The Mercy Beat are (possibly international) gentlemen (and maybe ladies?) of mystery for right now, so all I can tell you is 1) they are currently in Los Angeles 2) this is their most recent song and 3) it is mellow and lovely.
Also, I am pretty sure the sly echo of “Mersey Beat” in their name is not an accident. And I have a very strong suspicion that I should know that voice.
Love Kin by Guantanamo Baywatch is a great surfy rockabilly tune, and one half of a double-A single release; the other side is Mama by Shannon and the Clams.
You can follow GB’s shenanigans on Facebook, but be warned, that page is not safe for work or persons with delicate sensibilities.
Ukiah Drag have taken Poison Ivy, originally by The Coasters, and given it their own doomy, grimy finish:
To hear what they sound like left to their own devices, check out their Soundcloud page.
Ancestor is one of the most extraordinary and unusual records I have listened to so far this year.
It’s mountain music, but it’s modern mountain music. The songs are still about love and loss, but the sound evokes a dreamy opiate-induced haze rather than a whiskey-fueled blues bender.
The man behind it is by Stone Jack Jones, originally from Buffalo Creek, WV. He comes from four generations of coal miners, but he’s a wanderer. Now based in Nashville, he’s – to quote his bio – “been a carny, an escape artist, a ballet dancer, a professional lute player, and even owned a late night performance art club in Atlanta.”
And he’s taken all of those experiences and channeled them into songs like O Child:
And State I’m In, which sounds like the end of a long night:
But there are bursts of sweetness too, such as this tune, aptly named Joy:
Late Night Listening: a home for things that might be fleeting, might be soothing, might be weird, might be soothing and weird. The blogging equivalent of sitting in the garage twiddling radio knobs just to see what might be out there.
shallow swell is the first ep from electronic producer/multi-instrumentalist edapollo (Ed Bidgood), of Bristol, England. And it is the perfect thing to put on to unwind in the evening after a long day, or at any other time you need just over fifteen minutes of sounds that are soothing, but definitely not boring.
I’ve included the whole thing below, mainly because the songs flow so neatly into each other, like movements of a symphony.
Like it? You can buy the EP from Bad Panda Records at bandcamp!
Late Night Listening: a home for things that might be fleeting, might be soothing, might be weird, might be soothing and weird. The blogging equivalent of sitting in the garage twiddling radio knobs just to see what might be out there.
Twang Darkly is Michael Futreal (dulcimer, guitar, banjo, gourdtar, harmonica, flute), Joel Boultinghouse (bass, guitar) and Troy Messina (drums) and they are based in Shreveport, Louisiana. You’ll notice there are no “vocals” in there; they are, indeed, a purely instrumental trio.
And they are really great. Their sound takes elements from multiple traditions, including mountain music, jazz, and folk, and fuses them all together, with delightful results. All of their songs are excellent; I picked these three to share because I liked the titles.
Skinwalker: This one adds some “horror movie” shine to the proceedings, and is both eerie and lovely:
Close to the Spark: For when the autumn nights begin to draw in, or any other time a fire must be built:
Sea Glass is pretty and smooth, and so is this song:
Bermuda, the third release from Mosey West, of Fort Collins, CO, is named to reflect the spirit of change that has been driving the band for the last year or so.
First they changed their line up – the current crew is Adam Brown (guitar, vocals), Mike McGraw (bass, vocals), and newcomers Max Barcelow (drums, vocals) and Nathaniel Marshall (keys and guitar) – and then they changed their sound, pulling up most of their country roots and taking a flying leap into the world of psychedelic indie rock.
That might seem like a hard right turn, but the end result is more of a logical evolution than a complete re-invention. The changes have, if anything, given them more depth and warmth then they had before.
Now as for the tunes, I only say they’ve pulled up most of their country roots because there are still one or two left, which you can hear in songs like Old Stone:
But the psychedelia is clear and strong too, such as in Hurricane Eyes where they really jam it out:
For the rest, head over to their bandcamp page!
Some songs come and go – sweet pleasures, but fleeting ones.
Others, they linger, wearing a groove in heart and brain that runs down the intersection of comforting and challenging.
These are some of those songs.
Off My Mind, Ryan Ross: It’s the plucked string at the beginning, I think. The insistent whang whang whang that reaches out to hook your attention just before the other guitars muscle in, rumbling and grumbling and trying to start a fight. And then about half-way through they settle down and start hammering out a quasi-hypnotic rhythm. I both do and do not want to know what the words are supposed to be; I’m curious, but also suspect context might ruin it.
If You’re in New York, The Grahams: I have more to say about Riverman’s Daughter, their most recent (and most amazing) record, but this is one of the songs I have been listening to obsessively. I have danced to this on subway platforms from Harlem to Brooklyn, and hummed along everywhere from the center of a swirl of autumn leaves on Central Park West to a rapidly thickening blanket of snow on 1st Avenue. It’s a country song, but it’s a got a city heart, and the city heart is full of joy.
Have a Cuppa Tea, The Kinks: From Muswell Hillbillies, but driven by the spirit of Village Green Preservation Society this is indeed an entire song about the role of tea in British society. I like to listen to it on my way to work while, yes, drinking a cup of tea.
We All Come to the Same Place, Rhubarb Whiskey: Because my people are the traveling kind; the ones who wander; who may or may not be lost, and if they are lost they probably like it that way; the ones who send me snippets of streetcorner moments, flashes of foreign trees, sunrises around the world, and more; the ones whose feet will never be wholly still; the ones for whom the roving dies hard.
True confession: I downloaded Lavender Diamond‘s Daytrotter session because I was intrigued by their name. I didn’t even read the description, just snagged it because it was there and I could and why not?
That, as it turned out, was a A++ life decision, because Lavender Diamond is awesome. Halfway through the first song I was breathless and hungry for more.
Happily there is more; the Daytrotter songs were excerpted from their most recent record, Incorruptible Heart, which you can listen to in full on Soundcloud. (And then go and buy it from them right away, so you can wrap it around yourself like a warm aural blanket.)
The following are three of my favorite tunes:
First: All The Stars, because every time I listen to it, I hold very still, so I don’t break the spell cast by Becky Stark’s voice:
Second: Teach Me To Waken. The Daytrotter version is by necessity stripped down, and the piano dominates; on the record the drums roll and roar like the beating of a mighty heart:
And finally: I Don’t Recall, which is spare, delicate and devastating. I seriously do not understand why this is not the #1 crying-into-your-ice-cream song in the world right now. The video, directed by Jena Malone, captures it perfectly:
http://youtu.be/aL3Vv1hQW4Q
The Astronaut, by Wax Fang, is everything you would want from a space opera: lush, sweeping, majestic, a little bit mysterious, and, since it’s about a lone space traveler who gets separated from his vessel, sucked into a black hole, and made into an interstellar god, a little bit tragic, too.
After I had listened to it a couple of times, I had some questions for the band:
Why a space opera?
We wanted to do something big and bold, something experimental and transcendental that was in accord with our tastes in art and music. A metaphysical musical adventure set in the deep reaches of outer space just seemed like a perfect fit for us.
At first I thought the three singles [The Blonde Leading the Blonde, Hearts Are Made For Beating, King of The Kingdom of Man] were independent of the space opera, but after repeated listenings to both works, the singles now sound, to me, like they should be part of the space opera. Were they conceived separately, or in conjunction with the opera? Why were they released separately?
The singles were all written long before the idea of the Astronaut came to be and, as such, have little, if nothing, to do with one another, save that they all come from the same place, that is, us.
How, if at all, does Alpha Man fit into the narrative universe of the space opera?
In my mind, each of our songs is its own microcosm. Therefore, Alpha Man and the Astronaut inhabit separate universes (or alternate dimensions of the same universe, perhaps?). But who am I to tell you what to believe?
And with that, dear readers, here is The Astronaut, in its entirety, so that you may decide for yourselves:
