Category: Folk

Laura Veirs – Daytrotter Session

Laura Veirs visited the fine folks at Daytrotter back in March to lay down some beautiful, acoustic tracks.  The tracks are lush, gentle, and reminiscent of Summer evenings past.  The more I listen, the more I am captivated by them – and it seems I’m not alone.  Colin Meloy has described her most recent album – July Flame – as “the best album of 2010.”  (It’s worth noting that he said this in January, which I take to be a sign of confidence rather than sarcasm.) As her site describes it:

[July Flame] explores the emotion of mid-summer. Drenched in wood smoke, sunlight, pollinators, pastoral dales, fireworks and warm nights, her lyrics explore the dichotomy between one’s desire for permanence and security and the realization that such things rarely exist.

And there is a sense in all of these Daytrotter tracks that things are both beginning and ending at once… that the world is both waking and sleeping, and that you are, indeed, caught between the two.  Follow me for more…

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Laura Gibson and Ethan Rose: Bridge Carols

I’ve discussed Laura Gibson before, but the need keeps coming back to revisit her work.  Gibson is a powerhouse – evolving and revolving with each passing moment.  And so it is no surprise that her collaboration with fellow Portland resident Ethan Rose represents another step forward.  The Bridge Carols website describes it like this:

Bridge Carols, the new project from Portland, OR friends Laura Gibson and Ethan Rose, began as a conversation of mutual appreciation and curiosity — a shared desire to challenge old ways of working. Ethan had mostly distanced his music from words, while Laura had often felt bound by them.

To wit: Steeped in the fingerpick-guitar rudiments of folk music, inspired by the expressionism of classic jazz vocalists, and finding common ground in the minimalism and ear-taunting of the avant garde, Laura Gibson alights on a branch of the music tree that no one else has found (NPR called her last release Beasts of Seasons “a quiet masterpiece.”) Sound artist and composer Ethan Rose has released recordings, scored films, and created sound installations (upcoming exhibitions include a collaborative installation with glass artist Andy Paiko at the Museum of Contemporary Craft.)…

…As the project developed, Laura began improvising lyrics and wordless vocalizations, stream of consciousness singing that tumbled out of her in long trailing waves. They recorded in the basement, the forest, and the field – each session having its own unique mood as Laura reflected from subject to subject.

The result is something that moves subtly, yet deliberately, and plunges the listener into a hazy, breezy Summer evening.  The music calls out for space, and, in that space, silence.  It does not overwhelm, or give into fits of bombast, but, instead, it washes over you with a simple, earthy beauty.  Here’s how Dusted Magazine puts it:

Part of the beauty of Bridge Carols—and this is a beautiful record—is the way that the line between real and contrived, natural and synthetic, shifts under your feet. Still, the music seems redolent with memory, imagination and doubt, strange yet recognizably reflecting the most mysterious parts of the human experience.

This is indeed a record to lose yourself in.  Its constellations of sounds need to be absorbed slowly, and are perhaps best appreciated in private.  There are movements in these sounds that stir echoes deep within, and then call them forth.  Listen to the whole thing below, and see for yourself – preferably on a day when you’ve nothing to do, and no one to call you away.

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Mountain Man – “Soft Skin”

It’s true that our brains are fundamentally designed to perceive harmony.  We separate the world out by like and unlike, and we order things based on categories of similarity.  It’s what we do, and, in some cases, it happens entirely without our knowing.  Musical harmony is one of those things that just happens.  The brain already knows about musical patterns.  Play an ascending scale for someone, stop on the 7th, and their brain will still resonate at the missing frequency (octave).  When it comes to harmony, we have all kinds of ideas about consonance and dissonance, and these are directly tied to our emotional centers… Harmony simply flows through us, and stirs heart and mind in equal measure.

All of this being a roundabout way of saying that it’s no surprise that the gorgeous, haunting harmonies of Vermont’s Mountain Man are often the focus of reviews.  Stereogum writes:

As everyone mentions, Vermont trio Mountain Man doesn’t include any men. What they don’t always mention — Molly Erin Sarle, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, and Amelia Randall Meath often harmonize like one person ghost lost in the Appalachians, all shadows and dew and shooting stars (even when they’re playing indoors in the afternoon at SXSW).

And their bio at Partisan – the label that is releasing Made The Harbor on July 20th – adds:

The music of Mountain Man is nestled in the tradition of American folk, but shoots like diamond dust out of the nest into the high, wide atmosphere. Their songs are shaped by three searching voices, encompassing harmonies and a shared belief in and love of the world.

