy Goes To Town

December 4th, 2011 • Album Review

Bonnie Prince Billy
Wolfroy Goes to Town
Drag City, October 2011
50:21 min

Every finals “season” brings me an new album to put on repeat for about two weeks straight. It’s a tricky business– the choosing of a whole album that at times acts as non-intrusive background but at other times provides a break from the work, demanding whole concentration on the song. I have been saving Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s Wolfroy Goes to Town just for this time – and the wait was totally worth it.

Anyone dedicated to Will Oldham’s previous works, whether it be as Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Palace Music, Palace Brothers or other more allusive Palace side projects will find solace in Oldham’s newest  album. While they’ve been used a hundred times to describe his sound, we must return to words like haunting and minimalist as Oldham has managed to stay true to “his sound” without simply producing a carbon-copy of previous work. Listening to Wolfroy Goes to Town we are reminded of “Ain’t You Wealth, Ain’t You Wise” in “No Match” or “I See A Darkness” in “New Tibet.” Listening to these songs, however, does not make you want to simply retreat into the past and put on Beware or Master and Everyone. Wolroy Goes to Town stands on its own as another work in Oldham’s repertoire, rather than simply the latest installment of interchangeable wintery folk.

The album, rather, is perhaps a caricature of what Oldham knows his audience looks for in his work. It abandons any fullness previously experimented with as it, instead, relies on the more subtle companionship of voice and guitar. The album wants to be listened to on a Maine island cabin in winter without isolation but with enough blankets to feign warmth; there, Wolroy Goes to Town is at home.

An easy album highlight is the shockingly upbeat “Quail and Dumplings.” Maybe it’s the shock factor of a second song on the album with a very noticeable “fuck” in it or maybe we’re just caught off guard by a BPM of more than 49. Regardless, it’s a welcome surprise that surely warrants your eyes to lift from work briefly to gaze and just listen.

While it’s already become my 2011 Finals album, it is sure to endure once the final paper is turned in.

Check out “Cows:”

Review: Tori Amos, Night of Hunters

October 3rd, 2011 • 1 comment Album Review

Night of Hunters is the twelfth solo studio album released by singer-songwriter Tori Amos, a classically trained pianist who has never shied away from the weird, elaborate, or less conventionally popular. To wit, Amos broke away from musicians with whom she had worked in the studio or on tour for more than a decade. She chose to enlist lesser-known talent on Hunters, including her daughter, Natashya Hawley; her niece, Kelsey Dobyns; and principal clarinetist with the Berlin Philharmonic, Andreas Ottensamer. The result is a strong album that begs to resonate from your speakers. Turn up the volume: Tori is back.

Amos has released several concept albums since her 1992 solo debut, Little Earthquakes. Hunters is no different. Inspired by classical music made famous by greats like Bach, Chopin, and Debussy, the album follows the journey of a woman dealing with the end of a relationship in which she has lost herself for the sake of her lover’s happiness. The musical themes and detailed story behind the album, which includes the appearance of a mythological creature who guides the woman’s journey through figurative and literal light and dark, reminds one of an operatic heroine.

Hunters is Amos’ first release on German classical music label, Deutsche Grammophon. “Edge of the Moon” and “Job’s Coffin” are especially stunning. The latter is one of several songs that features Amos’ daughter, who was also featured on 2009′s Midwinter Graces. In “Coffin,” Amos can be heard singing, “Since time why do we women / give ourselves away / we give ourselves away / thinking somehow that will make him / want to stay / make him stay,” leading the listener to think, perhaps, of an opera’s mournful melody that plays before the heroine’s all-too-early and tragic demise.

Though Hunters isn’t rife with “deep weirdness” – that is, the oft-odd lyrics and atypical instrumentation that drove earlier albums like 1996′s Boys for Pele – the album is solid in its delivery and hearkens back to the inspired storytelling and earnest instrumentals that brought Amos her worldwide following. Learn more about Tori Amos and the tour supporting Night of Hunters at http://www.toriamos.com/.

Richard of artroommelody.com

Bon Iver: Bon Iver, Bon Iver Album Review

August 16th, 2011 • Album Review
Tags: Bon Iver

Anyone who knows and loves Bon Iver can tell the tale of front-man Justin Vernon’s debut recording experience. After the breakup of his former band, the end of a relationship, and a mononucleosis infection, Vernon headed to his father’s cabin in the woods of Wisconsin, seeking solitude.

What emerged from this ultimately cathartic experience was the dark, sparse, and hauntingly beautiful album For Emma, Forever Ago. Everything about the album just worked; listeners could hear Vernon’s isolation and identify with his emotional longings.

Four years, an EP, and several collaborations later, Vernon released Bon Iver’s (semi) eponymous sophomore album, Bon Iver, Bon Iver. Just taking a quick listen to his collaborations (an eclectic combination of ambient, experimental, indie rock, and hip hop), and you know this album will be different.

Honestly, with all the praise the debut album received, I’m surprised Bon Iver didn’t get more hate. However, upon listening and relistening, you realize that this sophomore album is still brilliant. And while it’s different, it’s not that different.

Despite the large variety of new sounds present – dirtier and grungier guitars, plenty more horns and woodwinds, 80s style balled synths(on more than one track mind you), random blips and bleeps, metallic percussion, saxophone – there are still more than a few songs that could have been recorded on For Emma and no one would be the wiser.

The first track, “Perth,” serves as a prime analogy to the transition of sound Vernon has taken in Bon Iver. It starts with a few seconds of a breeze blowing and distant clanking (perhaps dinner plates inside a home or rustic wind chimes). Then a soft guitar progression with only a hint of grit on the peaks of the pattern enters and fades. Then a church cathedral vocal harmony joins a military snare pattern under Vernon’s opening verse, finally giving way to the chorus which includes the initial soft guitar progression along with a standard drumset backbeat.

It’s not what you would expend from Bon Iver, but it’s also pleasantly familiar. They definitely sound more like a rock band at certain moments while in other moments I feel I am back in Vernon’s Wisconsin cabin.

If there is one thing consistent between both albums, it is the excellent songwriting and attention to detail. There was a lot of ambience you could pick up from the sparse arrangements in For Emma. You can only imagine the level of detail in this lush second effort. Every close listen draws another interesting detail I hadn’t heard before. Sometimes I have to stop listening and ask myself, “What was that exactly?”

Of all the various sounds present in Bon Iver, I’ve find the most strange and uncharacteristic of that familiar Bon Iver sound to be the strange, sparkling 80s synth tones and pads that occur on “Minnesota, WI,” “Calgary,” and “Beth/Rest.” It almost comes as a little out-of-place or even gimmicky, like a purposefully unexpected turn in an otherwise cohesive plot.

Of course, there are other strange, eclectic moments within the album (the classic rock/country guitar mesh at the end of “Beth/Rest” and the blips and bleeps in “Lisbon, OH”) to reassure the listener that this album, as best I can tell, is a breakout album. Debunking any previous assumptions that Bon Iver has a particular sound or genre.

While I do find the mesh of disparate styles to be interesting, it can also be a bit disconcerting or even annoying for those looking for a cohesive sound. You can’t deny the brilliance of Bon Iver, Bon Iver although I do hope their next effort has a more focused aesthetic and sound.

Mariana Ashley is a freelance writer who particularly enjoys writing about online colleges. She loves receiving reader feedback, which can be directed to mariana.ashley031 @gmail.com.

