Jeffrey Martin’s song “Burroghs” this song is one of the most powerful songs I’ve ever heard. I don’t mean this year. I mean ever. Martin’s precision in songwriting is probably once in a generation. He’s in very elite company when it comes to the ability to match a folk song ethos with cathartic, sometimes chilling lyrics. The lonesome quality in his vocals helps to punctuate the tragedy of Burroughs’ life as expressed in the song. This is truly exceptional work.
Jeffrey Martin’s music has been compared to songwriters like Josh Ritter and Joe Pug. “I’m a writer more than I am a musician. If I could play guitar half as well as I can write I’d be wearing nicer pants.” His songwriting has earned him opening slots for the likes of Anais Mitchell, Sean Hayes, Frank Fairfield, Joe Pug, Gregory Alan Isakov, David Wilcox, and others.
Jeffrey Martin has recently partnered with Fluff and Gravy Records in Portland, OR, and is releasing a full length album with them . The album, entitled Dogs in the Daylight, is an ambitious 15 track collection that is full of weight and intricacy. While the new album is bigger than his previous albums, complete with piano, bass, fiddle, drums, and even trumpet, the songs are still largely carried by Jeffrey’s voice and the sincerity of this songwriting – the very qualities that separate him from his peers.
I can tell you very little about Janileigh Cohen other than she’s a singer songwriter from Bolton, UK and I think she’s pretty magical. With a wonderous vocal style hearing her sing ‘As A Child‘ EP. I’d made my mind up to introduce her to you. Her influences are very much from the heyday of contemporary folk including such greats as John Martyn, Joni Mitchell, Jackson C Frank, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. She has that ever so slight husky edge to her vocals that catch you on first listen and she’s a very talented songwriter as well as you can hear below.
Los Angeles-born, Austin-based Molly Burch is a force to be reckoned with, albeit a subtle one. Her debut LP, “Please Be Mine”, was released in February and was not just among one of the year’s best albums by a newcomer, but one of the best period. The record is heartfelt, intricate and unconditionally romantic. As a trained jazz singer, Burch’s vintage vocal anchor the 10 songs, particularly on the standout track “Fool” and the title track, “Please Be Mine.” With dual talents for Laurel Canyon folk and Hit Parade pop of the ‘60s, she’s a breath of fresh air in comparison to much of today’s overly processed singer-songwriters. This year she opened for everyone from Lucy Dacus to Grizzly Bear, so keep her name (and her album) in your brain.
Pip Hall might share youth, a label and a flare for the emotional , Pip’s offering, “James”, is a raw slice of emotional outpouring. This is never more obvious than on the stunning title track, Pip’s tribute to her late father, who died when she was young; is part beautiful homage to his memory, part honest recollection of her struggles to grow up without him around.
Musically, across the EP, Pip shows a wonderful dexterity, from the fluttering electronics and Fleetwood Mac-like melodies of Devil You Don’t, to the driving twangy guitars of Turn Over. Throughout they are all pinned together by Pip’s frankly stunning vocal, an instrument capable of effortlessly shifting from an impassioned howl to an intricate whisper. At barely sixteen, Pip Hall is a mercurial talent, a songwriter with unlimited potential, and already quite probably Preston’s most famous musical daughter. If James is an intriguing introduction, where she goes next might just be incredible try and catch her while you can.
“a gigantic talent…potentially massive” – The Line Of Best Fit
“Hall’s ability to write a brilliant pop hit is evident.” – Goldflakepaint
“It’s been haunting me all day. Sounding absolutely fantastic” – Radio X (John Kennedy)
“a palpable successor to the crown bestowed on Lorde after all.” – The Metro
“Revelatory songs wrapped in velvety synths and guitars” – Daily Mirror
“Stunningly penned tracks.” – Little Indie Blogs
“Wonderful” – Amazing Radio (Shell Zenner)
“Beautiful and engrossing.” – The Revue
“Graciously dark and lushly soulful” – Fame Magazine
“A star in the making.” – For The Rabbits
Tamara Lindeman was 31 years old when she recorded her latest album as the Weather Station, which is significant. “Thirty” is a song about surviving that milestone birthday, about the small moments that define that time of life: “You put your hand on the small of my back, I was surprised that you’d touch me like that.” The song builds speed and momentum, getting faster and faster with each new memory, much like life itself. And Lindeman stands in the middle of the storm, trying to make sense of one moment before the next moment hits. “That was that year, now here is another one.”
On astonishing artistic statement The Weather Station, Tamara Lindeman homes in on her rebellious core to express some of the finest musical sentiments Canada has conjured. A mood and scene-setter, Lindeman delves into the complexity of interpersonal relationships and, in particular, the tricks and treachery of soul mate communication. It’s not always easy, and neither is the Weather Station.
Often citing the writing of Steven Lambke, like he’s a mentor, Lindeman approaches language like a dancing partner but also like a foe. Often, as on the flurry of imagery that propels “Thirty” or “Kept it All to Myself,” she lets loose emotive lyrical torrents that haunt the listener.
