Once we watched the video for "14" from arty-smarty Tallahassee, Florida dream/pop outfit Carrousel, we knew we were on to something good. Taken from the just-released debut album 27 rue de mi'chelle, the track (and charminlingly chaotic video) is all about the "layering dense vocal harmonies, tambourines, 60-ish guitar lines and dramatic piano fills into a dazzling melange of smart, sophisticated art/pop." More DC on Carrousel (listen to "Where Do We Go From Here"), umm, here.
A day late. Sorry. One of those weeks. A fairly slim list of notable DC releases this week but a few nice standouts. New England songwriter Ryan Montbleau heads to New Orleans to record his fine new album of Crescent City R+B/pop, For Hire with some famous local names. Beach House return with the follow up to their fine Teen Dream with the aptly titled Bloom. New DC faves Carrousel deliver one of the more intriguing and promising new albums of sophisticated alt/pop: 27 rue de mi'chelle. And L.A. songstress Meiko is back with The Bright Side, her first new studio album in four years. As always, we've got music to stream and videos to watch, so read below (and link for more)...and check out our larger list, too.
A platinum-selling art/pop star in her native Australia, Kate Miller-Heidke confidently returns with Nightflight, her third studio album that smitten critics have described as "a masterpiece" and "clever, insightful and revealing." Boasting an dramatic, adult-focused sound -- more art than pop -- and a diverse and thoughtful collection of songs written with her husband Keir Nuttall, the successor to her breakout '09 album Curiouser has drawn comparisons with the works of Kate Bush in its sophisticated production, panoramic pop/opera vocals and soul-bearing lyrical edge. "Nightflight is definitely a more vulnerable and exposed record than anything I’ve done before," says Miller-Heidke. "If Curiouser was a playful, dysfunctional adolescent, Nightflight is more like a damaged, melancholy person in her late 20s. With Nightflight, we wanted something darker and more organic, more beautiful and more expansive."
Kate Miller-Heidke - "The Tiger Inside Will Eat the Child" (from Nightflight)
Russian-born, Nashville-based performing songwriter Natasha Borzilova brings a remarkable emotional world view to Out of My Hands, her third album of sumptuous folk/pop embellished with an Americana fringe. Self-produced and recorded in Music City with an impressive band of local studio players, Out of My Hands deftly straddles the pensive, grown-up acoustic/pop creations of the likes of Shawn Colvin with the wide-ranging, roots-driven songs of modern Nashville writers such as Gretchen Peters and Matraca Berg. Borzilova, a classically-trained guitarist with a gorgeous, richly textured voice first came to the U.S. as part of the "redgrass" Russian band Bering Strait. She wrote or co-wrote all of the album's eleven tracks, songs that range from the pain of a failed relationship ("Better Than Me"), motherhood ("Long Night"), her own dark days of depression ("The World Below") and the heartbreaking story of her father, a nuclear physicist who died at an early age after helping direct the radiation cleanup at the 80's Chernobyl disaster ("One Second Flat")...
Natasha Borzilova - "The World Below" (from Out of My Hands)
Natasha Borzilova - "Fisherman's Wife" (from Out of My Hands)
A mainstay of the New England club circuit for the past decade, Ryan Montbleau left his veteran band behind and headed for New Orleans to record For Higher (May 15), a soulful and swinging collection of his own songs peppered with chestnuts from R+B icons Bill Withers, Curtis Mayfield and Eddie Hinton. An invitation a few years ago to write for Crescent City rising star Trombone Shorty inspired Montbleau to journey to the town he describes as "deep, dark and beautiful" and, with help and guidance from producer Ben Ellman (Galactic), assembled studio sessions with a stellar line up of sidemen (or, as Montbleau calls them, "badasses") including Ivan Neville on keys, Anders Osborne on guitar, drummer Simon Lott, and Meters bassist George Porter, Jr. The result is a loose and funky exploration that feels like a natural progression for Montbleau -- and sounds like a whole lot of fun. "This is a totally different record than I've ever made," he says. "Every single person, kind of to my amazement, got into it. They listened to every playback, and they were high-fiving each other. They were great."
Three parts smoky molasses and one part warm whisky shot, the voice of Louise Hull -- the retro-glamour frontwoman of Britain's female trio Louise and the Pins -- sounds like it's beaming in magically from some long-ago bar of Naugahyde booths, overflowing ashtrays and stained walnut paneling. Sultry, richly vibratoed and effortlessly radiating heat, Hull turns melancholy folk into an eerie slow dance where her voice, brought intimately front and center by producer David Odlum (The Frames), sounds so close you can detect the slightest breathy texture. Imagine Julie London recording at Sun Studios in the 50's for the feel of the latest single (and touching video, below) "Bell Jar", the follow up the fine torch of last year's "Melancholy" (a duet with Martha Wainwright) and a song that sets the velvet curtained stage for a full length debut by the end of the year. "The album is going to be like a big story, there’s a lot of light and shade," says Hull. "I’ve got a lot of things I want to say. It’s gonna be emotional!"
Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally of Beach House have been redefining their own brand surreal, flip-flop-gazing art/pop over the course of three albums including '09's breakout Teen Dream. New Bloom (May 15, Sub Pop) continues the dreamy soundscapes with Legrand, the niece of legendary French composer Michel Legrand, and Scally taking us by the hand and leading us through celestial, chiming guitars, dense electronic atmospherics and hymnlike vocal harmonies for a stately sound that touched both Pet Sounds and Cocteau Twins. The duo, who shared co-production duties with Chris Coady say they wanted the self-described "darker" album to be consumed as a real album, a full fledged collection songs with a singular vision. Tracks like the seductive "Myth" and the more delicate shadings of "On the Sea" aren't so much shifts from the Beach House playbook as they are more nuanced refining, adding more complex orchestration -- chamber pop for the XL stage -- and creating moods that seem more attuned to relatively clear-eyed late night headphone bliss than the harsh haze of early AM rays.
There appears to be no shortage of female songwriters Down Under who combine whimsy and arty smarts for a particularly endearing and quirky version of alternative pop. Helen Croome, who performs as Gossling, is the latest to ply that odd and oddly endearing musical hybrid currently on display from the likes of Lisa Mitchell, Kate Miller-Heidke, Sia Furler, Sarah Blasko and Megan Washington. Third EP Intentional Living, released last month in Australia, preserves Gossling's sleek, deliciously off-kilter songcraft while injecting a slightly darker theatrical element and retro-pop nostalgia into the proceedings. Lead single, the handclap-rhythmic "Wild Love" features Gossling's distinctive helium-laced vocals and a melody that swoops and dives from major to minor chords with a spaghetti-western Telstar twang while the heartfelt piano ballad "Love Falls Foul" laments unrequited feelings with a graceful, tender touch. Listen to the full EP at Gossling's Bandcamp page. "Wild Love" video below...
When Scottish singer/songwriter King Creosote (aka Kenny Anderson) and electronica-tician/ producer Jon Hopkins decided to form a rather unlikely musical alliance, who could have imagined that their 2011 collaborative debut album Diamond Mine would become an equally unlikely critical phenomenon in the U.K. Nominated for the prestigious Mercury Prize and prominent on a slew of year end Best of lists, the project involved the inspired reworkings of King Creosote songs spanning a couple of decades. Last month Diamond Mine was reissued in an "expanded" version, adding a generous six songs to the disc's original seven. Among the additions: the classic-sounding, folk-rocking "Third Swan", featuring backing vocals from fellow Scot K.T. Tunstall. "To exist as the ugly duckling between two paragons of swan-like virtue is, no doubt, the metaphor that ties all of this together," says Mr. Creosote. "In short, there was a lot swirling around my head in the dark weeks leading up to the end of 2011, and it had to end up on this, the penultimate page of the Diamond Mine travelogue."
An eclectic mix of music on today's new release turntable as some of our favorites in the Esteemed Singer/Songwriter category go up against a few of the more Adventurous Indie rock and alt/pop bands. From the former, we give you Greg Laswell, Rachael Sage and Sara Watkins (of Nickel Creek). And from the latter, we suggest the latest from Silversun Pickups, Here We Go Magic and Cheers Elephant. And in-between: the magical art-pop of Simone White, the U.K. debut of velvet-voiced chanteuse Ren Harvieu, actress Irene Jacob's cool French/pop diversion and Keane's Strangeland. Eagle fans will note the release of Glenn Frey's croon-fest After Hours while Blur afficionados will want to check out Damon Albarn's Dr. Dee project. Lot's more to review, read and listen below...
Silversun Pickups - Critically acclaimed "Best New Artist" Grammy nominees gracefully walk the tightrope between bold, intelligent art-pop and prickly, psychedelic indie/ alternative rock on their third longplayer and follow up to their '09 breakout Swoon... frontman and songwriter Brian Aubert says he and his fellow Pickups marked their tenth anniversary together by discovering a certain "playfulness" in the new tracks, adding, "we just wanted to let it all fly"...in-demand producer Garrett "Jacknife" Lee (R.E.M., Snow Patrol) recorded Neck at his Topanga Canyon studio //Release: Neck of the Woods (May 8, Dangerbird) // Sounds like: Aubert's boyish vocals continue to be an interesting counterpoint to the L.A. band's dark, incendiary sonic underbelly and angular melodic structures...there's a gleaming, brittle sheen just below the surface of many of these tracks, programmed beats, booming bass lines and electronic washes rubbing against the immaculate, echoing guitar riffs...
Silversun Pickups - "Here We Are (Chancer)" (from Neck of the Woods)
Silversun Pickups - "Bloody Mary (Nerve Endings)" (from Neck of the Woods)
Scottish neo-folk songwriter Rachel Sermanni just keeps getting better and better. New single "Eggshells" arrives on the heels of her January Black Currents EP, a song that won't diminish the Laura Marling comparisons but certainly puts the 19-year-old songwriter in a position of carving out her own acoustic persona. As we noted in our earlier post, "Sermanni finds that sweet spot between refreshingly unadorned directness and artful ornamentation, quiet laments and soaring orchestration all centered around a darting sand-textured voice that moves from tumbling lyricism to moments of serene, sweeping grandeur..." "Eggshells", true to it's title, is a more delicate affair than her more experimental Black Currents jam, a sweetly serene, chamber-folk melody carried lightly by Sermanni's cool, breathy vocals. No word on a U.S. signing, but the new single is available digitally this week.
We first tipped you to Athens, GA's Easter Island in January of last year with the release of their excellent track "Proud" and March EP Better Things. Now with a new rhythm section in place, the band's new debut full-length Frightened, arriving July 3, picks up where "Proud" left off, once again surrounding the airy tenor vocals of brothers Ethan and Asher Payne with the ringing guitar lines, richly textured art-pop dynamics and sweeping melodies normally found across the Atlantic and band's like Keane, Snow Patrol and Coldplay. New songs such as the expansive title track are majestic with a small "m", big enough to spill out of the speakers in dense layers of sound but with enough understated style to keep any overt bombast at bay.
Simone White's intimate and ethereal chamber/folk acousticism gets a major makeover on her third full length Silver Silver (May 8, Honest Jon's), her wispy, whispered vocals intact but now augmented with an equally delicate, occasionally intense array of cool electronic textures, tapping beats and an atmosphere lifted from some shadowy dreamscape. From the opening seconds you realize that there's a subtle whiff of dark, arty theatricality wafting thoughout her elegant songs, the strains of sweet melody tempered with a seriousness of purpose that, once you sign on and let go, opens one intriguing door after another. Notes, beats and White's airy voice seem to be suspended in air, a closeness that defies the spaciousness and spareness of the production. Every word is right at your ear, each sound handpicked (or plucked) with the backing percussive sounds adding both subtle punctuation and rhythmic flow. The lyrical themes are immense, the poetic approach oblique but thoughtful, as on the the drifting, layered ode to the Japanese tsunami "In the Water Where the City Ends" (video below) or the mesmerizing seven-minute title track, a duet with Andrew Bird that builds from violin-accented folk to a flurry of dense, weaving patterns of minimalist clatter.
"Unashamed Desire" puts on stark display an emphatically different Missy Higgins than the ingratiating persona that launched the multi-platinum international hit album On A Clear Night five years ago. The charming, edge-free folk/pop of Higgins' earlier songs like "Sway" and "Peachy" were hardly pop pap but they were also safe and mostly mainstream, offering warm melodies and cool, sometimes distant, lyrical centers. Her bold new album The Ol' Razzle Dazzle, arriving June 1, turns the tables stylistically, thanks in great part to her partnership with fellow Aussie, now Nashville-ian and DC fave Butterfly Boucher in the producer's chair. Need proof? Look no further than the video -- and provocative modern dance moves -- of her "Unashamed Desire". This is hardly radical, border-pushing stuff. But it does show a more adventurous, assertive and, well, W.T.F. attitude in the mix. As Ms. Missy puts it, "I've got nothin' to hide."
"Writing songs when you aren’t heartbroken or self-destructive requires a little more work," observes Greg Laswell of his own personal, positive "reboot of sorts". The pain of relationships gone bad and the various emotional fodder that fed his own creative struggle have pretty much been happily on the wane recently for the performer known for his way with a smart melody and distinctively weary hang-dog vocals. Married now to fellow performing songwriter Ingrid Michaelson and relocated to New York City, Laswell completed his new fourth album in record time (for him), lugging his portable "studio" to his in-laws' small, seaside town in Maine -- inspiring the album's title from lack of cell phone reception -- and laying down most of the album in under three weeks. Landline (May 8 CD, out now @ iTunes, Vanguard), he says, is "larger". It's also brighter, sharper and more collaborative as he shares the mic with a few of his "favorite female singers": Michaelson, Sara Bareilles (on the album's first single "Come Back Down"), Elizabeth Ziman (of Elizabeth and the Catapult) and Sia Furler...
For her sixth album Tangerine, Louise Taylor and producers Peter Galway and Annie Gallup opted for a dramatically direct approach: keep her songs in a stark, stripped down but plugged-in form utilizing simply Taylor's expressive voice, her trusty hollow body Duesenburg electric guitar and, in a stroke of divine luck, the masterful percussive work of renowned drummer Jerry Marotta (Peter Gabriel). The exquisite end result is a collection of songs steeped in late night atmospherics, both personal and powerful, an album that easily and firmly reestablishes Taylor as one of our finest, if unheralded, writers and performers. With subtle, rootsy finesse, Taylor turns "China Doll" and "Baby Hands" into sweetly turned blues gems while the raw, steamy "Morning Memphis" and "Riderless Pony" veer confidently into Ry Cooder, John Hiatt and Sonny Landreth territory. For those who felt a certain kinship with the latest from Bonnie Raitt, we suggest Tangerine as a tart and potent chaser.
Ontario singer/songwriter Matthew de Zoete says "a darkened room, good headphones and a glass of single malt" are the preferred atmosphere and accompaniments to his new album Colour Film (May 8). And who are we to disagree? Armed with a sheaf of songs written on the farm where he lives with his wife and daughter, de Zoete worked with producer Les Cooper and some handpicked studio support to flesh out the tracks. The result is a project that gracefully moves from tender acoustic folk to densely layered art/pop, sometimes -- as on the fine album opener "The Good Life" -- within the same song. Hoping to make a "collection of songs that were direct and succinct enough to be the soundtrack for a short film", de Zoete brings that particular focus to the album's title track (video below) as images of his grandparents in home movies served as reflective inspiration: "I thought your life was black and white but it's colour now...to me".
Belgian songwriter Selah Sue has become something of a sensation in Europe where her soulful beat-driven reggae/pop songs -- mostly written on acoustic guitar -- have taken her self-titled 2011 debut to sales of almost 500,000 copies (more than half of those in France). With a name that rolls of the tongue a bit more gracefully than her given Sanne Putseys, Selah Sue will be introduced to the American market this spring and summer with her album dropping in August via a major label push by Columbia. Lead single "Raggamuffin" has a special warm/cool toastin' vibe (see video below) but for us "This World" is the killer cut, a dark dub track and slinky video with menacing minor chord tension and some sharp brass highlights. The striking 22-year-old singer says she wanted wanted her album to be "an intimate, dark, melodious record, with light and lively beats" -- and with "This World", she's succeeded and then some.
Aussie songstress Lisa Mitchell makes her long-awaited return with a new single (and EP) Spiritus, arriving May 4 Down Under that's also a preview of her upcoming, as-yet-untitled full-length follow-up to the fine breakout '09 album Wonder. A platinum seller in Australia, the delightfully quirky (sm)art/pop Wonder was the recipient of the Australian Music Prize and also brought Mitchell five ARIA nominations. We opined that the album was "an unusual, dreamy and surprisingly mature collection of addictive hooks, sunny, unpretentious goofiness and her own left-of-center musical vision." "Spiritus", it's title taken for the Latin word for "breath", is suitably a showcase for Mitchell's breathy, girlish vocals as well as a bright, exotic romp that brings both Paul Simon's Graceland and Vampire Weekend to mind. Working with producer Dann Hume, Mitchell says, "we filled it with light rhythmic energy and percussion from all over the world! It became full of people and voices and laughter and spirit." Video below.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012 at 11:33AM