Band suggestions: You Won’t

August 15th, 2011 • Album Review, Boston, Folk

On a long drive back to Portland from a northern Maine seacoast town I decided to relive some musical favorites from past years at Bates – I played some Tallest Man on Earth, some Langhorne Slim, some Deer Tick and even some Elvis Perkins. It’s been almost two years since these bands were basically my go-to music and I’ve struggled to find anything since then along the same genre of these pseudo-folk-indie-pop stars that I’ve been as excited to listen to on repeat for three moths. So I’ve looked to other genres to fulfill my obsessive personal music interests.

At last, I can return. Boston natives You Won’t rock. They display the same vim of other-year favorites with reflections of recent musical trends – the more soulful-rock oriented influence of popular Mumford and Sons and the less formulaic electronics of Passion Pit’s diminishing popularity. The group’s first album, Skeptic Goodbye, is available for download on bandcamp.

Okkervil River: I Am Very Far Album Review

June 4th, 2011 • Album Review
Tags: Okkervil River

Okkervil River
I Am Very Far
Jagjaguwar
May 10, 2011

As a long time Okkervil River fan, I was convinced that (by me) frontman Will Sheff (the only surviving member of the original line up) could do no wrong. With this in mind, my first  listen of  I Am Very Far actually upset me. There was no immediate “Westfall” (Don’t Fall In Love With Everyone You See, 2002), no “Black” (Black Sheep Boy, 2005) and certainly no “Unless it Kicks” (The Stage Names, 2007). What Okkervil created, instead of previously characteristic energizing riffs masking shockingly dark lyrics (“Some nights I thirst for real blood, for real knives, for real cries”),  is its most surprisingly succinct album to date (I say surprising because it’s actually proceeding a few concept albums). So after a second listen, I’ve become relatively obsessed.

This album is dark to the core and even “upbeat” tracks like “Rider” and “Wake and Be Fine” introduce something new in Sheff’s voice – an instrumental cry that, while highlighted in others albums, becomes almost infernal. And the devil (or at least his voice) comes with company- a whole orchestra, in fact. While the band has previously toyed with instrumental variations, there’s barely a track relying on the simple classic guitar-bass-drum combo. But really, it seems that more and more bands are doing that now so what’s the big deal, right? The big deal is that Okkervil doesn’t just have some extra instruments to add to its sound. Its sound becomes the union of the orchestral, full band (brass without being ska, alright!) and original band instruments.

That’s no accident, either. The band did live recordings on a lot of the songs, having seven guitarists, two bassists, two drummers, and two pianists in one room at the same time. Playing live. You know what the means? That means one mistake and everyone has to start at the beginning. Every time. Sheff admitted in an interview with Pitchfork in April that “we started to discover that the way for it to sound good was for everybody to try not to play with any personal flair at all. The more individuality people were expressing in their music, the worse it was.”  It’s not like performing. It’s like perfecting- which they did.

So clearly this album has that constructed-album-not-just-a-bunch-of-individual-hits-thrown-together thing that, in my opinion, separates lasting musicians (Okkervil River has, in name, been around since 1998) from the scores of fifteen-minute bands that flood “the scene.” That’s not to say, however, that there aren’t stand-out tracks. “Rider” and “Hanging from a Hit” are two such songs.  “Rider” is a bit of a throwback to energized and unrestrained vim of previous albums but retains that good ol’ I Am Very Far maturity that, while not absent in Okkervil’s earlier work, dominates the album. Also, it’s pretty catchy. That’s pretty fun. “Hanging from a Hit” is not so catchy, but easily the album’s best track. It’s melodic. It’s emotional. It’s instrumental. Actually, it’s instrumentally emotional relying on a a simple piano line to deliver some of the emotional punches that usually Sheff’s vocals take care of alone.  His lyrics and wails still do the job, just with some help. His fade away “I like back on my pillow and ask what her husband is like” is a like stranger’s wry morning smirk that you can’t get out of your head until you fall asleep…but it feels good. 

Listeners warning: Be prepared to feel uncomfortable. Be prepared to feel scared. Be prepared to feel initially skeptical. Be prepared to have to unwrap an intentionally created mystery with no definite answer. Be prepared to have it be worth it. Basically, be prepared to fall in love.

Album Review: The Dodos “No Color”

April 4th, 2011 • Album Review

Frenchkiss Records
15 Mar 2011
9 Tracks (41:47)

The dodo was a flightless bird. That, combined with its fearlessness of humans (dumb), made it easy for people to kill so hello, extinction. This was a valid fear for the fate of The Dodos after the 2009 release, Time To Die (with a name like that, maybe even they were aware of the risk of extinction). With Time, they flapped their wings and jumped, taking the risk of trading their energy for a third recording member with an electric guitar.

Apparently the trade was refundable. No Color relies again on the hard-strumming acoustic of Meric Long and the  drumming of Logan Kroeber (with only an occasional electric visitor). It always really surprises me how much I like the Dodos. They don’t have a bassist or a bass drum and I’m a total sucker for low tones. But I’m also a sucker for bands that play their instruments to death, which is a characteristic of the Dodos revisited on No Color that was neglected in Time (a concept even explored in “Good” lyrics, “is it better to be on or be good?”).

When bands do this, it’s easy for me to get fixated on an individual instrument’s contribution to the total sound. This, however, would be very difficult thing to do for No Color. It’s not about a sudden burst of guitar madness or a subtly intricate bass change (well, obviously with no bassist). This isn’t to say that the individual parts are necessarily simple or uninteresting. They rather, force you to focus on the whole above the parts.

This can, likewise, be said about the structure of the album itself. It simply goes together. The flow between tracks is seamless. They wholly rely neither on pause nor linked transitions. It’s nicely organized, but this makes it almost boring at times. The band took risks in the last album and it didn’t go so well. Maybe, then, they were afraid to do it again. There is no obvious stand-out song (like “Fools” on Visiter or every song on Beware of the Maniacs). Although it was a step in the right direction to step back, each track could easily have fit into Visiter. The album’s final track, “Don’t Stop” is pretty- very pretty in fact. The opening track “Black Night” is catchy- very catchy in fact. Maybe it’s not enough, though. It’s like a hand drawn perfectly straight line. It’s impressive because it’s so straight and the color used to draw it is awesome, but it is after all just a line.

(By the way, Neko Case is used frequently as backup vocals on this album. It’s subtle and it’s nice.)

Matt & Kim “Sidewalks” Review – Track by Track

November 4th, 2010 • Album Review, Brooklyn, Electronic

#1: Block After Block – This track sounds more like a remix of a Matt & Kim song – there are just too many layers of sound. It’s more oriental-sounding like “Good Ol’ Fashion Nightmare.” The thing is that Kim is clearly playing a drum machine, and that is a totally new direction for the band. i know they’ve used it a little in the past, but this flat jingly snare sound doesn’t work here. I think this track would be better live.

#2: AM/FM Sound – Again it really doesn’t open like a Matt & Kim song. The verse sounds really tacky, like they struggled to write the melody. The chorus, however, is more fun and catchy with the “oh ay oh”s. This track is a little reminiscent of Cinders, but I just don’t really feel like I could dance to this.

#3: Cameras – I’ve already been in love with this song for over a month. I love the bells Kim is playing as well as the syncopated brass. Matt’s voice sounds so natural and excited in this song. The effects on his voice are just what they’ve always used in their prior albums. True, it’s not clear keyboard/drums of To/From and their self-titled album, but the elements are all there. I think it’s the syncopation and explosive jolting energy which really make this song so amazing.

#4: Red Paint – The drums and Matt’s voice are pleasantly familiar in this track, but then there’s too much cymbal and nintendo noises which distract. The volume levels seem off – Matt and the flute are kind of drowned out by extra vocal layers and whatever else they added in.

