americana
Album Review: The Mountain Goats – ‘Dark in Here’
If there was a way in which one could imagine themselves frozen in time, Dark in Here would be the soundtrack for that moment. Sincere, grounded, beaming with analogue sound complete with stellar bandmates and an impressive storyteller, indie folk band The Mountain Goats have delivered a narrative of old school blues, jazz, Western and …
With his debut solo album just a fortnight away, Cameron Knowler invites us to contemplation in ‘Kuyina’
WITH HIS two-hander album with Eli Winter, Anticipation, an excellent study in guitar primitivism, just three months behind us in the rear-view mirror, Texas acoustic explorer is just a fortnight or so away from the release of his debut album proper, Places Of Consequence – a study of roots, memory and the land in the …
See: Rianne Downey seizes the day with the honeyed country of ‘Do Or Die’
INVOKING the righteous bluegrassy, feminine country strength of a fine line of songwriters that stretch back through First Aid Kit and Shelby Lynne, and right on back to Dolly back herself, Scottish country chanteuse Rianne Downey is back and proud with her strumsomely lovely new single, “Do Or Die”, in which she moves on from …
Track: Cameron Knowler – ‘Lena’s Spanish Fandango’: a tender and plaintive Americana air
TEXAN solo guitar practitioner and melodicist Cameron Knowler – whose lovely, exploratory album with Eli Winter, Anticipation, we fully embraced in early March – has announced he’s to unveil his first solo album on American Dreams, Places Of Consequence, in mid-July. To tempt you further into his world and to pique your curiosity – and …
Track: Matt Sweeney and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Joan Shelley and Nathan Salsburg – ‘Watch What Happens’: a good old-fashioned swap and cover two-tracker is out now
WITH their long-awaited third joining together in song, Superwolves, the direct descendent of 2005’s Superwolf, out digitally just a couple of months back, you might think Matt Sweeney and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy could rest easy, take a breather; but not a bit of it, they’ve been up to so much. For a start, Drag City are pleased as …
Album review: Lord Huron – Long Lost’: the perfect soundtrack to accompany a tranquil moment
LORD HURON has produced the perfect soundtrack to accompany a tranquil moment of wondering about “Where Did The Time Go?” After an extended period of teasing their fans, American folk band Lord Huron have released their fourth album, Long Lost. It’s an album that tells the story of a complex new character, Tubbs Tarbell, while …
See: Michael Cormier gathers the undead at the karaoke bar for one ‘Last Hurrah’; ringing Americana warmth and limbs everywhere
GUITARS glimmer with a melodic, picked loveliness that can only bring a smile, kinda post-folky; the vocals are a blissed whisper, and an occasional flute circles and glides among sun-kissed slide guitar and trilling synth. The whole thing is hammock-lazy beautiful. But … the zombies? The undead at the forlorn, roadside strip karaoke bar, extremities …
See: Texan guitar melodicist Cameron Knowler announces his debut solo album; come see the video for the atmospheric ‘Puerto Suelo’
TEXAN solo guitar practitioner and melodicist Cameron Knowler – whose lovely, exploratory album with Eli Winter, Anticipation, we fully embraced in early March – has announced he’s to unveil his first solo album on American Dreams in mid-July. To tempt you further into his world and to pique your curiosity – and if you love …
Track: Michael Cormier – ‘Empty Mugs’: A lovely lo-fi Americana drop about waking from a speedboat dream
CO-FOUNDER of the lovely Dear Life Records, home to rootsy talents such as Josh Halper and Wes Tirey, and also the musique concrète stylings of Bolomite Jr. (see our recent Dear Life coverage here); drummer in the indie four-piece Friendship, Philly’s Michael Cormier makes a potent contribution to the beating heart of the US underground …
Track: Trippers & Askers – ‘Chance’s Wake’: warming, spiritual Americana lays out the path towards an album drawing on the near-dystopian classic, ‘The Parable Of The Sower’
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER was a Californian African-American science fiction author whose 1993 novel, Parable Of The Sower, has rippled out with staying power across culture, with its tale of the marginalised attempting to survive a (really, very) near-future ecological and economic collapse. it was only written less than three decades, in the lifetime of many …