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Still In Season

2006-05-17T08:57:00.000-04:00

Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man live on KEXP with two beautiful acoustic tracks from their album 'Out Of Season'.

Technorati Tags: Music, MP3, Beth Gibbons, Accoustic

Listen to 'Mysteries'
Listen to 'Resolve'

Jana Hunter

2006-05-17T04:15:00.000-04:00

BlogUp Musique has produced a compilation of Lullaby songs by independent artists, that are real gems. Credit goes to songs:illinois for pointing it out.

One track that is especially beautiful is 'Oohuuh' by Jana Hunter. Some more tracks can be heard at her MySpace location. This is lovely, simple, spare and powerful music.

Technorati Tags: Music, slocore, alt-country, Jana Hunter

Listen to 'Oohuuh'

Cowboy-Alien Groove

2006-05-16T02:09:00.000-04:00

Gram Rabbit have a new CD out, 'Cultivation,', sequel to 'Music To Start A Cult To', and they did a show on KCRW's MBE. What a mixture - people have used 'Old West' and mentioned Jefferson Airplain, I'm reminded of the B-52's and there's sampling wizardery going on... You'll have to listen for yourself.

There's a chinees ho-down song at the end of the show!

Listen to the MBE show
Listen to 'Dirty Horse'
Listen to 'Witness'

Palestine, Texas

2006-05-15T08:58:00.000-04:00

T-Bone Burnett is an all-round musician, producer, band member in Bob Dylan's band it's real fun to see and hear him on this KCRW show singing material from his new Album 'The True False Identity'. I love the way he shows up at the KCRW studio with a sweater and tie... Palestine, Texas, is track #2 on the new Album.

He has another new album out 'Twenty Twenty - The Essential T Bone Burnett' which is fun. My favorite though is 'T-Bone Burnett' from 1995 which is a country-folk kind of a deal, in which Burnett sounds a little like Johnny Cash, which reminds me that I read that he worked with the stars of the movie made about Cash, 'Walk the Line'

Get 'T-Bone Burnett' for $3.94

View Burnett on MBE

The Boss pays his union dues

2006-05-01T07:53:00.000-04:00

NPR's All Things Considered is streaming a track from Bruce Springsteen's 'We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions'.

If you go to the Amazon page, you'll see a video clip of the same song...

It's a much more energetic take then the Seeger original, with a zydeco accordion added to the party.

Listen to 'John Henry'

More Julie Doiron

2006-04-27T09:50:00.000-04:00

Goodnight Nobody has been out since 2004, and is as good as anything Julie Doiron has ever recorded.

I like this quote from the Cincinati City Beat: "Although she is often compared to Joni Mitchell, Doiron's moody minor key whispers make Mitchell seem almost giddy"

Got this from 3hive!

Get album for as low as $4.98!

Listen to 'No Money Makers'
Listen to 'Dance All Night'

Dana Falconberry

2006-04-26T09:08:00.000-04:00

She's from Austin, has a sweet and sad voice, and an upcoming EP, named Paper Sailboats, the title track of which you can hear here.

She is also featured on an Italian podcast, Indie - Eye. Get the episode here (21.9 MB). It's fun, starts out in Italian, but then we get Dana singing several tunes and reading out of Tom Soyer...

songs:illinois is were I found this exeptional song on. Check it out, Craig has plenty good stuff on his pages.

Listen to 'Paper Sailboat'

Laura Veirs in Concert

2006-04-24T09:14:00.000-04:00

Listen to a live concert from Laura Veirs as recorded by NPR On March 1st. It's acoustic, solo, sweet and neurotic, in a nice way...

Listen to concert

She has a Neil Young Roadie!

2006-04-10T09:05:00.001-04:00

I don't usually like the allusions to one artists when you are looking to describe another (although I have done so myself, here for example). But when I listened to the show Lucinda Williams recorded for NPR' All Songs Considered, I kept thinking - it's beautiful in so many ways - like a Neil Young show might be. The country/blues/rock/gospel and country again mixture, with great melodies, great voice. This show has been playing on my PC in a loop in the past several weeks.

And then I heard her saying one of her roadies works with 'Neil'...

Strangely, the CD 'Live @ the Fillmore' is not that great. I don't like her presentation - too coarse. 'World Without Tears' is better, with some of the great tunes she plays on the show like 'Ventura' and 'Three Days'.

New Jolie Holland CD out in May

2006-04-06T06:13:00.000-04:00

The lovely Jolie Holand has a new CD in the works - 'Springtime Can Kill You'. Click the link on the right to stream the title track.