#5: Where You’re Coming From – I like this one more than most of the songs on the album. The beat is good and the energy is up a little more. It’s like the “Turn This Boat Around” of this album. It’s the feel-good, change-the-world, inspirational one. Whatever happened to abstract lyrics like “pitchfork, switchblade, salt water and this hose/I tend to believe my eyes before my nose.” No, apparently now Matt is showing people how to become a man, how to walk into a grave, claiming he knows where you’re coming from.

#6: Good for Great – Honestly this song is just asking for Fireflies and Riding Solo mash-ups. This song also just seems so boring…which doesn’t make sense because Matt and Kim are such enthusiastic performers. The lyrics take almost an environmental theme: “So I’ll leave these pages in the trees.” The layered vocals are awful in this song too, unfortunately – making it sound like Hawk Nelson or Forever the Sickest Kids.

#7: Northeast – Aww another song about New England. Okay this is the Daylight outro of this album. Matt’s vocals are pretty good and he references Good Ol’ Fashion Nightmare: “as I said, the skyline’s brighter tonight.” There’s a nice drum addition and synth, but still it’s too simple and cliche for them. It ends very abruptly. It seems like it’s building up, and you’re hoping something awesome will happen next, but no…the song just ends.

#8: Wires – I have a great feeling about this one – it reminds me a lot of Dash After Dash, especially with the low distorted keyboard. I think they could have chosen a more crisp snare sound, but other than that this track is really quite good. The vocal layering fits much better here, and the drumming gets better and better. This is the second best track on the album, I’d say.

#9: Silver Tiles – At first I was really excited that they were doing a Silver Tiles remake. Now I feel betrayed. Matt’s vocals are almost the same as the original though he has a little more control. I HATEHATEHATE the tinny back up vocals. They make his voice sound like Matt Theissen automatically and totally drown him out. I feel like they’re trying to make this sound more professional and mature; and it sucks. They did almost nothing to remake it – they just re-recorded it with their fancy new equipment and effects.

#10: Ice Melts – The last track has a few more classic Matt & Kim qualities, like the keyboard following Matt’s voice and if you listen closely you can hear the bass notes on the keyboard. This, for some reason, sounds more like a track 2 than a last track. There’s definitely more energy in this song, though the balance between instruments and vocals still isn’t quite right. The bells pull the Cameras theme back in. Again the ending is very abrupt – much too abrupt for a last track.

Overall I was clearly disappointed with Sidewalks. I miss their old minimalist keyboard and drums feel – it felt much more genuine and the excitement from Matt’s voice and Kim’s beats was contagious. This album just feels different than their older ones. As an album itself, it’s actually pretty good. It’s just within the context of their other albums it falls very very short. It was smart of them to release Cameras as a single first, though – it’s definitely the best track on the album.

Matt and Kim’s Sidewalks on Pitchfork

Summer Music: tUnE-yArDs

June 26th, 2010 • Album Review, California, Commentary, Folk, Summer Playlist, Video

I investigated the music of tUnE-yArDs (the moniker of Oakland-based Merrill Garbus) the way I always look at new music that’s been getting a lot of rAvE rEvIeWs: with caution. Obscure bands getting rave reviews are even worse…and I don’t want to be that person who’s touting the next up-and-coming band-you’ve-never-heard-of. But tUnE-yArDs was a pleasant surprise.

Let’s start with the basics. tUnE-yArDs isn’t that obscure. Pitchfork, for what it’s worth, ranked Garbus’ debut effort, BiRd-BrAiNs, as the 44th-best album of 2009, which is no small honor. BiRd-BrAiNs was released on the Marriage label, shared by notable acts such as Dirty Projectors and YACHT. She’s now signed on to the UK independent label 4AD, which she shares with the likes of The Big Pink, TV on the Radio, and Bon Iver.

