Posts Tagged ‘Gregory Alan Isakov’

GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV – ” She Always Takes It Black “

Posted: April 15, 2021 in MUSIC
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Singer Songwriter Folk guitarist Gregory Alan Isakov has taken time away from working on his follow-up to 2018’s Evening Machines to record and share a new live video for “She Always Takes It Back”. The soft-sounding original ballad was the final track on Isakov’s 2013 studio album, The Weatherman.

Set in a darkened studio setting, Isakov and his solo acoustic guitar guide viewers on a gentle ride through the 2013 original with the use of his fingerpicking style and trademark melodies. Isakov has made a career out of those subtle but heartwrenching melodies, and he shows he hasn’t lost any of his abilities even with all this time away from performing.

Isakov was scheduled to embark on a run of spring and summer tour dates last year, in addition to dates supporting the Zak Brown Band, but those shows never ended up taking place with the arrival of COVID-19.

GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV with the COLORADO SYMPHONY – “The Stable Song”

Posted: December 19, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Few people in the UK are aware of the talents of this man. An accomplished singer/songwriter who understands composition and production as well as musicianship. I have followed his career after stumbling upon the album That Sea, The Gambler, and have been increasingly continuously impressed. The orchestration on this album is wonderful, the songs familiar, yet refreshed.  “The Stable Song” is a slice of Americana that is head and shoulders above anything his more well-known contemporaries have produced in recent years. The acoustic guitar and banjo remain in the forefront and his vocals are as warm as a mid-western prairie on a summer day. The orchestration is both beautifully subdued and lush. When he sings the lines “And I ran back to that hollow again/The moon was just a sliver back then/And I ached for my heart like some tin man/When it came oh it beat and it boiled and it rang…oh it’s ringing”

A collaboration with The Colorado Symphony, the eleven track record features favourite songs from Isakov’s previous albums, as well as ‘Liars’, written by Ron Scott. Isakov will embark on an extensive US tour this next year and summer, including performances with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra. Club shows will feature Isakov and his band. Recorded at Boettcher Concert Hall in Denver, as well as at Starling Farm in Boulder, Gregory Alan Isakov with The Colorado Symphony was co-produced by Isakov and his longtime collaborator, Jamie Mefford, and was arranged by Tom Hagerman (DeVotchKa) and Jay Clifford (Jump Little Children), and conducted by The Colorado Symphony’s Scott O’Neil. The new album follows

The new album follows The Weatherman, which debuted at #1 on iTunes’ Singer/Songwriter chart and received widespread acclaim including critical notice at NPR’s Weekend Edition, NPR Music, Esquire, Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, etc. Isakov has toured alongside musicians such as Iron & Wine, Passenger, Brandi Carlile, The Lumineers and Nathaniel Rateliff. Gregory Alan Isakov – a South-African born, Colorado-based musician make a compilation of his work to date and underpin it with an orchestra. He is not the first artist to perform such a feat with Joni Mitchell and Mary Chapin Carpenter releasing albums with full chamber backing. What is special about Isakov and the Colorado Symphony is that his beautiful acoustic songs still maintain their delicacy without the orchestra overwhelming or intruding.

GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV – ” Evening Machines ” Best Albums Of 2018

Posted: November 1, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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It makes all the sense in the world that Gregory Alan Isakov owns and tends a farm on Boulder, Colorado’s outskirts when he’s not touring. He’s a man who appreciates the peace of mind one finds only in nature; “Nature is a reference point for sanity, I draw a lot from it, just like every other living thing,” he mentioned in an interview back in 2016. You get the sense of his ideology listening Evening Machines, his latest album, a piece of work written in the language of the natural world. Isakov strikes as too humble to claim fluency in that language, but he’s well versed enough. Environmental imagery peppers the album, from the earth beneath us all the way up to the galaxy. “Those bright crooked stars, man they’re howlin’ out,” he muses on the record’s closing track, “Wings in All Black.”

The sky is a recurring image throughout Evening Machines, as seen in the title of “Wings in All Black,” the lyrics of “Caves” (“I used to love caves / Stumble out into that pink sky”), or the lyrics of “Dark, Dark, Dark,” where he sings about Maria, who’s “got wings, she’s got legs for the sea.” Maybe Isakov has destinations in mind other than the open plain; maybe he’s a drifter, or a bit of a loner. The album cover hints at the truth, depicting Isakov keeping vigil among fields of grass, staring ahead at a gathering storm, but even so he remains an elusive, almost capricious figure. He likes his quiet, and he’s clearly prone to reflection, but in Evening Machines he finds himself at home, contemplating his past and present in modest spirit. It’s an album of small intentions with a grand sweep, intimate and boundless at the same time.

