Look, I’m easy to please. Give me a banjo (bonus points for claw hammer!), a husband-wife harmony duo and a song about waiting for the “coffee to brew” and I’m happy. And so begins The Yoke is Easy, the Burden Is Full, the peacefully pensive new album from North Carolina old-time group Chatham Rabbits, aka married duo Sarah Osborne McCombie and Austin McCombie.
The footage in this video is from the film The High Lonesome Sound (1963) by John Cohen, and is being used with permission by Folkstreams. We chose these specific scenes because they inspire us deeply. Community and music are depicted as essential to life.
The text is an animation made from Kelley Will’s hand-lettered font based on an old wood-type specimen from the turn of the 20th century. We hope this song, both its triumphant melody and hopeful lyrics bring you hope as we continue to lean on each other in the midst of Covid-19.
You can certainly hear the echoes of Chatham Rabbits’ predecessors here: Over the Rhine, The Civil Wars, Mandolin Orange and other bands who were/are bound in matrimony as well as music. But Chatham Rabbits’ back-porch ballads land in a lighter and different way—there’s very little production clouding their rushing harmonies, clear as a mountain stream, and crunchy Applachian jams (We named “Oxen” as one of the best folk songs of the year so far). The Yoke (which arrived on May 1st) is a stable album with few peaks and valleys, but I’ve found its steadiness to be oh-so-very comforting during an otherwise choppy time. That aforementioned first song is album opener “Clean Slate,” a pretty poem about “the innocent youthful glow” of mornings, “the best part of the day.” As a recovering night owl, this is a sentiment I probably wouldn’t have jiived with a couple of years ago.
With a cool May breeze drifting through the open window, “Clean Slate” sounds like a pretty excellent way to think about the time of day that could be viewed as just another daily reminder of our habitual new tedium.
Jerry Williams’—aka Swamp Dogg—first love was country music, listening to it as a Navy family kid growing up in Portsmouth, Virginia. “My granddaddy, he just bought country records out the asshole,” Swamp remembers. “Every Friday when he came home from the Navy yard he’d stop off and get his records, like ‘Mule Train’ by Frankie Laine, or ‘Riders in the Sky’ by Vaughn Monroe. His first time performing on stage, in fact, was a country song at a talent show when he was six years old: “I did Red Foley’s version of ‘Peace in the Valley.’
While the 77 year-old Williams’ most enduring persona is the psychedelic soul superhero Swamp Dogg—a musical vigilante upholding truths both personal and political since 1970’s immortal album, Total Destruction To Your Mind he will tell anybody who will listen that he’s considered himself country this entire time. “If you notice I use a lot of horns,” Swamp says. “But actually, if you listen to my records before I start stacking shit on it, I’m country. I sound country.
Swamp began his professional singing career as Little Jerry Williams back in the ‘50s before working as an A&R man for Atlantic Records in the late ‘60s. His biggest hit is actually a country song: 1970’s “Don’t Take Her (She’s All I Got).” Written with his best friend Gary U.S. Bonds, the track is country in that woeful, underdog-baring-their-soul sort of way that for some reason only country songs really ever allow themselves to be. Freddie North covered it first and made it a Top 40 pop song, but Johnny Paycheck took it all the way to #2 on the country charts in 1971.
Following 2018’s critically acclaimed, Ryan Olson-produced Love, Loss, And Auto-Tune his first LP to debut on the Billboard charts and his first chart ink since his 1970 song “Mama’s Baby – Daddy’s Maybe” Sorry You Couldn’t Make It allows Swamp to finally dive into the sound he grew up playing. With the support of Pioneer Works Press, they recorded the album at Nashville’sSound Emporium with Olson as producer once again, and backed by a crack studio band led by Derick Lee, a keyboard virtuoso who worked as the musical director of BET’s Bobby Jones Gospel Show for nearly four decades. Nashville guitar firebrand Jim Oblon combusts his way through lead duties, while frequent collaborator Moogstar and special guests Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), John Prine, Jenny Lewis, Channy Leaneagh and Chris Beirden of Poliça, and Sam Amidon join the action throughout.
A band of 14 players, including Vernon, Lee, Beirden, and Moogstar, among others, provides the background for Swamp’s devastating new take on “Don’t Take Her (She’s All I Got).” Lead single “Sleeping Without You Is A Dragg” is one of Swamp’s most heartfelt songs to date and features Vernon on piano as well as backing vocals by Lewis and Leaneagh. He duets with country-folk legend JohnPrine on two songs (“It’s the first time I had seen John since the sixties!” laughs Swamp): the indelible, psychedelic ballad “Memories” and the reflective “Please Let Me Go Round Again.” Originally written and demoed in his forties, “Please Let Me Go Round Again” is a plea for one more chance at life, sung with acute emotional connection.