Bon Iver forms a particularly relevant comparison. Like Bon Iver, tUnE-yArDs’ first album was recorded in a makeshift home-studio with whatever was at hand…which was comprised mostly of Garbus’ ukulele. Interviews with Garbus suggest that she owned significantly less gear at the time of BiRd-BrAiNs‘ recording than she tours with now, meaning that what she’s got onstage is more than what she recorded the album with. The album was mixed with free-for-download software on her home computer. This makes the album super-lo-fi, most likely with one mic for just about everything. This style is important in terms of Garbus’ expression, insofar as the album was more a catalog of her life, a journal of how she felt, than a studio album. Garbus herself calls it a ‘living history.’ Live, tUnE-yArDs reminds me more of Professor Murder, with the live band’s sparse melody section and prolific drumming. Like Professor Murder, tUnE-yArDs has multiple drumkits on stage, and often as many as three people banging on them at once, forming a very rhythm-oriented sound. Also like PM, the bass guitar sits pretty far forward in the mix (it’s half the melody section), and the mildly-distorted bass sound really fills a lot of space. Garbus’ voice sails over it all, with an unabashed, sustain-filled tone.

Bottom line? If you love the ukulele, and can take some real lo-fi, please grab BiRd-BrAiNs for a listen this summer. At least a couple of songs should speak to you. If you hated Bon Iver and can’t stand Professor Murder, a police officer who stopped me recently gave me a rave review of a recent Staind show he was at, so you could probably check that out.

Review: Grace Potter and the Nocturnals (Hollywood/Ragged Company)

June 10th, 2010 • 4 comments Album Review, Concert Review, Folk, Rock

I recently had the opportunity to watch Grace Potter perform live.  Each time is a treat. She shakes and drops, teasing the crowd with her rockin’ legs and “candy ass.”  Abandoning her trademark soul, Gracie has gone rocker-girl with her new partner-in-crime Catharine Popper, formerly of Ryan Adams and the Cardinals. Popper’s smart, up-beat baselines and sexed-up style bump the Nocturnals to a new level. But on the new album, and to some extent in concert, our Gracie has gone missing. The soulful organ-grinding girl from Burlington has gone Hollywood, literally. While This is Something certainly marked a shift Potter’s style, she maintained her seductively bluesy sound. However, signing with Hollywood Records seems to have finally hijacked the bands studio sound, turning our Gracie into a magnate for 15-year-old high school girls, alienating the old-guard hippie crowd that gravitated to her during tours with Gov’t Mule.

It isn’t simply the turn towards hard-core rock that has me rattled. It’s that she abandoned what made her special, and worth listening to: The Organ. Without it, she looses the soulfulness that makes her hard-core rockin’ so damn sexy, its distinctiveness in a world of blonde country stars with cookie-cutter verse chorus repeat bridge banality. With Grace Potter and the Nocternals, the band’s latest effort, the B-3 largely fades into the back. Its sound varies. Alternating from choir accompanist to circus master, the Hammond has lost is soul in Ms. Potter’s latest album.  For all those who crave the unnerving, reverb-saturated, rock grind that drove tracks such as  “Treat Me Right”, “Ragged Company”, and “Sweet Hands” on Nothing but the Water, the reality will soon set in that Gracie likes to shake it, and the B-3 hides what all the men in the 9:30 club want to see.

Ms. Potter played many of her new songs, returning briefly to NBTW for brilliant renditions of “Sweet hands” and “2:22”.  She remains a force to be reckoned with on-stage, even if her voice sounds constrained at times. Slipping her shoes back on after a raunchy opening set she remarks, “ I don’t care what anybody thinks, I’m putting then back on ‘cuz they make my butt look like candy. See?” turning her back to the audience and accentuating what could never be even intentionally obscured. Just as her new songs feature a smart lyrical compactness, her on-stage banter maintains a sharp and witty character. Popper eggs her on. “Take it off,” she taunts.  Potter retorts, “talk about womanizing ourselves” as the band plunges into “Ah Mary”, the crowd-pleasing political scorcher about America.