BTW, I've udated my original Jolie Holland post so it is linked to some 'Catalpa' tracks, instead of the now dead link to the whole album...

Listen to 'Spring Time Can Kill You'

Music from the Prairies

2005-12-22T10:45:00.000-05:00

Cara Luft is a young woman originally from Calgary, currently based in Winnipeg I think, and she seems to tour extensively. She is or was also a part of the Wailin' Jennys band.

The track that caught my attention is not found on her first album, Tempting The Storm. It's the hauntingly quiet 'Springtime on the Prairies' (click the link on the right). It's a complete story told in 4 minutes 18 seconds. Wish I could do that.

I've put a link to the 'These Times We're Living In, A Red House Anthology' because it has a great Wailin' Jennys tune on it as well as tunes by Ronin and Linda Williams, John Gorka, Peter Ostroushko and many others I might do posts about some day. And because I like the cover art...

Listen to 'Springtime on the Prairies'

Enraptured!

2005-12-20T15:14:00.000-05:00

Laura Veirs manages to look completely different in every picture taken of her. Compare the image on her latest CD - Year of Meteors, to how she looks in her recent KCRW Gig. Her music is always beautiful, minimalist, introspective. Look for 'Spelunking' and 'Magnetized' starting at about 22:30 minutes into the gig, both from 'Year of Meteors'.

My favourite though is 'Rapture', from Carbon Glacier her previous album. "With photographs / And magnetic tape / We capture / Pretty animals in cages / Pretty flowers in vases / Enraptured ..." You can hear it here, second track in the player.

Listen to 'Rapture' perormed by a group of French kids

Kate Earl

2005-10-09T08:56:00.000-04:00

Kate Earl comes from Alaska, has a Jazzy twang mixed in with a beautiful voice, autobiographical poetry - that's all I know about her except for that her music is lovely.

Hear and watch a recent set she did on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic.

buy now for $7.77!

Watch KCRW set

The Shins and paper cows

2005-09-04T09:59:00.000-04:00

The Shins are a fun pop band. The reason for this post is a music video made by the Israeli multi media creator Adam Bizanski for one of their tracks , Pink Bullets.

It's shot entirely in stop motion, and all on a table in his room. And the cows - they are allmade from paper but have the most expresive faces you could ever imagine, on a cow that is. You need to watch it to understand.

And wouldn't you know it, there is a KCRW gig here.

Watch 'Pink Bullets'

Emiliana Torrini

2005-09-01T15:41:00.000-04:00

Born in Iceland, has an Italian name, sings in English - this is not Americana, Toto… But the songs on Emiliana Torrini’s second Album, Fisherman’s Wife, are acoustic, mellow and heartfelt. Maybe it’s Alt-Nordic, or Slo Bjork :-)

So here is another gem from KCRW’s archives - a studio appearance by Emiliana, including a short interview.

Watch the KCRW gig

Feist - Fire and Ice

2005-07-31T04:56:00.000-04:00

Another Wow moment - another brilliant star come down from Canada, with a voice full of emotion and color, lyrics that grab you strait away and a presence that shines through the music and makes you want to meet the singer behind it.

So now you can, sort off. Click the link on the right and watch a studio appearance on KCRW's 'Morning becomes eclectic'. Don't miss the second or third song, about 8:30 minutes into the interview, where she accompanies herself by doubling her voice - pure magic. This does not seem to be from her published album by the way.

Let it Die, her first solo album has a richer sound, but keeps the intimate sound and feel of this broadcast.

She seems to tour a lot! Has anyone here been to any of her shows? What are they like?

Watch studio appearance

The Glass

2005-07-28T10:54:00.000-04:00

the Glass come from Memphis and the Memphis Flyer has this to say about them "They can shift gears from straight-up rockers to creepy but artfully arranged melancholic moaners. They make hopelessness so damn romantic you almost want to go out and throw your life away so you can feel half as beautifully lost as they sound". Obviously, I couldn't have said it better.

Tell me it's snowing starts with the words: "I'm a minor poet / you're a finer breed ..." Sounds a little like Songs Ohaya's Molina...

Concorde has only been released locally but I've included a link to some used copies you can pick up on the web.

Buy for as little as $2.15

Listen to 'Tell me it's snowing'

Billie Holiday in Overalls

2005-03-22T06:34:00.000-05:00

There is so much good music out there, but once in a while you come across an artist that plain knocks you over. Jolie Holland just did that to me. Born and raised in Texas, and with Creole roots, her music has a Southern sound but with a West Coast shine and brilliance.