These are narratives about love, of missing the one you love, of compassion, family and friends, and even the kind of love that transcends death. “I was looking for a new way for Swamp Dogg to go,” he explains. “Apart from me singing and writing most of the songs, I didn’t participate—in other words, I told ‘em, ‘Don’t ask me, I wanna see what happens without my influence.’ It was hard for me to do, ego-wise.
Sorry You Couldn’t Make It sees Swamp come full circle, and closes what has felt to him like unfinished business. “They didn’t have any blacks in country until Charlie Pride came along,” he says. “But in time, all things change and that’s what has happened to country music.” Surveying today’s Nashville reality, Swamp sees opportunity: artists as divergent as Darius Rucker and Lil Nas X are converging in a genre that he once worried might never give him his shot. “I’m anxious because it’s like I’ve taken all my money and put it on one horse,” he says. “But I believe in this horse.
“Sleeping Without You Is a Dragg” from Swamp Dogg off the album ‘Sorry You Couldn’t Make It’ out on Joyful Noise Recordings & Pioneer Works Press.
Activity are an avant four-piece featuring Travis Johnson, and drummer Steve Levine, both from the band Grooms, bassist Zoë Browne from Field Mouse, and guitarist Jess Rees from Russian Baths. Produced by engineer Jeff Berner of Psychic TV, their debut forms a casually menacing framework for lyrical themes of paranoia, exposed character flaws, and the broader human capacity for growth when an ugly truth is laid bare.
Lead single “Calls Your Name,” establishes the record’s spectral aura with nauseated electronic bells, and a relentless Geoff Barrow-esque drum beat beneath a half-sung, half-spoken lyrics inspired by C.S. Lewis’s 1945 novel The Great Divorce. In the novel, characters stuck in a grey, joyless conception of hell repeatedly deny opportunities to be taken into heaven, instead making excuses as to why they should remain in their embittered purgatory states. Allegorically, this speaks to the kind of opportunity for metamorphosis and positive change that’s possible when the depths of disillusionment are reached, an idea which permeates much of the album. Despite recurrent aches of discontentment, each track glows with radiant waves of catharsis while elegantly evoking jubilation and anguish within the same breadth, showing that the two are always around the corner from one another.
Sinister and calming sounds might seem mutually exclusive, but New York City’s Activity beg to differ. The experimental quartet’s debut album, “Unmask Whoever”, which came out earlier this year via Western Vinyl, delights with its warm psych-pop bluster, but sufficiently would deter me from graveyard listening due to its ominous undercurrents. Its dark, understated melodies and hushed vocals make it feel like a fever dream, but one where you’re weirdly comforted by the surreal, slow-moving confusion. The witchy lead single “Calls Your Name” led me to believe the album would contain 10 songs of nightmarish, sacrificial moods, but it’s actually an outlier in that regard. Unmask Whoever is a beautiful, detailed LP of wonder.
Earth Angel released on Western Vinyl
Released on: 2020-02-18
Margo Price has released a new live album, “Perfectly Imperfect at The Ryman”, which documents her sold-out three-night run at the iconic Nashville, TN venue in 2018. The album comes after Price announced back in March she would delay the May 8th release of her new Sturgill Simpson produced studio album, “That’s How Rumors Get Started”, due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.
“I am so excited that we are releasing it today,” said Price in a press release. “The recordings are rough and the performances are raw, but there was a magic there and the band was on fire. We played unreleased songs, alternative album versions and had lots of special guests. I hope it moves you.”
The 11-track album features collaborations with Emmylou Harris on Margo’s original, “Wild Women”, Sturgill Simpson on a rendition of Rodney Crowell‘s “Ain’t Livin Long Like This”, and Jack White on a duet of the rare White Stripes track, “Honey We Can’t Afford to Look This Cheap”. Additionally, Perfectly Imperfect at The Ryman also features a “funk version” of Price’s Midwest Farmer’s Daughter track, “Weekender”, and a take on the title track of her 2017 LP, All American Made.
“Perfectly Imperfect at The Ryman” is available now via Bandcamp. Preview the album below, scroll down for the full tracklist and credits, and purchase it for $10, All proceeds will benefit the MusiCares COVID-19 Relief Fund.
Galaxie 500’s output is a force stronger than you might realise. Sure, the original Harvard via New York band of Dean Wareham (guitarist/singer), Damon Krukowski (drummer) and Naomi Yang (bassist), no longer exists as that line up, but what they have gone on to achieve, and the other bands and artists they have influenced – Low, Liz Phair and Sonic Youth, to name a few – further cements their relevance in musical history. Back then John Peel got in on the act and Rough Trade signed them up, for their last album, before going bankrupt. After that Dean went on to form dream popping band Luna, more recently remerging under the recording name Dean and Britta, who floated into the peaceful shoegaze revival on Rob da Bank’s recent Sci Fi Lo Fi Vol. 3 compilation. And in case one couple wasn’t enough, Damon and Naomi are also doing their own softcore folk rock thing too and are about to embark on a 2010 Euro tour.
Inspired by the Velvet Underground, Joy Division, Jonathan Richman, and New Zealand’s Flying Nun label, Galaxie 500 stood out in the rollicking Boston underground thanks to their introspective minimalism. The 10 tracks on their 1988 debut, “Today”, are sprawling washes of sound that manage to capture an ineffable sensation: a nostalgia both known and unknown, intensely familiar yet completely mystical. But any shot at shoegazing here is thwarted by a subtle restraint. No matter how high Damon Krukowski’s primal, jazz-inspired drums, Dean Wareham’s psychedelic guitar ramblings, and Naomi Yang’s robust basslines soar, their playing always returns to Earth.
You get gentle off beat drums rattling away in the background, the hypnotic day glow of bass, contrasted with the brightness of the guitar and sedate tones of Wareham’s voice. Later tracks build up the sound even more, with Wareham layering his vocals with simple, but pleasing to the ear harmonies on tracks like ‘Pictures’ and the shockingly upbeat ‘Parking Lot’. From this album it soon becomes clear that Galaxie 500 was not a vocal led project by any means; in fact on the Jonathan Richman cover ‘Don’t Let Our Youth Go To Waste’, the first third of the song is purely a meditative, barren instrumental soundscape and the last third a guitar solo freak out.
Their heads, however, stay in the clouds on songs like “Flowers” and “Oblivious,” in which the trio ponder the trappings of romance. And then of course there’s the fuzzy and careening “Tugboat,” in which Wareham declares his humble resolution to buoy his love through whatever choppy waters they face.
For the first time ever on vinyl, a special limited edition of Galaxie 500’s only live recording, “Copenhagen” . Galaxie 500’s last show of their last European tour was captured to 24-track tape by Danish National Radio on December 1st, 1990, and first released (on CD only) by Rykodisc in 1997, following the success of their 1996 box set reissue of all Galaxie 500’s studio albums.
3-sided double LP (side 4 is custom etching). Limited edition of 2000 black vinyl copies. For the first time ever on vinyl, a special limited edition of Galaxie 500’s only live recording, Copenhagen. Galaxie 500’s last show of their last European tour was captured to 24-track tape by Danish National Radio on December 1st, 1990, and first released (on CD only) by Rykodisc in 1997, following the success of their 1996 box set reissue of all Galaxie 500’s studio albums.
The live album, Copenhagen, which is heavy on songs from This Is Our Music and in almost every case improves upon them, turns out to be the ideal closing chapter. During the 1990 show in Denmark, Galaxie 500 play magnificently to what sounds like a pretty small crowd. But that small crowd is into it. Sometimes bands work like that. They never made it big, but during their short run, Galaxie 500’s often quiet and always beautifully rendered music had a profound impact on a few people, including this writer. It needs to stay out there, where it has a chance of finding a few more.
Copenhagen “is a bullet to the head of those who maintain that the band was best heard on record,” as critic/sage Byron Coley has written.”It is abundantly clear, as the trio spirals through an inspired set of covers and originals, that the introverted disengagement of their early live work has been replaced by a unique, powerful and controlled presence that allows them to deliver the goods emotionally as well as sonically. The blend of heart and hand is stunning.” Mark Richardson wrote in Pitchfork: “The live album, Copenhagen, which is heavy on songs from This Is Our Music and in almost every case improves upon them, turns out to be the ideal closing chapter.
An official Record Store Day release, co-sponsored by Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ales, who are releasing a limited edition Danish-style beer to enjoy alongside, and staging a RSD 2020 live tribute to Galaxie 500 at Brooklyn’s Rough Trade Records featuring Magnetic Fields, Xiu Xiu, Surfer Blood and others.
Recorded live by Danish National Radio, 1990, This 3-sided double LP (side 4 is custom etching) Limited edition of 2000 black vinyl copies.
Jade imagine is a four piece band based out of Melbourne, Australia lead by singer, songwriter and general good vibe bringer Jade McInally (formally a member of Teeth & Tongue and Jess Ribeiro).
The final studio album from the late, great Jason Molina – “Eight Gates” (Secretly Canadian) Limited Edition “Shortbread Splash” Red Vinyl LP, Black Vinyl LP, CD
The singer/songwriter, who released his most well-known albums under the alias Songs: Ohia (his indie folk outfit) and then later with his band Magnolia Electric Co. (who were more comfortably classified as country-rock), died way too young at 39 in March of 2013. He struggled with depression and alcoholism for years, the latter of which eventually led to organ failure. His story is a tragic but familiar one: Like Elliott Smith or Kurt Cobain or Amy Winehouse, Molina was a genius who left us too soon.
Thankfully though, like Smith, Cobain and Winehouse, Molina released near-perfect music in the short time he was here. Those aforementioned nine never-before-heard songs will arrive in the form of a new posthumous solo album, Eight Gates, on Friday, August. 7th via the storied indie/folk label Secretly Canadian. The label is releasing Eight Gates under Molina’s name (as opposed to one of the other monikers he used while he was alive), and its arrival was preceded by two singles: “The Mission’s End” and “Shadow Answers the Wall.” Recorded in the late 2000s when the Ohio-born Molina was living in London, Eight Gates is a lo-fi unfinished effort (probably because it was, in fact, never fully finished). It doesn’t feel like enough to constitute an album. But considering that our desire for new Molina music will never actually be satiated, it’s appropriate that Eight Gates leaves us wanting more.
This is a really special one “Eight Gates” is the final collection of studio recordings made by Jason Molina (also known by Songs Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co.) in 2013, before he passed away from complications around alcoholism. Taking its name from the fabled seven gates in London’s walls, the eighth was Molina’s own way into the city. He was feeding bright green parrots in his yard, descended from ring-necked parakeets Hendrix released over London skies in the ’60s, and making some of the most fully-realised music of his career.
Secretly Canadian announce this new Jason Molina record, Eight Gates, will be released on 7th August and share the track ‘Shadow Answers the Wall’. The album is the last collection of solo recordings Molina made before he passed away from complications related to alcoholism in 2013.
Sometime in 2006, or 2007, Jason Molina moved from the Midwest to London. Separated from his bandmates and friends, and never one for idleness, Molina explored his new home with fervor. He’d pick up on arcane trivia about London’s rich history, and if the historical factoids weren’t available, or weren’t quite to his liking Molina was quite comfortable conjuring his own history.
When he learned of the London Wall’s seven gates, Molina went ahead and called it eight, carving out a gate just for himself. The eighth gate was Molina’s way into London, a gate only passable in the mind.
Fast-forward to 2008, Molina set off on an experimental solo tour through Europe. While in Northern Italy, Molina claimed to have been bitten by a rare, poisonous spider. A debilitating bout of illness ensued. “I was in the hospital here in London,” Molina wrote in a letter. “Saw six doctors and a Dr. House-type guy. They are all mystified by it, but I am allowed to be at home, where I am taking a dozen scary Hantavirus type pills a day that are all to supposedly help but they make me feel like shit.” There is no record of a single doctor visit, not any prescription record for these medications. It is entirely plausible there was no spider and that whatever was keeping him indoors during this time was entirely self-induced. While at home, he of course wrote songs.
Molina also claimed that during this time, he fed several bright green parrots that would gather in his yard and made short, crude field recordings of them with his trusty four-track. Only once Molina was officially on the mend and re-exploring the streets of London would he learn that those parrots had their own fabled tale. Back in the 60s, Jimi Hendrix — in a moment of psychedelic clarity — released his pair of lime green ring-necked parakeets from their cage, setting them free into the London sky. Now, their descendants are spotted regularly around certain parts of the city. Or so we’re told.
Recorded in London around the time of the supposed spider bite and Jimi’s supposed parakeets, some of the songs on Eight Gates (“Whispered Away,” “Thistle Blue”) are fully-realized — dark, moody textures that call to mind his earlier work on The Lioness. Knowing what we know about those parakeets and their peppered presence on the recordings, one can’t help but think of that colorful tree of birds on Talk Talk’s classic Laughing Stock, certainly a spiritual guide for much of the set. Other songs (“She Says,” “The Crossroads and The Emptiness”) lay in a more unfinished states, acoustic takes that call to mind Molina’s Let Me Go Let Me Go Let Me Go, and still tethered to Molina’s humorous studio banter. You remember how young Molina was, and how weighty this art was for such a young man. On the closer, “The Crossroads and The Emptiness,” Molina snaps at the engineer before tearing into a song in which he sings of his birthday (30th December), a palm reading and the great emptiness with which he always wrestled. It is a perfect closer and, in many ways, the eighth gate incarnate: mythical, passable only in the mind, built for himself and partway imaginary but shared, thankfully, with us
“Shadow Answers the Wall” by Jason Molina, from the upcoming record ‘Eight Gates’ out August 7th, 2020 on Secretly Canadian.
Tracklisting:
Whisper Away
Shadow Answers the Wall
The Mission’s End
Old Worry
She Says
Fire on the Rail
Be Told the Truth
Thistle Blue
The Crossroad + The Emptiness
One quality that differentiates Molina from those other lost names, though, is that he was never really famous. He played small shows and roughed it for most of his career. In death, however, his songs have taken on a mystical quality—In 2014, a host of artists like My Morning Jacket and Sarah Jaffe shared fresh takes on his songs for a covers album called Farewell Transmission: The Music of Jason Molina. Since then, even more artists have come forward as Molina disciples: Kevin Morby and Waxahatchee covered two Songs: Ohia classics for a split single in 2018, “Just Be Simple” is a staple in The Avett Brothers’ live show and Amanda Shires covered that same song in our studio a couple years back. Hopefully Eight Gates will lead even more Americana-minded musicians down the long trail of breadcrumbs Molina left behind.
In Another Life marks the third studio album for Active Child, the first in 5 years. Since 2017, we’ve been getting glimpses of a project in the works but never a full album. Alas, the wait is over and fans get 10 fresh and epic new songs from the harpist who’s falsetto is a work of art. I was trying to come up with an RIYL to some friends and he is really hard to pindown. My mashup was “James Blake, Antony & The Johnsons, Rhye, Joanna Newsom, Craft Spells & Jonquil were put in a blender, then something like Active Child might pop out, maybe” Crude, but whatever.
The eponymous single is simply remarkable. Starting softly and slowly building to a more broader, deeper sound until the climax of the full band gives way to a cascade of simplicity at the end is really some excellent composition. The ride is complete with operatic vocalization that moves your inner being in ways that haven’t been done since “A Seat at the Table” or “Limit to Your Love”.
Thankfully the album doesn’t just put out one stellar track but oscillates from one track to the next providing a steady stream but slower, melodic songs to more electro pop like sounds all being emphasized by strings and his harp. A major highlight is “Set Me Free” which grasps your soul and tugs hard on it, especially if you watch the music video. Another highlight is “Weightless” which is another song contemplating humanities worst inevitable fear, death and growing old. The song also has an unintentional double meaning for our current situation we are in with lyrics like: no contact / never ever leaves / stuck inside of me. The album rounds out with “Cruel World” which was originally dropped in 2017 but was never properly released until now. I found it an uplifting end to the album, basically pointing out how terrible the world is but it’s worth it to keep your head up because time is short.
Overall, the album is the type you put on, relax on the couch and listen to as if you were watching a well made TV show that is though provoking, has a well formulated story line, and gives you pause as you ponder life’s brutal nature.
Official Video by Active Child, from the new album ’In Another Life’ –
The Song is Coming From Inside the House is a 24-track COVID-19 charity compilation of B sides, demos, and unreleased songs from some of the country’s best underground acts. All proceeds will benefit Groundswell’s Rapid Response Fund, an organization working to address the deep problems and injustices that underlie our economy, political system and our communities.
The Groundswell Rapid Response Fund provides fast funding to grassroots organizations led by women of colour, trans people of colour, and low-income women and trans people in critical, but unexpected, fights to protect and advance reproductive and social justice, including mutual aid societies, rent moratoriums, and digital organizing. You can read more here about how they are adapting their approach to meet the demands of the COVID-19 pandemic: groundswellfund.org/rapid-response-fund/#covidrapid
We are supporting Groundswell because this is a way for us to invest in organizations working to address some of the severe inequities in our society that this pandemic is highlighting. Victims of COVID-19 are disproportionately people of colour, and the crisis has already been used as an excuse by lawmakers to deny abortion access. We feel that issues like these have been unreported relative to the general media conversation surrounding COVID-19, and as a result they are likely to be underrepresented in charitable efforts.
Art by Mac Pogue. Special thanks to Jessica George and Amber Carew for their help with this project.
Released April 30th, 2020
Very happy to have a never before heard horse Jumper song included on this compilation along with so many great artists. All proceeds will be going to the groundswell rapid response fund for covid 19 relief. @groundswellfund is offering relief to to communities most at risk pls check them out and consider buying the comp tomorrow actually because Bandcamp is waiving their revenue share !! Big thanks to @strange_ranger_ for putting this together!.
