drag city
See: Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles get languid with the deep verdancy of ‘Dowsing’
IT’S STILL pretty weird out there right now, right? I think it’s getting better; thank the sweet lord for the gift of music. And one area in which 2021 is shaping up to be really interesting year is in the field of solo Americana musicians who’ve been carving their own, unspooling instrumental path coming out …
Album review: New Bums – ‘Last Time I Saw Grace’: Ben and Donovan reveal an unexpected treat
Last Time I Saw I Grace reveals more depth than the two single drops really hinted it contained; yeah sure, there’s cracking moments of that raggedy-assness, but the run of wider-screen psych-country and other tracks are deft and prettily arranged, less … excellently thrown down than you might expect. It probably isn’t the kind of album that throws you back against the wall at some party downtown for a ruby-red lipped snog; but it very much is the kind of album you end up on a spontaneous road trip with, or hanging with on a rainy Sunday, and realised you had deep feelings for all along.
Track: The Peacers – ‘Ghost Of A Motherfucker’: a lazyass garage nugget
WHAT’S set San Fran’s ace garage outfit The Peacers apart from other bands from that city’s scene they’re travelling alongside (and exchanging members with) is a more baroque, acoustic approach to their garage vision; maybe a little more Pearls Before Swine in that initial mix than say, Bubble Puppy, maybe more ’66 than ’69. Frankly, …
Track: New Bums – ‘Cover Band’: lamentin’ the life of the working combo
NEW BUMS, the duo of Six Organs of Admittance’s Ben Chasny and Skygreen Leopards’ Donovan Quinn, are all set to release their actually really lovely second album, Last Time I Saw Grace, in about three weeks, via the offices of Drag City; and they’ve made it three’s company this very afternoon with a new single …
Track: Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles – ‘I See God’: that old time religion beautifully recast for guitar and banjo
KEYS, the soon-come long-playing conversation between Chicago’s Bill MacKay on guitar and North Carolina’s Nathan Bowles at the banjo, ranges back and forth across the great bluegrass and guitar soli traditions, both pushing forward with free-flying chemistry and grounding their essaying in the canon of the form; and it’s the latter angle they’re examining on …
SEE: Cory Hanson – ‘Pale Horse Rider’: the album’s delayed, but it’s so worth the wait
AS HIS second solo album for Drag City approaches, LA’s Cory Hanson – Wand frontman and on his own clock, potent (and a little dark) psych-country explorer, has released a third single, to follow the deep grace of “Paper Fog” and the dark-hearted brilliance of “Angeles”; waiting, we’re told, placidly for end of days, a …
ALBUM REVIEW: Bill Stone – ‘Stone’: Maine psych-folk nugget sifted and reissued
Drag City dig deep, strike fortune: Bill Stone’s album rings down the decades and it’s really sweet. Sure it’s a little rough ’round the edges, but that’s absolutely part of the charm; you can hear these songs live and breathe, the actual moment of their realisation. Real and delightful
NEWS: Drag City announce new signing AND imprint – hear E.R. Jurken’s ‘Colonels Of The Morning’
DRAG CITY have been so moved by the psychedelic whimsies of new signing E.R. Jurken that they’ve decided the only right thing to do is to is set up a boutique imprint just for him to lead; so a double smashing of the champagne bottle upon the hull, then, as this quirksome talent premieres the …
NEWS: Ty Segall and Cory Hanson issue ‘She Is A Beam’ 10″ on Drag City; hear the lead track
CAST your mind back to the good old days of 2015. Y’know, gigs, pints, going anywhere. Good times. We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Way back then, fuzzmeister Ty Segall and fellow psychester Cory Hanson were burning up a little creative time together, jamming out and totally in the zone, delighting in what they were …
NEWS: Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles announce April album; see the brilliant instrumental bluegrass of ‘Joy Ride’
BILL MACKAY, the Chicago-based guitarist, improviser of note and all-round scion of six strings, sure loves to enter into a two-way conversation with other artists with reliably beautiful results; witness the brace of albums he’s recorded with the freewheelin’ Ryley Walker, Land Of Plenty and Spiderbeetlebee. There was 2019’s darker two-hander with cellist Katinka Klein, …