Archive | Artist Profiles RSS feed for this section

These Elms, Those Willows

2 Apr

Those Willows

I’m sure we all can relate to saying farewell to many bands that were unable to “make it.” Working at my college radio station, I got to know countless groups that met their demise in some form or another, whether they disbanded completely or simply scrapped their original projects that I had grown to love. It warms my heart (nay, lights my heart on fire!) to see artists I discovered years ago still going strong, and I’m happy to present Those Willows. I played them on the radio, and now they are back with their newest EP, Three Books.

Those Willows are a folk duo based in Portland by way of Detroit. They provide generous piano and acoustic guitar melodies, though that may not be your first thought when you hit play on the opening track, “Winter Skin.” The familiar closeness is gone, replaced by eerie and lonesome distance. “We could fall in love…” Mel Tarter murmurs before the guitar and strings chime in. This is where Those Willows shines; the chord progressions and melodies are always remarkably unique, and they deliver on the other three tracks of the EP as well. Give a listen to my favorite, “The Noise,” below.

Three Books EP is out now. I also highly recommend checking out their full-length, Rivertown; the title track is delightful to say the least. For more information on Those Willows, visit their website or follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Tags: ,

Bells Atlas drop new single, promise new EP

1 Apr

Bells Atlas

I’m not-so-secretly a cynic at heart. Good thing there are groups like Bells Atlas that make me question my nature. Everything about them is fresh and original, starting with their latest track, “Future Bones.”

Bells Atlas cultivate a mysterious truth in their muted-tropical indie rock. The vocals from Sandra Lawson-Ndu follow a rhythm that usually only groups as quirky as Dirty Projectors could pull off, and the lyrics themselves seem fairly bizarre. The song begins, “If future takes me to find our bones/ I’ll mold them together/ and desert this form,” continuing on with overarching themes involving appreciation of the First Law of Thermodynamics. “The lyrics ask the question, ‘What do our future bones look like if our spirits are able to design our bodies?’” the band explains of the nature of the song. Sounds like a riddle to me, but I’m not concerned about solving it. As they tell me, I’m the island and the ocean that surrounds it, and I’m perfectly fine with that. 

“Future Bones” will be on Bells Atlas’s next EP, Hyperlust, which you can pre-order here. For more information on Bells Atlas, visit their website, Facebook, Twitter, and Bandcamp.

Tags:

Closure in the Chords

31 Mar

sufjan stevens

Sufjan Stevens is the son of Rasjid and Carrie, though he was also a child of divorce. Most of his childhood was spent with his father, after Carrie left when Stevens was barely a year old. He spent a handful of summers with Carrie and her husband Lowell in Oregon, which he speaks of in cryptic references throughout the record (such as the mention of blue buckets of gold in the final track, which references a legend about a lost gold mine in present-day Beer Creek). Stevens has always dug into his past to add to the folktales in his music- which is most obvious on Michigan, an album about the very state where he grew up- but permeates all his music in its own right.  One of my favorites includes “Decatur, or Round of Applause for your Stepmother!” from Illinois, where he doesn’t hide his own childhood pettiness: “Our stepmom, we did everything to hate her.” Stevens is prone to bitterness, but he is open to forgiveness (“Appreciate her! Stand up and thank her!”). Forgiving his stepmom for having to deal with him and his siblings at that age was easier than coming to terms with his biological mother’s abandonment. Stevens didn’t (couldn’t) understand this until Carrie was on her deathbed. Then his perspective changed. Arguably, Carrie left for the right reasons, but now that she is permanently gone, she can no longer justify her actions. Sufjan fashioned his reflections on their relationship into the tightly wound Carrie & Lowell, an ode to unconditional love.

Continue reading →

Tags:

Modest Medley: Briars Frome, Snowbride, and Clive Tanaka

12 Mar

Hey, can everyone just shut up for a second and listen to these? This medley features music that will calm you, soothe you, and perhaps even heal you. Don’t fight it, just relax and settle in for a few minutes; you’ll be glad you did.

Snowbride – “Rooftop Islands”                                                       

Southern beatmakers, Snowbride takes mind-melt psych rock and pairs it with droning synths. Blissed out and worn, “Rooftop Islands” has its own hazy sheen.

Find Snowbride on Facebook, tumblr, YouTube, and Bandcamp.

Briars Frome – s/t EP

This is a little darker. Briars Frome creates a landscape with the sounds they knit together. Slow and purposeful, the opening track of their EP “(No) Welcome to Briars Frome,” opens up with fuzzy percussion and humble guitars. They really make thunderclaps work as music, which probably isn’t something you hear every day. The rest of the release follows suit, so be sure to give it a listen in full on their Bandcamp.

Find Briars Frome on tumblr.

Clive Tanaka y su orquesta

My beloved Clive Tanaka. Tanaka is a reclusive Japanese electronic artist that hasn’t really ever been “active” in the music scene. Or at least, I’ve never heard a peep out of him since his masterpiece, Jet Set Siempre 1o. This album was a hit at my college radio station, and “Neu Chicago” was our most popular song for years. Nothing can top those steel drums and underwater vocals.

I hope you don’t want any more information on Clive Tanaka. He has nothing on the web except for a very outdated website, so you could do well to just Google him and see what comes up.

Belongs in a Museum: Monuments and Statues reveal debut album Fractals

9 Mar

Monuments and statues Photo

There is a very important reason why Freelance Whales is my favorite band: prolific banjo-manship. I do not know why, but I just love banjos in all their plucky glory. My earliest banjo memory is when I was a kid watching Steve Martin on SNL perform a silly tune called “Late For School” where he played that glorious instrument. I was hooked. Monuments and Statues’ debut album, Fractals, features prominently a banjo, so, needless to say, I’ve been listening to it on repeat.

Continue reading →

Tags: ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →