Posts Tagged ‘New York’

Christopher Paul Stelling – ” Itinerant Arias “

Posted: February 28, 2017 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Christopher Paul Stelling is a songwriter based in NYC.
Having building a reputation as a formidable and passionate performer, his debut album, Songs of Praise and Scorn saw its release on 2/21/12 to much critical acclaim.
Christopher has played well over 150 shows in 2012, and continued touring through the beginning of 2013. After an upcoming european tour, his followup record False Cities was released May 21st 2013.

Amidst the euphoria of playing in bars, cafes, theaters, festivals, under bridges and in living rooms, were late night conversations with friends, new and old, about the undercurrents of tension and change in their countries and concerns about what was happening back in his own. And so Stelling wrote songs about it all. Darkly beautiful and powerful songs which became the album Itinerant Arias which arrives on May 5th. Months ago, these songs seemed cynical, even paranoid. After all, everything was going to be fine.

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Along with the track, there is a video depicting Stelling at home in Asheville, North Carolina preparing to hit the road again. As Stelling explains, “I wanted the video for “Destitute” to convey the bittersweet relationship that I have with leaving.  Just when I start to settle in it’s time to go.  As hard as it is to find any routine in my home life, touring has become like a nightly reunion.  My friends are out there, and I get to go see them, check in, and play them my latest.  Destitute is a song about counting your blessings.”

Unlike previous records, “Itinerant Arias” finds Stelling backed by a band, electrified if you will. It is a record inspired by movement and travel. The album cover a photograph taken by Stelling himself depicting an arrangement of found objects on his table. With a little more than a week before returning to the road, he retreated to a friend’s Connecticut cabin out in the woods with some musician friends. They slept there, ate there and didn’t leave for the next eight days, recording the haunting and powerful record.

WILD PINK – ” Wild Pink “

Posted: February 23, 2017 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Tiny Engines recently announced their debut album from New York City band Wild Pink ,
You can hear the new single “Wanting Things Makes You Shittier” now . The album will follow up the band’s 4Songs EP from last year,
“Wizard Of Loneliness” is a subdued, somber account of loneliness in the presence of another, but it makes for a wonderfully affecting two-and-a-half minutes regardless. It all serves as a pivot from the raw, driving power of their earlier output to a more taut and atmospheric sound.

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The ANTLERS – ” Hospice ” Classic Albums

Posted: February 9, 2017 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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21st century concept albums Antlers

The Antlers – “Hospice” –Released in (2009; Frenchkiss Records) is the third studio album by American indie rock The Antlers, and their first concept album . It was initially self-distributed by the band in March 2009, and was then eventually remastered and re-released.

Part of what makes a concept album truly work is the narrative it’s beholden to. Hospice is a grizzly and harrowing work, which seeks—if nothing else—to completely hollow you as a human being. Dealing with a hospice worker’s romantic entanglement with a patient with terminal bone cancer, Hospice is an album with a palpable feeling of mournful hopelessness.

Singer Peter Silberman’s vocal styling is responsible for at least 50 percent of the latent intensity of the narrative, a quivering whisper of toiling emotions, annunciating with ruthless efficiency a narrative of intense tragic beauty, backed by the sometimes gigantic walls of sound produced by the band, as if to jolt you from the dreamy vocal patterns. It is passionate, powerful and pragmatic in its vision of a relationship that is cultivated through frailty and exposed through its own flaws. Hospice is a direct narrative of suffering without any obfuscation at all, its music perfectly pairing with the rollercoaster anyone experiences in a relationship, with an ending that either uplifts and destroys

The album was released to critical acclaim. Music blogs endorsed the re-release of Hospice with their “Best New Music” stamp.  NPR Radio placed the album at number one on their list of the top ten albums of early 2009. At the end of the year, praising its “power to emotionally destroy listeners

Personnel

  • Peter Silberman – vocals, guitar, accordion, harmonica, harp, keyboards
  • Darby Cicci – trumpet, bowed banjo
  • Michael Lerner – drums, percussion
  • Justin Stivers – bass
  • Sharon Van Etten – vocals on “Kettering,” “Thirteen,” “Two,” and “Shiva”

HAND HABITS – ” Wildly Idle (Humble Before The Void) “

Posted: February 5, 2017 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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“Meg Duffy”, aka Hand Habits, is a singer, songwriter and guitarist from Upstate New York. She has been putting her time in on the road and in the studio over the past two years with pacific northwest band Mega Bog, and the Kevin Morby Band, making an impression on everyone she comes across with her natural charisma and uncharted talent as a multi-instrumentalist. But let Wildly Idle (Humble Before The Void) be her open invitation to the world to step inside and take a much deeper look into who Duffy actually is. Tracked in an Upstate New York living room, then finished in her current home in Los Angeles – it is appropriate that this album was recorded by Meg herself – for Meg, who has an acute ear for detail, has touched every corner, has seen every vision ’til its end. Because of this, Wildly Idle feels incredibly intimate, like a secret between her and the listener. It hits soft, like warm water, and before you know it it is all around you – a bath, and Meg’s whisper has made its way inside you. Like many bedroom-debuts before it (Microphones, Jessica Pratt, Little Wings, Grouper) let this be the first of many to come, for Meg has music in her touch – and this is only the beginning. But let us not look to the future now, but instead stand alongside her, our trust in her will, both humble before the void, with her first chorus as the mission statement; ‘hold you like a flower, hold you like an hour glass’.”- Kevin Morby

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WILD PINK – ” Wanting Things Makes You Shittier “

Posted: January 14, 2017 in MUSIC
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In the summer of 2015, Wild Pink premiered their EP entitled “Good Life”, released via Texas is Funny Records. Since then the band announced that they will be releasing their new EP, “4 Songs” via Tiny Engines Records and have recently embarked on a tour to promote their latest release. John Ross, lead songwriter and front man of the group .  Early musical influences, nostalgic tour moments, and self-identity in an ever-changing scene. This group runs the gamut from soft, sultry ballads to rock bangers with poignant lyrics that center on nostalgia and past haunts.

Wild Pink “Wild Pink” LP/CD/Digital out 24th February on Tiny Engines Records.

JULIE BYRNE – ” Not Even Happiness “

Posted: January 10, 2017 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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New York based singer-songwriter Julie Byrne has announced her sophomore album, “Not Even Happiness”, is set to be released on January 27th via UK-based label Basin Rock Records.

“The title of the album comes from a letter I wrote to a friend after a trip to Riis Park’s ‘The People’s Beach’,” Byrne says in a press release. “It was the first warm afternoon of the year. I walked alongside the Atlantic as the Earth came alive for the sun. There was a palpable sense of emergence to everything. I felt it in myself too, and remember thinking I would trade that feeling for nothing… not even happiness.”

Today, Julie Byrne has shared the song I Live Now As A Singer, the elegant closing track from her upcoming album, “Not Even Happiness”. It is Julie Byrne’s first song ever to be recorded without a guitar.

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Her husky voice ebbs and swoops in one of those wordless melodies that seems like the singer is channeling some ancient wavelength, Byrne’s voice is so delicate it sounds like she’s harmonizing with a breeze, her songs are so transfixing — the sun is setting, and the magic-hour light is warm and enveloping  that those of us who’ve gathered to watch her are sitting slack-jawed.”

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Not Even Happiness is out January 27th on Basin Rock Records.

WILD PINK – ” Wizard Of Loneliness “

Posted: December 31, 2016 in MUSIC
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New York City’s indie pop rockers Wild Pink follow October’s ‘4 Songs’ EP with a self-titled full-length out February 10 2017 on Tiny Engines Records.

Listen to ‘Wizards Of Loneliness’, below, where the trio exert you to, “Calm down/put your phone down” on the low-key lullaby, which comes from the new album which was recorded with Justin Pizzoferrato (Dinosaur Jr., Speedy Ortiz). Wild Pink is an American power pop band from the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens New York City.

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band members

  • John Ross (vocals, guitar)
  • T.C. Brownell (bass)
  • Dan Keegan (drums)

FREE TIME – ” In Search of Free Time “

Posted: December 30, 2016 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Dion Nania, the leader of NYC-via-Melbourne rockers Free Time, traveled back to Australia and assembled a crew of musicians including Totally Mild’s Zachary Schneider and Terrible Truths’ Joe Alexander to help record their sophomore album “In Search Of Free Time”. Well, he seems to have found that free time he was searching for, because the record sounds nothing if not leisurely, propelled along gently by a loose but never sloppy energy. But that’s not to say there aren’t any surprises here — opener “Among The Reeds” rocks unexpectedly hard, and the nine-and-a-half minute “5th Floor” ambles along from its jangly beginnings to a sublime saxophone climax. The album officially comes out on Friday, but just dive in and let its easygoing charm and Nania’s Kurt Vile-adjacent drawl win you over now.

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TREADS – ” I Don’t Know How to Have Fun on an Island Where I’m Always Wasting Time “

Posted: December 30, 2016 in MUSIC
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This New York act combines growl-y vocals and driving guitars for a fierce sound guaranteed to rile up a crowd. I am, however, in question of the basic premise of this song. These cats obviously know how to have fun no matter what the lyrics suggest. This single comes to us from the band’s 4-track EP, I Don’t Know How to Have Fun on an Island Where I’m Always Wasting Time. Yeah, it’s a mouthful, but it also might be the best eleven minutes of your day. Listen to “IDK Fun” below before continuing on to the full EP

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75 DOLLAR BILL – ” Wood​/​Metal​/​Plastic​/​Pattern/​Rhythm​/​Rock “

Posted: December 22, 2016 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Rick Brown was born in San Francisco, California and is a clerical worker at a law school in NYC. Che Chen was born in New Haven, CT and works for a cancer diagnostics company in Stonybrook, NY. They met via myspace and started playing together as 75 Dollar Bill approximately eight years later.

Brown plays percussion and homemade horns and Chen plays electric guitar.   “It’s hard not to slip into ridiculous hyperbole when it comes to 75 Dollar Bill. Whatever conclusion you come to personally, you’re gonna love the instrumental duo of guitarist Che Chen and percussionist Rick Brown. They’ve definitely nailed down a thrillingly original sound, centered around Chen’s specially designed quarter-tone guitar — something about his tone cuts right to the quick, with North African riffs blending into juke-joint boogies into more avant territory. Brown’s impressively minimalist setup (he mostly plays a wooden crate) is a perfect fit, adding a hypnotic thump to the mix. The whole thing is a little hard to describe,  75 Dollar Bill is amazing. On the band’s latest release, Wood / Metal / Plastic / Pattern / Rhythm / Rock, the group expand the lineup — baritone saxes, droning violas and contrabass — and deliver their most powerful music yet. Things feel a bit more composed and fleshed out as opposed to the improvised feel of some of their earlier recordings, but it works just fine: four mindbending tracks, each one a delight.

Rick Brown: plywood crate, maracas, shakers, bells, a drum
Che Chen: 12 and 6 string electric guitars, bass, shakers
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Carey Balch: floor tom (tr.3)
Rolyn Hu: trumpet (tr.4)
Cheryl Kingan: baritone & alto saxophones (tr 2 & 4)
Andrew Lafkas: contrabass (tr.2)
Karen Waltuch: viola (tr.2)

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