Her new songs however, offer little of the sound that first attracted me to Potter’s music. They are marred by backup vocal tracks that dilute the sheer power of her voice. She rarely lets loose, with outtros comprising loud guitar rock and the occasional Potter shriek instead of the heart melting blues notes she used to hold for miles.  Electrifying guitar solos replace jazzy organ jams. “Tiny Light” showcases her vocal talents at moments, but they become lost in the country-pop choruses. The organ finally breaks through in earnest in “Only Love” a Bonnie Raitt styled throwback about heartbreak and love. It’s truly one of the more enjoyable tracks on the album; the chorus has a jazzy fullness, delivered with a guttural emotion missing from many of the country-tinged offerings.

The single “Medicine” represents some of the best elements of Ms. Potters revamped sound, most notably her songwriting and thumping classic rock guitar lines.  The song describes a seductive “policy woman” who pulls the narrator’s lover away. The seductive intruder has “the medicine”, but our storyteller steals “her bag of rattling bones” and “magic stones” en route to securing “the medicine”.  Our storyteller gets herself a pair of “mojo hands”, ending the song proclaiming, “I got the medicine that everybody wants.”  The phrases are bright and sexy, there’s a sense of achievement in Potter’s voice that mimics the song’s lyrical theme.  Missing from the album is the bands one-of a kind rendition of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” as featured in Tim Burton’s Almost Alice. I’m not sure what prompted this decision, but I regard it as a significant oversight that reeks of big-label money-sucking tactics. The band’s cover is magnificent. Live, it’s spectacular. Popper bangs out the iconic baseline with an addictive coolness and suave that sets the tone for Ms. Potters picture-perfect vocals.

The album is overall quite good. Ms. Potter’s vocals soar on several of the tracks, revealing how truly talented she is. The album seems to be an attempt to channel the electricity and vibrancy of the band’s live work into a studio album. On this level, they have succeeded spectacularly; the album simply rocks from start to finish.  But I can’t help longing for the soulful organ rock that first attracted me to Gracie. It’s there; It’s just in the background now.  Just like her concerts, the album is chocked full of erotic grunts, ohhs and ahhs, sensual reminders of watching Ms. Potter perform live.

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals leaves me asking one question. Where has Gracie gone?  I know she’s still there somewhere, waiting to break loose live in the nation’s most prominent music clubs. The new album however seems to pander to a different crowed. In front of me was a group of high school girls. “They don’t get it,” my concert neighbor, a long time Potter fan remarked about the bands music and the girls. They may not get the old stuff, the music that first seduced me; music that made Grace a tiny light on the otherwise marginal roots-rock throwback scene. However, they do get the new Grace, the Hollywood Records Grace with harmonized back up vocals and mainstream normalcy.  They get it because they are used to it, and GPN puts it right in their laps, no work needed.

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals: B

Live Concert: A

ALBUM REVIEW: Mount Eerie — Black Wooden (EP)

April 29th, 2010 • Album Review
Tags: Black Wooden, Mount Eerie

Phil Elverum is an undisputed, but still relatively obscure master of the American underground. Elverum first made waves when he was still known as The Microphones, in the early 2000s; his 2001 album, The Glow Pt. 2 especially gained him a following for its unusual and varied sonic texture, its naturalism and its range of tape hiss and hum among softly strummed songs and whaling static and feedback. Elverum wondered at his solitary and unique position under the stars and among rocks and trees.

Elverum is a musician both interested in intense documentation and dissemination (e.g. Elverum’s own record label, P.W. Elverum & Sun, and his detailed liner notes, complete with clippings footnotes and illustrations) and his own privacy—he usually tours solo, and he sort of famously lived in solitude in arctic Norway in 2002-3. This concern between public and private selves, and between interiority and exteriority illustrates itself best on his muddled and brilliant 2005 album, No Flashlight.

But years on, Elverum, now in his early thirties, has progressed and matured in his production and lyricism without losing the austere, concerned and articulate poetry of his music. Read more »