As she says in Old Fashion Morphine from Escondida "It was good enough for my grandpa - it's good enough for me...", tradition is always important and evident here in singing style, melody and arrangement. Yet the sound is sharp and the themes up to date. The Catalpa CD has an especially brilliant sound, considering it was not intended for public ears. Listen to Black Stars from this demo-turned-very-well-seller...

Don't miss the opportunity to stream the whole Catalpa album (link on the right). Who knows how long it will stay available! There are about four minutes of silence about five minutes into the stream - don't despair, the music returns at 7:58 or so.

The title for this post comes from a 3hive post BTW.

Update (April 6, 2006): The Catalpa stream is no longer available. Instead, you can stream 3 tracks from that albom using the links on the right. Enjoy.

Listen to 'Catalpa' tracks:
All The Morning Birds
December 1999
Ghost Waltz

Riviera & Quasar Wut-Wut in Chicago

2005-03-21T03:58:00.000-05:00

Glorious Noise Records, the indie label offshoot from the online music community, Glorious Noise is releasing 'At the End of the American Century...' by Riviera, at a release party at Schubas in Chicago on Saturday, April 2. Quasar Wut-Wut and the Paper Airplane Pilots are opening.

Here is a live Neil Young cover by Riviera - Revolution Man.

Quazar Wut Wut do a great version of The Partisan which was made famous by Leonard Cohen and also performed by Joan Baez, and Israel's Esther Ofarim, and is actually a french resistance song.

Listen to entire album

Piney Gir is lots of fun!

2005-03-15T02:42:00.000-05:00

Angela Penhaligon (aka Piney Gir) is from Kansas, lives in London, has been a game show contestant and front-woman for Vic Twenty, an Analogue Synthpop (?) band...

Her debut album is full of fun, with a Country twang and a mixture of Electro sounds, sometimes loud and sometimes mysterious.

Confused - listen to the two tracks here, and note her lovely, versatile voice go through all the different styles.

Listen to 'K-I-S-S-I-N-G'
Listen to 'Greetings, Salutations, Goodbyes'

Stream this Blog!

2005-03-14T05:53:00.000-05:00

This is neat - I found an automatic script that creates an M3U file of all the MP3's referenced from a page. Just click the Stream! link on any page and all the MP3's on the page will start playing on Winamp, or any other player that supports the M3U palylist format.

Currently you will be able to hear tracks from Hannah Fox Larkin, Holly Figueroa, Parker Paul, Bright Eyes, Songs Ohia, Low, and Wilco, all from the Listen! main page... Enjoy!

Young, Unsigned, here is Hannah Fox Larkin!

2005-03-01T03:09:00.000-05:00

Not often do you come across someone so good with so little Google presence. Hannah Fox Larkin has no CD, no published gigs, no web site... But her music is true and her voice is clear, her lyrics mature and her guitar playing although simple, follows in the steps of the best folk tradition.

Listen to Forget and to Letters.

You heard it here first (probably...)

Holly Figueroa - a blast from her past

2005-02-24T08:40:00.000-05:00

Holly Figueroa's recordings mostly sound like they should be heard in a small Cafe with (dare I say it) cigarette smoke thick in the air and rain outside. So here are two songs recorded live a while back (I got them on MP3.com back when the site was full of free tracks, so it can't be later then 1999).

Montana is like a short story about a woman left 'in Bozeman, with a baby and half a tank of gas'. With sparse lyrics and her painfully beautifull voice, you can just see the scene.

A thousand times is an amazing a cappella performance - you have to hear this!

Listen to 'A Thousand Times

Wilco live show stream

2005-02-23T07:07:00.000-05:00

Wilco do not excite me or move me all that much, but are the kind of band I would love to see on stage. I have a feeling they are not going to visit my part of the world all that soon so here is the next best thing - they will be on stage at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Feb. 24, and the full concert will stream live from NPR.org.

I'm not sure what the link will be. I will try to post it later, so watch this space. You should try the All Songs Considered site for a link too.

Listen to 'Handshake Drugs'

Parker Paul - Is He for Real?

2005-02-13T11:06:00.000-05:00

This guy sounds like he belongs in the middle of the twentieth century, with the touch of cabaret in his sound and the flowery, Jazzy piano. His lyrics belong today though – confessional and frank, quirky at times, like a guy who might chat you up at your local.

The song you can listen to here, tells a story of domestic, everyday tragedy – a father and boy who live together after the mother has left. The dry ‘Me and the boy we love each other/We eat our greens, we drink our water/We clean the toilet, we sweep the walk/We listen to each other talk’, turns into the lament ‘We miss our lady/we miss our lady…’ Somehow the matter of fact telling is really sad.

Listen to 'We miss our lady'