 

GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV – ” San Luis “

Posted: October 17, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Singer-songwriter Gregory Alan Isakov’s new album, Evening Machines, showcases his emotionally evocative songwriting style; rich in narrative detail and beautifully contemplative.

Isakov was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He and his family immigrated to the States in the mid-1980s and settled in Philadelphia. As a teenager, he began touring and moved to Colorado to study horticulture. He self-released his debut album in 2003, and he’s built a following on a series of lush, honest, ethereal songs that embody modern folk, influenced along the way by Leonard Cohen and blues-folk musician Kelly Joe Phelps. Over the years, Isakov’s songs have appeared in a number of television shows. His songs often have atmospheric, cinematic qualities and while placements in shows like Girls, Californication and Rectify have served his career well, the recent use of “If I Go, I’m Goin” (from 2009’s This Empty Northern Hemisphere) on the final episode of the new Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House is a perfect example of how Isakov’s sense of narrative and quiet intensity can elevate a visual medium.

The video for “San Luis,” a cut from Isakov’s newest album. It’s a mesmerizing, sprawling road video beautifully shot by director Andy Mann, who filmed it with his fellow video and photography colleagues, Keith Ladzinski and Chris Alstrin.

Isakov had this to say about the song:
“I started this song in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado, a place I often draw from when writing. The song followed me around for about a year and finished itself in California, on the central coast. Andy called me soon after I had returned to Colorado and said he was shooting a short film about artists and wanted me to meet him at Great Sand Dunes National Park for a few days. Any chance I get to hang out with him, I’ll take. He, along with some other National Geographic photographers and friends were traveling the Southwest, documenting the artist’s process. We camped a couple nights and talked about writing, photography–and got caught in a gnarly sandstorm, our tents blowing away in the distance. It was a surreal and beautiful few days.

I reached out to Andy a few months back, to ask if we could use some of the footage for a video for the song. I wanted to make sure the landscape that we had experienced together made it in. I loved collaborating with him; he really is a master at what he does.”
The photography for “San Luis” is wondrously expansive and moody. It seductively captures the wide open sky above the Great Sand Dunes National Park, as well as the land and wildlife found there. The video opens on a shot of morning breaking, before following Isakov in his camper through the park. A campfire roars. A spectacular night sky twinkles brilliantly. As a banjo gently strums, Isakov’s pensive guitar pushes the song into stirring solitude.

“Weightlessness, no gravity. / Were we somewhere in-between? / I’m a ghost of you, you’re a ghost of me. / A bird’s-eye view of San Luis”
Simply put, the video for “San Luis” invites you in to a place that you never want to leave.

GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV – ” Chemicals “

Posted: October 6, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Very proud to announce the release of our new studio album, Evening Machines, available October 5th. A lot of love and care went into this one, and we are so thrilled about how it came out. Listen to the first single, “Chemicals,”

The South African-born troubadour’s first album of originals since 2013 adds an array of new textures to the hushed-indie-folk template he perfected on “Big Black Car” and “The Stable Song.” Lead single “Chemicals” pits the singer’s Zach Condon-esque croon and airy falsetto against faint string drones that recall his 2016 collaboration with the Colorado Symphony; “Caves” mixes electronic static, wordless harmonies and heavily reverbed instruments for an intoxicating rush, one of the few moments where Evening Machines hints at “rock.” But Isakov largely sticks to dreamy, hypnotic soundscapes like the layers of feedback on “Powder” or the reverse effects and ghostly vocals of “Where You Gonna Go”  beautiful collisions of acoustic instruments, Isakov’s soothing vocals and otherworldly noise.

Chemicals, the first single from the new album “Evening Machines,” available October 5th.

GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV – ” Evening Machines “

Posted: August 22, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Our new studio album, “Evening Machines”, will be available October 5th! We recently released a second single, “Caves,” .
I wrote this song with my dear friend Ron Scott, from Austin. He came up to visit me, and we were wandering around the farm and going for these long walks through the hills around Colorado. Ron and I spend a lot of time being quiet. He’s one of those friends that reveres silence as much as I do. We share a similar world where we write from. Some songs are about a story, a conversation. This one is more about the places they can bring you. And that love for silence.

Our new song “Caves” is now available From the forthcoming album ‘Evening Machines‘

Chemicals, the first single from the new album “Evening Machines,” available October 5th.

GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV – ” Fuel/Friends Chapel Session No#34 “

Posted: April 1, 2017 in MUSIC
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I had the pleasure of seeing Gregory Alan Isakov just last week at the almost sold out show at the Bodega in Nottingham an artist I have followed for the last few years after hearing this session via the awesome website Fuel For Your Frieinds

His most recent album with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra at Red Rocks must have been an incredible event, and then having his most recent (magnificent and charming) music video debuted by NPR’s Bob Boilen, with Rolling Stone calling him the “Best Subtle Storm” Perfect.

One thing I have always loved about Gregory Alan Isakov and his music since the first time I heard it is the hint of sly joy that underlies everything he seems to sing. I almost feel like I can feel a shy, candescent smile just waiting at the corner of his lips.

He writes rambling songs that really stab at a certain heart of foolish beauty that exists all the time in the world around us, but that I am often too hurried to see, much less to give it the attention it deserves. He weaves words together into perceptive lyrics that I can’t get enough of, songs that skiffle and flicker as they grow slowly.

In this session, Gregory and his band performed three songs from their (2013) album The Weatherman, and one stunningly jaw-dropping cover of one of my favorite artists Sam Beam of Iron and Wine.

FUEL/FRIENDS CHAPEL SESSION #34:
GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV
January 9, 2014
Shove Chapel, Colorado Springs, CO

Suitcase Full Of Sparks
This song speaks directly to the always-gnawing wanderlust that sometimes hides under the ashes in me, but that is always ready to be stoked by this wide, wild world around us. It makes me want to do nothing more than head off onto a roadtrip — anywhere that promises campfires, or even better, an ocean. Gregory’s wanderings here are trying to find their way to someone, but I find the song works just as well for me if we think that the someone we are rambling everywhere trying to find is ourselves.

Saint Valentine
A song for mostly-misremembered Roman saints, and also for banjo-plucking dancing around in the pouring rain. Also notable in this song is the great delight I get from such an old-timey sounding folk song that contains the line “while the girls in the glass, they’re just throwing me shade.” Aw, poor Gregory.

The Universe

the Universe, she’s wounded
but she’s still got infinity ahead of her
she’s still got you and me
and everybody says that she’s beautiful…

The Trapeze Swinger (Iron & Wine)
Welp. I sat in stunned silence when Gregory suggested this song as his cover. The original is one of my top five songs ever — this baffling, beautiful, confused, peaceful elegy that feels like it never started and will never end.

I remember a book from when I was about ten years old, something like A Wrinkle In Time or one of those fascinating imaginative visions of other worlds and things unseen. My brain stretches hard to recall a passage about tapping into a current of singing that existed outside of normal time, these pulsing jetstreams of melody and poetry and all the human longing – timeless and universal. Always there. Not always heard.

When I listen to “The Trapeze Swinger” by Iron & Wine, that’s the closest I can come to expressing its perfection. It sounds like waking from a dream on your front porch in the late afternoon in springtime — or maybe not waking at all, but being suspended. Somewhere where, for once, you can hear the currents. “Please remember me, happily, by the rosebush laughing, with bruises on my chin….” the song begins, all golden beauty and purplish contusions from the first lines.

Gregory does 100% justice to the original, in the noble hesitation, in the smiles around the edges of his voice, and with the gorgeous golden guitar solo in the middle. Who the hell can see forever?

GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV – ” Master and Hound “

Posted: August 30, 2016 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Gregory Alan Isakov along with the Colorado Symphony doesn’t really feature any new music from this US based South African singer-songwriter, but the inclusion of the orchestra just takes Gregory Alan Isakov’s music to the next level. In most cases the Symphony is actually pretty understated on the album with Isakov’s vocals and finger-picked guitar well and truly at the front of the mix. The result is a lush experience that still feels so intimate.

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THIS WEEKS ESSENTIAL NEW RELEASES – 8th July 2016

Posted: July 8, 2016 in MUSIC
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THE JULIE RUIN – HIT RESET
Julie Ruin return with ‘Hit Reset’ which expands on the band’s established sound: dancier in spots and moodier in others, with girl group backing vocals and even a touching ballad closer. ‘Hit Reset’ is the sound of a band who have found their sweet spot. Kathleen Hanna’s vocals are empowered and her lyrics are as pointed and poignant as ever. From the chilling first lines of ‘Hit Reset’ (“Deer hooves hanging on the wall, shell casings in the closet hall”) to the touching lines of ‘Calverton’ “(“Without you I might be numb, hiding in my apartment from everyone / Without you I’d take the fifth, or be on my death bed still full of wishes”), Hanna takes a leap into the personal not seen completely on the first album or possibly even in the rest of her work.
LP+ – Limited Rough trade Exclusive – 500 Copies on Neon Pink Vinyl with Download.
LP – Black vinyl with Download.
LP/MP3 – Limited Indie Shops vinyl – white vinyl with Download

The Rave-Ups, Town + Country [Expanded Edition]

Omnivore offers a 30th anniversary expanded edition of The Rave-Ups’ Town + Country.  The band may be best known for its appearance in the film Pretty in Pink, but this reissue proves there’s plenty more to the group.  The reissue of this lost Americana classic produced by Stephen Barncard (Grateful Dead’s American Beauty) features the original 10 songs, plus 11 previously unissued bonus tracks-including live radio performances recorded for Deirdre O’Donoghue’s KCRW-FM program Snap and material produced by Steve Berlin (Los Lobos) and longtime Beach Boys associate Mark Linett.  The Rave-Ups’ Jimmy Podrasky supplies the new liner notes!

OF MONTREAL  – INNOCENCE REACHES
The project’s 14th LP follows two full decades of mercurial creative mania: swallowing up ’60s psych-pop, Prince-ly funk, and glammy prog in turn; morphing freely between full-band affair and cloistered confessional booth; comprising lyrics both painfully personal and absurdly fantastical; and recently drawing site-specific inspiration from culture capitals like San Francisco or New York City. The thread that runs through it all is Athens, GA’s Kevin Barnes, and ‘Innocence Reaches’ finds him at his most light-hearted in years, working a Parisian stint, Top 40 sounds, and his newfound single status into the kaleidoscopic swirl. ‘Innocence Reaches’ features darker moments to be sure – isolation, anger, indifference, and the feeling that, like a Truffaut film, madness lurks just outside the frame.
LP – 180-Gram Light Blue vinyl with download code. Packaged in deluxe gatefold jacket with 18×24 David Barnes-designed poster.
Tape – Limited Lime Green Cassette.

GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV – GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV WITH THE COLORADO SYMPHONY
Gregory Alan Isakov with the Colorado Symphony marks a milestone for the Colorado-based singer-songwriter, re-imagining songs from his previous three studio albums– The Weatherman, This Empty Northern Hemisphere, and That Sea, the Gambler –along with the debut studio recording of “Liars,” a fan favorite and staple of his live shows for many years. With orchestral arrangements by Tom Hagerman (DeVotchKa) and Jay Clifford (Jump, Little Children) and with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra’s Scott O’Neil conducting nearly 70 classical musicians, the songs are cast in new and revelatory hues.

CLINIC / SEX SWING
TAPE FOR JASE / NIGHT TIME WORKER
Very limited split 7″ repress on sexy Brown Vinyl from Liverpool’s legendary psych overlords Clinic backed with blood-pumping shadowy noise from London’s Sex Swing featuring Mugstar, Part Chimp, Earth, Dethscalator and Dead Neanderthals members. Released on God Unknown Records and beautifully packaged.

JOANNA GRUESOME
PRETTY FUCKING SICK (OF IT ALL)
Blue Coloured Vinyl 7″ (Limited to 300). Joanna Gruesome release their first material since the departure of vocalist Alanna McArdle on this limited edition coloured vinyl 7″ on the Fortuna Pop! Jukebox 45s singles club. Following a chance meeting in an occult bookshop, the band’s new line up features two amazing and inspiring women, Kate Stonestreet (formerly of queer punks Pennycress) on melodic vocals / shouting / screaming and Roxy Brennan (of Two White Cranes and Grubs) on melodic vocals / keyboard, joining Owen Williams (guitar / vocals), George Nicholls (guitar), Max Warren (bass) and Dave Sandford (drums). The record features original artwork from Bart De Baets. Recorded by producer Rory Atwell on a boat in London, a statement from the band on ‘Pretty Fucking Sick (Of It All)’ reads, “This song is about being pursued by intelligence operatives and is partly set in the Welsh village of Llangrannog. It is influenced by our recent U.S tour, during which the CIA took a special interest in the group’s movements.” On Occult Bookshop the band says, “This is an origin story, detailing the first meeting of the group. It is also about using astrological means to strengthen, receive and administer crushes. Another reading suggests that the song is about attempting to destroy binary conceptions of gender through ritual hexing.”

Image of Martha - Blisters In The Pit Of My Heart

Martha –  ‘Blisters In The Pit Of My Heart’

Martha return with their second album. Produced again by MJ from Hookworms, the album explores the difficulties in staying political, staying passionate and staying punk over the course of eleven expertly crafted pop songs. Hailing from Pity Me near Durham, Martha play energetic, impassioned power pop with intricate vocal interplay and lush four-part harmonies, informed by 90s indie rock and contemporary garage punk. The band is comprised of J. Cairns (guitar), Daniel Ellis (guitar), Naomi Griffin (bass), and Nathan Stephens Griffin (drums). All four members sing and write the songs. Daniel and Nathan also play in Onsind, while Naomi also plays in No Ditching.

Their debut album “Courting Strong” came out in 2014 and was included in the top 50 albums of that year, winning them the epithet “One of Britain’s best rock bands”. If the band’s first album, ‘Courting Strong’, was about punks growing up, then ‘Blisters In The Pit Of My Heart’ is about grown-ups staying punk. It’s an album about trying to stay creative and passionate and making the most of everything in spite of the many obstacles that get in the way. It’s about finding strength and solace in friendships, love, and taking motivation from the people in your life who really inspire you. Taking inspiration from such likely and unlikely sources as The Replacements, Heart, Billy Bragg, Thin Lizzy, Cheap Trick, The Go-Gos and Radiator Hospital, the album bursts into life with “Christine”, “a love song filtered through the messiness of anxiety and night terror” that takes inspiration from “Threads”, the British TV drama of the 1980s about nuclear war, and is followed by the rousing “Chekhov’s Hangnail”, with backing vocals from Ellis Jones of Trust Fund. The catchy “Precarious (The Supermarket Song)” finds romance in the washing powder aisle, while “Goldman’s Detective Agency” shows the band’s playful side as they re-imagine 19th century anarchist Emma Goldman as a private eye vanquishing corrupt cops and politicians.

Nearly every song here is a potential single, from the infectious “Do Whatever” and “11:45, Legless In Brandon” to outsider anthem “The Awkward Ones” and the Billy Bragg / Coronation Street-referencing “Curly and Raquel”. The album concludes with “St Paul’s (Westerberg Comprehensive)”, a song about being caught up in the toxic culture of a Catholic comprehensive school. “It’s for the kids who had the guts to be queer at school and for those who didn’t figure themselves out until they got out of school.

GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV WITH THE COLORADO SYMPHONY – ” Liars “

Posted: May 11, 2016 in MUSIC
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Gregory Alan Isakov with the Colorado Symphony

Gregory Alan Isakov with the Colorado Symphony marks a milestone for the singer-songwriter, who’s beloved for the spectral intimacy of his recordings and live shows. Set for release on June 10th on Isakov’s own Suitcase Town Music label, the album finds Isakov cracking his catalog wide open to see what else he—and we—can learn about them.

The album features songs from Isakov’s previous three studios releases, along with the debut studio recording of “Liars,” a fan favorite that’s been a staple of his concerts for the past few years (listen above). The album will be released on limited-edition LP, CD, and digitally. With orchestral arrangements by Tom Hagerman (DeVotchKa) and Jay Clifford (Jump Little Children) and with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra’s Scott O’Neil conducting nearly 70 classical musicians, these are older songs cast in new and revelatory hues.

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“I’ve always had this hunch that you can manifest whatever you really want if you dream hard,” Isakov says. “I think I wrote down this idea a bunch of times, thinking it would be so incredible. And when it finally happened, I was just over the moon.”

“It’s not that I thought these were better versions than the ones we put out before,” he adds, “but I think these versions are so different, and this collaboration with the symphony gave the songs a whole new angle.”

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