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To call the music of Robert Ellis ‘country’ isn’t wrong, but it does miss the complexity of sounds and styles he regularly brings to his music.
The title track of his previous album Photographs stood out for its weepy melody and Ellis’s aching voice.
This year, though, Ellis has emerged with a new album — The Lights from the Chemical Plant — that’s every bit as strong, but shifts focus away from anything overtly honky tonk.
Alt-country artist Jonny Fritz (aka Jonny Corndawg) joined up with Deer Tick’s John McCauley to create a moody soundtrack for the documentary Oxyana, which is about the oxycontin epidemic in Appalachia.
As the New Republic explains, Oxyana “seeks to capture the ravages of prescription drug addiction in Oceana, a town of 1,370 deep in impoverished coal country, not far from the Kentucky border.”
And the film’s stark point of view didn’t go over well with everyone in Oceana. Some felt the depiction didn’t show a fair and full picture of the town.
Still, as the New Republic points out, at a local town hall meeting about the film, “it was plain that local ire over the film was going to be paired with frank acknowledgment of the region’s prescription drug problem. Of all the issues that came up at that meeting, none was the subject of as much concern as drug abuse.”
Watch a trailer for Oxyana (above), or watch the whole thing on Amazon.
And the Oxyana soundtrack is haunting, too. Hear it via a Soundcloud link below.
A song that’s been haunting me this year is “Line of Fire” by the Swedish group Junip.
The band features singer/guitarist José González. Mesmerizing — I can’t stop playing it.
The video for the song, is directed by Mikel Cee Karlsson. Watch it below:
(Featured image at top is a video still that initially appeared on Trendland)
There’s something smartassy about this band that almost makes you want to slap them. But I can’t stop listening to this song. Catchy and brilliant — like the most popular boy or girl in your class, you know that they know it, too. All that aside, though, Foxygen still is one of the best new bands I heard all year.
Curious to hear more?
Three years ago I had never heard the name John Grant. But that year, Mojo named his debut solo album Queen of Denmark their favorite of the year. And like a lot of people who read that review, I was at first puzzled. Then I listened, and based on the deeply personal songs, his haunting vocals, and the warm arrangements (he was backed on the album by the band Midlake), I understood. It’s been a favorite album in regular rotation for me ever since.
It’s great news, then, that Grant finally has a followup album. Called Pale Green Ghosts, it’s already out in the U.K. and is due in stores in the U.S. on May 14.
“Sometimes vanilla just tastes so good.”
A friend of mine (Nate Cavalieri) once said that. He was talking about a Steely Dan video he was sharing. I always remembered it, and thought it made perfect sense in relation to that band’s sort of uber-polished, borderline-bland, radio-friendly pop sound.
Personally I’ve never fully settled on where I stand with Steely Dan. On one hand their sound is ubiquitous radio pop that’s overly crisp, with all the dirt washed off and creases ironed out. The sound can be cloying, and as we all know it’s been impossible to escape for decades.
On the other, man, when you really listen to some of those songs, they’re impressive. In terms of the writing, yes, but especially the production.
And from that perspective alone, an album like Aja deserves its accolades.
Toronto indie-rock band The Darcys today paid tribute to Steely Dan by releasing their own version of Aja–a song-by-song re-creation of the classic 1977 album, though done in their own moody, fuzzy style.
One of the bands that’s been slowly burning its way into my consciousness the past few years is Phosphorescent. It started with their head-turning 2009 album To Willie, which contained all Willie Nelson songs redone with a laid-back approach that both pays tribute to Nelson’s own songwriting and arrangements, but also brings the music inside the circle of 21st century indie-rock. Meaning, Phosphorescent does a fantastic job reinterpreting Nelson’s music with arrangements and voice born from the alt-country side of the tracks, and makes the classic songs like “Too Sick To Pray” and “Pick Up The Tempo” feel fresh all over again.
Listen to the lead track, “Reasons to Quit”–a Nelson song that may have not grabbed your attention before; in the hands of Matthew Houck, however (he’s the main force in Phosphorescent)–with his gently raspy voice that sounds on the verge of breakdown–it’s a clear standout, capturing a moment in time where the characters are teetering on the edge between too much and not enough.
OK, not teetering anymore, they’re slipping into darkness.
I’m a fan of Pedro the Lion, and so I was curious about David Bazan’s solo album, Curse Your Branches. It came out in 2009, and I grabbed a copy from Amazon.
Bazan’s album is a tough one. “It’s hard to be a decent human being,” he sings on the lead track, “Hard to Be.” OK, fine, no problem there, we can all relate. But then it sort of goes deeper into darkness, or, you might say, downhill. Not that dark isn’t a good thing–I’m all for it. But there are some hard, head-on-the-pavement truths his characters are facing in these songs that are pretty tough to hear.
Midlake lead singer Tim Smith at SXSW in 2010
Midlake performed at SXSW 2010, showcasing their new album The Courage of Others. It’s the best album of 2010, and their SXSW showcase was the best live show of 2010. And it’s only March.
UPDATE: A quick taste of Midlake, the epic song “Bring Down,” from their 2010 album The Courage of Others.