Beyond her gift for phrasing and alluring voice, Lindeman also shows off an ear for arrangements and production here. The musicality is uniquely orchestral and sophisticated; the back-up vocalists are utilized with subtle strength. This is the Weather Station, ascending with the grace of a heron to full flight.
The Weather Station’s S/T album was released October 6th, 2017 on Paradise of Bachelors (worldwide), http://www.paradiseofbachelors.com/po… as The Weather Station, Tamara Lindeman reinvents, and more deeply roots, her extraordinary, acclaimed songcraft, framing her precisely detailed, exquisitely wrought prose-poem narratives in bolder and more cinematic musical settings. The result is her most sonically direct and emotionally candid statement to date, a work of profound urgency and artistic generosity.
The palpable freedom emanating from Tamara Lindeman’s fourth long-playing album as The Weather Station is unmistakable, and completely intentional. Stepping aside from a successful acting career, and taking the reigns in the recording studio, the Toronto-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has crafted her most intrepid, stirring, and successful work to date. All it took was a load of gumption.
She cracks that the new album is her rock and roll record. There’s of course a grain of truth in every joke. “There was this excitement around what would happen if I blended my sensibility with that spirit,” she says. “That devil-may-care attitude.” By that she means that she had to actively work against most of her natural instincts in the studio—to be less careful, less cautious, and totally unselfconscious in her decision to stand up to male assertion. “I knew exactly what I wanted, and I just realized that it was actually better if I didn’t listen to anyone else,” she adds.
It’s an environmental reality most women have had to face. The overcoming of this quiet oppression, this subtle misogyny, becomes an unwanted career milestone—the product of a deep-rooted, male-centric ideology that remains a de facto force in creative and corporate settings. “Lord, Give Me the Confidence of a Mediocre White Man” is an oft-memed phrase for a reason.
Lindeman explains that she’s never worked with a female producer, and in her experience men in that role exude finality in their point of view, often ignoring the artist’s input altogether. As a self-proclaimed introvert and someone to whom leadership does not come naturally, she adds that she had to tap into her acting chops to construct a reality where her opinions of her own work negated outside input. She adds that men have a keen ability to make their opinion seem like the truth. “But in the end, that’s just one opinion, that’s how it sounds to you,” she says. “I just had to pretend to myself that my opinions were the Word of God.”
The new, self-titled album’s eleven songs unfold and build upon one another like chapters in a captivating memoir. They’re moving yet unsentimental, welcoming listeners aboard a passenger train between heart, brain, and larynx.
“I just had to pretend to myself that my opinions were the Word of God.”
“All these years I have followed you / It never occurred to you to follow me,” she sings on album opener “Free.” The song acts as a mission statement, the trailhead of a path through introspection and liberation, surrounded by swaying guitar, stringed breezes, and chirping piano. It’s familiar and yet deeply personal, merging universal truth and individual experience. It describes the making of the record, and the feeling throughout the end result. It’s a painful realization—and a battle cry.
Like any great book, the LP’s effortless quality comes from a mastery of craft. Each song has a stream-of-consciousness quality, but in fact endures rounds of re-imagining and revision. Lindeman begins with a germ, a seed of a song, and incubates it by recording different, largely spontaneous versions on the theme with just guitar and voice. She plays them back, transcribes them, and then fuses together her favorite parts for a finished song.
Album standout “Impossible” began with what became its apex: the line “I guess I got the hang of it, the impossible.” She knew immediately that the very loaded observation deserved a wider exploration. Despite the universality of the song’s crux, she sought a very personal narrative to surround it. An early version didn’t tap far enough into any specific place in time, and ended up on the cutting room floor. “It doesn’t feel right if I write a song that’s too vague,” she says. “All the lyricists I admire have moments where it’s universal and moments where it’s specific. There’s a perfect balance that I’m always striving for.”
Like any red-blooded Canadian, Lindeman cites Leonard Cohen as a lyrical hero, but with a caveat. “Bob Dylan is also the best,” she says. “Leonard is better in a lot of ways, and I think he’s the best, but you need Bob, too.” She also mentions Canadian compatriots of the contemporary music scene in the same breath. Artists like Jennifer Castle have inspired her own free-form approach to songcraft, which emphasizes lyrical narrative, rhythmic phrasing, and organic instrumentation over traditional verse-chorus formatting. It’s a signature mark of artists like Joni Mitchell and Mary Margaret O’Hara, and one increasingly present in the new age of singer/songwriters like Lindeman, who deftly manages to work a multitude of cohesive feelings, ideas, and actual words into her songs.
When asked about her approach to phrasing, her voice piques with excitement. “People don’t talk about phrasing, but it’s so key,” she explains. She adds that while she doesn’t have a deep knowledge of the canon, rap music has influenced the quality of her sung words. “You can’t help but notice the ingenuity pouring out of that genre right now,” she says. “What people are doing in rap is much more distinctive than what people are doing in folk music… Having rap permeate the culture has really affected me.”
For an album with a remarkable series of firsts, from self-producing to string arranging, The Weather Station spins like a classic work from a storied professional, steeped in equal parts confidence, grace, and duende—that intangible spirit of passion. And all this despite disapproving forces in the studio. “There were people around me who didn’t like the record,” Lindeman says. “I was like, ‘OK, I gotta see this through.’” The result is a triumph of character and expression. A singular vision swimming upstream in a sea of know-better.
Though the deceptively complex pop of “Quit the Curse” which marks the debut of Anna Burch, The Detroit singer/songwriter has been visible for the better part of her years-long career singing in the band Frontier Ruckus, or more recently co-fronting project Failed Flowers, but somewhere along the way a vibrant collection of solo material had slowly began taking form.
Growing up in Michigan, Burch’s fixation with music transitioned from a childhood of Disney and Carole King sing-alongs to more typically angsty teenage years spent covering Bright Eyes and Fiona Apple at open mic nights. By 18 she was deep into the lifestyle of the touring musician, After a few whirlwind years, exhausted and feeling a little lost, she stepped away from music completely to attend grad school in Chicago. This lasted until 2014 when she moved to Detroit and found herself starting work in earnest on solo songs she’d been making casual demos of for a year or so. Friends had been encouraging her to dive into solo music, and one particularly enthusiastic friend, Chicago musician Paul Cherry, went so far as to assemble a band around scrappy phone demos to push for a fully realized album.
“Writing songs that I actually liked for the first time gave me a feeling of accomplishment,” Burch said, “Like, I can do this too! But working with other musicians and hearing the songs go from sad singer/songwriter tunes to arranged pop songs gave me this giddy confidence that I’d never felt before.”
The process was drawn out and various drafts and recordings came and went as the months passed. By now Burch was playing low key shows and d.i.y. tours solo and had released some early versions of a few songs on a split with fellow Detroit musician Stef Chura. Even at a slow, meticulous pace, with every step the album took closer to completion, it felt more serious and more real. After a more than a year of piecemeal recording sessions, Burch was introduced to engineer Collin Dupuis (Lana Del Rey, Angel Olsen) who helped push things energetically home, mixing the already bright songs into a state of brilliant clarity.
The nine songs that comprise the album “Quit the Curse” come on sugary and upbeat, but their darker lyrical themes and serpentine song structures are tucked neatly into what seem at first just like uncommonly catchy tunes. Burch’s crystal clear vocal harmonies and gracefully crafted songs feel so warm and friendly that it’s easy to miss the lyrics about destructive relationships, daddy issues and substance abuse that cling like spiderwebs to the hooky melodies. The maddeningly absent lover being sung to in “2 Cool 2 Care”, the crowded exhaustion of “With YouEvery Day” or even the grim, paranoid tale of scoring drugs in “Asking 4 A Friend” sometimes feel overshadowed by the shimmering sonics that envelop them.
“To me this album marks the end of an era of uncertainty. Writing songs about my emotional struggles helped me to work through some negative patterns in my personal life, while giving me the sense of creative agency I’d been searching for.”
Emerging from years spent as a supporting player, Quit the Curse stands as a liberation from feeling like Burch’s own songwriting voice was just out of reach — an opportunity, finally, for the world at large to hear what’s been on her mind for quite a while.
Two singles (“2 Cool 2 Care” and “Asking 4 a Friend”) have already been released to rave reviews, and now you can check out a third offering — “Tea-Soaked Letter”
“Comparisons to Courtney Barnett, Waxahatchee, and Eleanor Friedberger lie within her tight songwriting and infectious lyrics .” – The Line of Best Fit [Burch’s] songs have some of the lo-fi finish and scrappy energy of 1990s indie-pop…but with a sharper edge. Frank and gratifying all the same, Burch’s tightly structured pop is an invigorating take on an evergreen sound.” – Pitchfork
Sufjan Stevens has shared a new song, “Tonya Harding”, dedicated to “one of the greatest figure skaters of her time.” In an accompanying essay, Stevens writes, “Tonya shines bright in the pantheon of American history simply because she never stopped trying her hardest. She fought classism, sexism, physical abuse and public rebuke to become an incomparable American legend.”
The song is not associated with the new Harding biopic I, Tonya, starring Margot Robbie and Sebastian Stan.
Sufjan is reminding us what popular music can do, reminding us that art can tackle any topic it wishes, delivering even a poignant five-minute “biopic” of a disgraced American figure skating champion because why not. Pop music is not supposed to do portraiture, but who made them rules? The Tonya Harding story challenges us all to look hard at our own sexism and classism.
TONYA HARDING, MY STAR
by Sufjan Stevens
I’ve been trying to write a Tonya Harding song since I first saw her skate at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in 1991. She’s a complicated subject for a song partly because the hard facts of her life are so strange, disputable, heroic, unprecedented, and indelibly American. She was one of the greatest figure skaters of her time, and the first American woman to perform a triple axle in an international competition. She was an unlikely skating star, having been raised working class in Portland, Oregon. Being a poor outsider, her rise to fame in the skating rink was seen, by some, as a blemish on a sport that favored sophistication and style. Tonya’s skating technique was feisty, fierce, and full of athleticism, and her flamboyant outfits were often hand-made by her mother (who was abusive and overbearing). (They couldn’t afford Vera Wang.) And then there was the Nancy Kerrigan incident. In January 1994, