Florist is a friendship project that was born in the Catskill Mountains. The Birds Outside Sang is an album about the speed at which rain falls, life goes on, and people grow. It’s one part a personal, autobiographical, and almost completely chronological telling of a time in my life full of confusion, physical and emotional pain, loneliness, and hope.beautiful music about times gone by and times to come. It is another part a rebirth of a musical friendship between my best friends in the whole world, and an attempt to highlight the importance of love and the things in life that give you something special to hold on to, to find a calm that can carry you through being alive and being scared.
Florist is emily sprague, rick spataro, jonnie baker, and felix walworth
There is something about Emily Sprague’s voice that both transcends twee indie-pop clichés even as it revels in them. The songs she writes for Florist — an Upstate New York quartet which recently decamped for the bright lights of Brooklyn, and is part of The Epoch collective alongside artists such as Eskimeaux – communicate the youthful discovery of self, sans filters. Or at least that’s what Sprague’s intimate-beyond-comfort, speak-singing voices makes it all sound like. It features something like a mix of Kim Gordon’s fierce detachment, Peggy Lee’s light-headed self-destruction, and the whimsy of all the narrators in Belle & Sebastian songs.
In Florist, Emily Sprague and her Catskills friends sing quiet, delicate songs filled with vivid memories. “Vacation” is about growing up and learning about love.
“Like when I used to ride roller coasters with my dad
When a swimming pool in a hotel
Was a gift from God
Like, love, we’re like a family
I don’t know how to be”
“Cool And Refreshing” finds Sprague singing about the childhood memories that we lose one by one.
“Think of me by the creek in cutoff jeans holding onto
Something that has meaning to me
I don’t really think my life will ever make me
As happy as Kaaterskill Creek”
These two songs are from Florist’s 2015 EP, Holdly, while the band closes its Tiny Desk concert with “1914,” a track from its new debut full-length, The Birds Outside Sang. On drums, you’ll find a Tiny Desk alum in FelixWalworth, who was first here with Bellows, then Eskimeaux; all of these musicians are connected in some way to the Epoch, a collective from New York City. It’s a creative friendship with stories to share, and its members’ songs feel best in intimate settings, like a desk surrounded by old and new friends. The Birds Outside Sang is available now: Set List:
“Vacation”
“Cool And Refreshing”
“1914”
Courtesy of the artist One verse of the barely two-minutes-long “White Light Doorway,” a great tune from the group’s upcoming full-length debut, The Birds Sang Outside, includes lines that seem simply ridiculous, the actions of a semi-competent mumblecore actress going for grand allegory and failing. Yet next to lyrics that touch upon a diary-like exploration of spiritual yearning, and sung over a lonely, fuzzed-out electric guitar and a kick-drum, it’s not silly at all. Forget poetry or narrative, this is confession as a mix of children’s therapy and religion, one that comes outlined in Crayola colors. That the song ends so quickly makes it feel even more honest and gratifying, speeding you back to press “Rewind” or to see what other unlikely thing might happen.
The Birds Sang Outside is out on Jan. 29 on Double Double Whammy
Its amazing how Sarah Desmarais marries her vocals to the grungy sound this Boston three-piece break out band. You’re in for quite a kick if you’re looking for buzzy guitars and heavy slabs of distortion — all with melodies that’ll make ’90s flannel-wearers feel tingly again.
Dealing With the Weird combines a lot of rock influences though. It doesn’t just stick to one narrative. In terms of the guitar-driven grunge effect, “Best Little Something In Somewhere”, “Kind Of Mean It” and “Dizzy” are all meant to have you rushing back for your Nirvana tees. The guitars are raw, soulful and filled with discord. Desmarais‘ vocal delivery is often low, relaxed but still very visceral. She’s in the background but not too far back when it comes to her on the mic, which surprises you when you ingest how deliberate she comes off amid a swath of thick, crunchy basslines (“20 Foot”)and heavy percussion (“Submarine”). Her words cut deep, like Frances Quinlan of Hop Along but a bit more pissed off and decisive.
When they go lighter, they continue to impress also. The mid-tempo alt. rock jam in “Wishful Thinking” as well as the more anthemic “August” are great examples of this, showing their diversity but also, how they can adapt to a pop-punk scale. Full of energy, dynamic and very fluid. Each song, each piece of reverb, each note off the amp…all flow brilliantly into the next. Fucko never let up and even with “Wake Up”, a song that starts off hauntingly slow and builds to a sludgy ball of catharsis, they never lose the plot and that’s to make compelling and emotional music. Dealing With the Weird is a versatile album that doesn’t redefine the grunge genre, it doesn’t reinvent any wheel but as familiar as it sounds, it’s still aggressively refreshing. One or two tracks too long but highly recommended.
recorded for Sveriges Radio in Sweden, from a concert given at Radiohuset in Stockholm on December 12th, 1970.
Free were one of the great groups to come out of the late 60s and early 1970s. And even though they were together for a relatively short period of time, left an indelible mark on music. A live sets from Free’s prime are featured on this bootleg, from a concert in Stockholm on December 12th, 1970. The sound quality is good enough to make one wonder whether this was recorded with an eye for official release, and the performances are solid, drawing from an assortment of songs on their first four albums. Unfortunately it doesn’t have much of their quieter, more subtle material, though the cocky strutting blues-rock side is well represented. There’s no real reason why this shouldn’t be issued officially,
Blue Vinyl Edition
Live at Radiohuset, Stockholm, Sweden, December 1970.
Comes with free bonus CD of the show
Paul Rodgers – lead vocals
Paul Kossoff – guitar
Simon Kirke – drums
Andy Fraser – bass, piano
4AD’s limited coloured vinyl reissue of Belly‘s 1993 debut Star is out today and meets all expectations – it’s a thing of beauty…
This limited edition double marbled white vinyl set doesn’t really look anything like the very colourful ‘artists impression’ shown on the news story earlier this week. The two records are basically pinky-white and bluey-white both with fairly subtle ‘marble’ effect.
The records are both 140g vinyl pressings, they are both 33RPM, even though the album is spread over two records.
Chris Bigg’s design work looks fantastic, the gatefold is high quality, printed on uncoated stock – as are the two inner sleeves – and even though this isn’t particular cheap, it feels like you’re getting decent value. Particularly because this comes with a CD rather than the ubiquitous MP3 code-on-a-card. Having the optical disc is great, but you’d wish they’d cobbled up the extra budget to put this in a printed card sleeve.
The vinyl sounds great – quiet and warm and it’s a lovely way to get to know (or reacquaint yourself with) this album which is 23 years old at the of the year. The lack of standalone CD edition may be addressed at some point, but we’d love to see more vinyl reissues demonstrate this level of care and attention.
Star, Limited 2LP Gatefold white vinyl edition, is out now.
Get all the Marc Almond you could ever wish for amassed in one mammoth, career-spanning, ten-CD collection, set for release by Universal Music this October…
Trials Of Eyeliner is touted as the definitive overview of Marc Almond’s career, and the fact that Almond himself has personally curated the collection, allied to the 189-strong track listing, suggests that this is no exaggeration. Neal X, Almond’s longstanding writing partner/musical director (and former Sigue Sigue Sputnik guitarist), supervised mastering of the tracks recorded over five decades between 1979 and 2016.
This anthology is divided into three themed sections. ‘History’ fills the first four discs with 72 of Almond’s favourite album tracks and B-sides, from Soft Cell’s Youth to the song that gave this super deluxe set its name: Trials of Eyeliner.
The three-CD ‘Singles’ section lines up all of his official Soft Cell, Marc And The Mambas and solo singles in pretty-much-chronological order, delivering assorted delights such as Soft Cell’s UK number one smash hit TaintedLove, duets with Gene Pitney (Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart) and Sarah Cracknell (I Close My Eyes and Count to Ten) and much more.