There’s not really a lot to add.  The music is, indeed, ethereal, and it commands your full attention.  It has a beauty that speaks of ancient ways of storytelling, and also a vibrancy that speaks to a living, oral tradition.  It is both earthy and sophisticated, and, above all else, it is beautiful.  Follow me for some songs from their 2009 Mountain Man, a copy of “Soft Skin” from their forthcoming Made The Harbor, and a performance video:

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Ghosts I’ve Met: “Payphone Patience” EP

Sometimes, though not often enough, the Fates conspire to start your day off just right.  And so it was, this morning, when Ghosts I’ve Met‘s debut EP on Yer Bird Records – Payphone Patience – arrived in my Inbox.  Ghosts I’ve Met is – according to Yer Bird – “…a musical project that came to be in Seattle in 2005 by singer songwriter & musician Sam Watts.  There are often a cast of musicians that find themselves anchored by the songwriting talents of Sam Watts that then become “Ghosts I’ve Met”.”  Those musicians have included Margaret White of Sparklehorse, Darren Jessee of Ben Folds Five, Brent Arnold (Modest Mouse, Built To Spill), as well as Michael Lerner of the Antlers.  Jessee plays piano on Payphone Patience.

The music itself is beautiful, lush folk music that reminds me of so many late nights spent driving through the sparsely-populated expanses of Western Massachusetts.  There’s a frost that attends Payphone Patience, and it feels that only the delicate, warm layers of harmony and strings keep it at bay.  Indeed, much like the campfire that you would expect to find these songs by, the warmth of the EP seems to swell over its five-song play list.  Listening to the album, one feels as if the ghosts that Watts’ evoked in the EP’s title are only just out of sight, and that they might very well come to sit with you – or, perhaps, within you – for a good long while.

I confess that this is the first I’ve listened to the music of Sam Watts, but it feels so very much like something that I’ve known and loved for ages.  It’s calming, and, in the best sense of the word, precious.  A feeling that’s truly hard to capture without using a phrase like “a giant reflecting pool for the soul.”  But as I’m no longer in tenth grade (I am, in fact, in the 21st grade), I’ll have to let that one go… Instead, I’ll tell you that it makes me think of dusk, and of breathing in some strong lapsang souchong while a hint of Autumn air moves gently under my collar…

I strongly encourage you to head over to Yer Bird and grab a copy.  It’s out today in digital release.  They’re absolutely right when they say that “you won’t regret it.”

Follow me for a sample and a video, and then go check out Ghosts I’ve Met on myspace:

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Breathe Owl Breathe – Daytrotter Session

From Michigan, by way of Daytrotter, comes yet another triumph.  Breathe Owl Breathe is a three-piece folk/indie band comprised of Trevor Hobbs (Percussion, Piano, Toys), Micah Middaugh (Singing, Guitar, Banjo), and Andréa Moreno Beals (Singing, Cello).  Their songs instantly take me back to Michigan: to evenings where dusk drags on forever in a big sky, where the shores of lakes may as well be oceans, and where settlements pop up like afterthoughts in an otherwise “open” landscape.  The songs are playful and mystical, earthy and ethereal, and they seem to simultaneously speak of dreams and waking.  On the subject of dreams, Micah writes this about the band’s name:

The name Breathe Owl Breathe came from a dream I had. There was an owl that was cutting its way through the cold, still night. (Whoever was in charge of the cinematography of the dream—my hatʼs off to them.) It was from the perspective of just above a field mouse scurrying through blades of grass. The mouse then found a little divot in the ground, laid down on its back, and gave its last breath. The breath rose up into the sky, passing by the owlʼs beak. The owl gave a breath, turned its head, and decided to fly away. Suspended in the air, I watched the owl weave its way out of sight, flapping three flaps on one wing before switching to the other wing to do the same. I had never seen a bird fly that way. I woke up and wrote “Breathe Owl Breathe” on the windowsill with a ballpoint pen, then fell back to sleep. The pen was out of ink, so the writing (I discovered the next morning) was more of an indentation of the words into wood. I called Andréa up, she wrote down Breathe Owl Breathe, the dream came back, and we had ourselves a name.

I think Derek Barber of The Michigan Daily describes their sound best: “Breathe Owl Breathe makes music of honest curiosity: Music that confounds a listener with its relentless humility, while somehow entrancing an audience with its loveliness at the same time.”  My personal favorite of the Daytrotter tracks is “Dog Walkers,” which kind of makes me think of a marriage between Great Lake Swimmers and Evan Dando.  For me, it all comes down to this lyric: “If the light bends, friend, bend with it.  You are a fallen star.  Pick yourself up…”  There’s something that glows in this track, even as it reminds me of the rain and fog.  But maybe that’s just the Midwest?  If straight-up sunshine’s your thing, then look no further than “Birdz.”  It’s lively, warm, and just dripping with onomatopoeia.  What more could you want, right?

Follow me to have a listen.  You can also visit their page, or their myspace page, for more.

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