The last three CDs consists of ‘Gems’ – fan-only releases, one-off collaborations, soundtrack contributions etc. – and includes 18 tracks previously unreleased from Marc’s own collection (see those marked with an asterisk in the track listing below) plus many more hard-to-find rarities and songs making their debut in the CD/digital format.
The ten CDs are housed in two six-page gatefold disc holders within a 240mm-square slipcase, and the music is complemented by a 64-page hardcover book featuring loads of photos and imagery from Almond’s own archive and an ‘interview/essay’ by Alexis Petridis. Artwork for the cover and elsewhere within the package is by renowned graphic artist Stefan Fähler.
The final song on the tenth CD in this set is entitled I Created Me, a highly appropriate choice for such a distinctive artist who’s enjoyed such a varied career.
“I can’t think of many artists who’ve been able to straddle the underground and the mainstream, to work in the underground and the commercial world, to do out-and-out pop and work with Coil or Throbbing Gristle,” says Almond. “There’s a whole big swathe of the British public that only know me for part of my music, and don’t know me for another part. And that’s absolutely fine. I always thought that music was a ride. You go on it, and sometimes it’s successful and sometimes it’s disastrous, sometimes it gets acclaim and sometimes it gets absolutely knocked down. You pick up different people for different parts of the journey. It just happens. But you’ve just got to go on that ride.”
Trials Of Eyeliner is released on 28th October 2016.
“On the Beach” is the fifth studio album by Neil Young, released in 1974. It was unavailable on compact disc until it was released as a HDCD-encoded remastered version on August 19, 2003 as part of his Archives Digital Masterpiece Series. Recorded after (but released before) Tonight’s the Night, On the Beach shares some of that album’s bleakness and crude production—which came as a shock to fans and critics alike, as this was the long-awaited studio follow-up to the commercially and critically successful Harvest—but also included hints pointing towards a more subtle outlook, particularly on the opener, “Walk On”.
While Rolling Stone described it as “One of the most despairing albums of the decade”, later critics used the benefit of hindsight to conclude that Young “[w]as saying goodbye to despair, not being overwhelmed by it”. The despair of Tonight’s the Night, communicated through intentional underproduction and lyrical pessimism, gives way to a more polished album that is still pessimistic but to a lesser degree. Much like Tonight’s the Night, On the Beach was not a commercial success at the time of its release but over time attained a high regard from fans and critics alike. The album was recorded in a haphazard manner, with Young utilizing a variety of session musicians, and often changing their instruments while offering only bare-bones arrangements for them to follow (in a similar style to Tonight’s the Night). He also would opt for rough, monitor mixes of songs rather than a more polished sound, alienating his sound engineers in the process.
“Ambulance Blues” closes the album. The melody ‘unintentionally’ quotes Bert Jansch’s “Needle of Death”. In a 1992 interview for the French “Guitare & Claviers” magazine, Young discussed Jansch’ influence:
“As for acoustic guitar, Bert Jansch is on the same level as Jimi (Hendrix). That first record of his is epic. It came from England, and I was especially taken by “Needle of Death”, such a beautiful and angry song. That guy was so good. And years later, on On the Beach, I wrote the melody of “Ambulance Blues” by styling the guitar part completely on “Do You Hear Me Now?”. I wasn’t even aware of it, and someone else drew my attention to it.”
The song explores Young’s feelings about his critics, Richard Nixon and the state of CSNY. The line “You’re all just pissing in the wind” was a direct quote from Young’s manager regarding the inactivity of the quartet.
On the Beach was savage and, ultimately, triumphant. “I’m a vampire, babe,” Young sang, and he proceeded to take bites out of various subjects: threatening the lives of the stars who lived in L.A.’s Laurel Canyon (“RevolutionBlues”); answering back to Lynyrd Skynyrd, whose “Sweet Home Alabama” had taken him to task for his criticisms of the South in “Southern Man” and “Alabama” (“Walk On”); and rejecting the critics (“Ambulance Blues”). But the barbs were mixed with humor and even affection, as Young seemed to be emerging from the grief and self-abuse that had plagued him for two years. But the album was so spare and under-produced, its lyrics so harrowing, that it was easy to miss Young’s conclusion: he was saying goodbye to despair,
Recorded November 30th, 1973 – April 7th, 1974 Arrow Ranch, Woodside, California;Sunset Sound Recorders,Hollywood
“Good album. One side of it particularly—the side with ‘Ambulance Blues’, ‘Motion Pictures’ and ‘On theBeach’ — it’s out there. It’s a great take.”
~Neil Young
The second in Neil’s ditch trilogy, On the Beach was also disavowed by Young and unreleased on CD until 2003. It is weirder but sharper than Time Fades Away, with harrowing lows and amazing highs, including the off-the-cuff, eight-minute folk jam “Ambulance Blues.”
~rollingstone.com
On its fourth album, Ambulance, The Amazing has a way of unspooling melodies that don’t grab you so much as slowly burrow under your skin. Playing with an unhurried improvisational spirit, the Swedish band lets ideas amble along and develop naturally; it takes time to explore the nooks of its songs in search of deeper resolution. That lovely, resonant quality conjures a meditative mindset suitable for solitary walks or the melancholic stillness of an early morning. Yet all the haze shrouds everything in mystery, and it appears that Christoffer Gunrup wants it that way.
As The Amazing’s enigmatic singer and songwriter (as well as one of its three guitarists), Gunrup submerges his muted croon just below the surface of the mix, singing so that his phrasing is practically imperceptible and his themes are equally tricky to parse. Gunrup makes a point to refrain from discussing his songs much or making lyrics available in liner notes online — the quirk of a guarded artist who insists the art speak for itself.
Like its previous works, and especially 2015’s Picture You, Ambulance uses mood to tell its stories. Recording live with only a few takes to rehearse the new material, each member — Gunrup, guitarists Reine Fiske (best known for his work with Dungen) and Fredrik Swahn, bassist Alexis Benson and drummer Moussa Fadera — is given space to freely embellish the songs while they’re still fresh. The result emphasizes sinuous melodies, lavish textures and spidery arrangements that forgo verse-chorus pop-song structures. Likewise, The Amazing deploys familiar genre touchstones (lushly orchestrated pop, British folk, pastoral psychedelia, cosmic mid-tempo rockers) as atmosphere-altering shorthand to transport listeners into its contemplative world.
From its first moments, the album-opening title track establishes an instrumental template that carries through nearly every song: Fadera’s militaristic drum roll accompanies stark piano stabs, intertwining guitar arpeggios from Fiske and Swahn, and keyboards that swirl atop glacial orchestration — all while Gunrup sings elusive lines like, “You know sometimes you have to change.” Later, in “Moments Like These” and “Perfect Day For Shrimp,” The Amazing blends fingerpicked acoustic guitar and shimmering synths with a breathy whisper that evokes the crestfallen hymns of Nick Drake or Jose Gonzalez. In “Floating,” twangy pedal steel and warbling synths give the song an almost country-rock flavor.
In “Through City Lights,” Ambulance’s longest and most stirring track, The Amazing conjures the winding story songs of Sun Kil Moon’s Mark Kozelek by unfurling every stanza with dramatic pacing, leaving plenty of room to let the words that stick out hang in the air. In those moments, he’s able to project desperation as gentle strumming and a simple, ghostly guitar motif glide underneath.
While mostly striking a somber tone, “BlairDrager” does provide a change of pace in the form of smoky lounge-jazz and cosmopolitan trip-hop. Built around in-the-pocket break beats, slinky guitar upstrokes and sinister speak-singing, it’s yet another satisfying color in the band’s palette. The Amazing implies its heartbreak and haunted regret without explicitly defining it, and Ambulance succeeds by inviting listeners to interpret the meaning for themselves.
Tracing the origins of Columbus, Ohio’s Connections would take you back to the mid-late ’90s, when singer Kevin Elliott and guitarist Andy Hampel were out of high school and in a band called 84 Nash. The only band signed to the Rockathon label despite having no formal relationship to owner Robert Pollard’s better-established pursuit (behind the mic with Guided by Voices), 84 Nash got to tour extensively with its benefactors. From the sound of it, that experience still informs the backbone of Connections‘ every move — five guys with loud amps blasting out of a basement on a regular basis in service of keeping some manner of truth in rock ‘n’ roll.
Ragged and persistent, “Month 2 Month” (from the band’s fourth album, Midnight Run) couples Elliott’s lyrics about hardship and uncertainty with a triumphant zeal (“I’m better off that way!”) nearly outpaced by the amount of energy coming out of the band. The central riff pogoes on-the-one all around the room, with bassist Philip Kim and drummer Mike O’Shaughnessy locked in behind Hampel’s and Dave Capaldi’s guitars as they shift from the rough edge of power-pop to the frantic exuberance of a Capaldi solo that builds to the track’s finale.
Connections’ home of Columbus has consistently been a hub for independent rock, punk and pop of remarkably high quality since the 1980s. (Its label, Anyway, which has documented a healthy amount of that town’s scene, celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.) Longevity and generations of both passing the torch and reaching across the table have been a consistent boon to the town’s unique musical output. Songs like “Month 2 Month” are evidence of maintaining a tradition: records handed down to the next crowd of kids on the come-up, who turn out remarkable likenesses in their own image.
Emily Jane White is a musician, songwriter, and poet from Oakland, CA. She began performing under her own name in 2003 and released her first album “Dark Undercoat” in 2007, with “Victorian America”, “Ode to Sentience”, and “Blood/Lines” following. White has cultivated a dedicated audience in Europe and North America. The title of Emily Jane White’s fifth album, “They Moved in Shadow All Together” (out in France & mainland Europe april 29th, 2016, England and North America, june 10th, 2016), is a play on the opening line from Cormac McCarthy’s novel “Outer Dark” which hauntingly depicts a group of uncanny travelers descending a hill in the Appalachian Mountains. Recorded at Tiny Telephone studio in San Francisco, CA, and New and Improved studio in Oakland, CA, between December 2013 and September 2015, the 11 songs focus conceptually upon the symptomatology of trauma, a pattern of experiences marked by a fragmentation of the self.
White’s polyvocal arrangements mirror her manifold focus, and are the defining stylistic element of the album. Multi-instrumentalist Shawn Alpay’s bass accompaniment firmly supports White’s steady guitar and piano playing by providing subtle rhythmic movement beneath her overlay. His cello sits closely below and curls around the vocals, lending definition to key dramatic moments, while Nick Ott’s visceral and tom-heavy drumming assertively mark the ebb and flow of each track. White: “I wanted to make an intimate album that had bombastic moments. The bass and drums helped define that. Cello is my instrument of choice when it comes to strings. It’s the instrument most capable of sadness and melancholy. The cello is the veil, the fog, and at times the guiding light – the drums the heart and blood.” White’s vision was aided by mixing engineer Mark Willsher, whose background in classical music and film score engineering complemented her spatial and stylistic sensibilities.
Emily Jane White is a musician, songwriter, and poet from Oakland, CA. She began performing under her own name in 2003
Created in 2001 and found in the wine country of Bordeaux, France, Talitres houses an eccentric roster of wordly indiemusicians from Britain, France, Scandinavia, Australia, Canada, and the US.
The label has been known for releasing the music of bands like The Walkmen, The National or The Organ and more recently for the acclaimed debut albums of Ewert & The Two Dragons & Motorama.
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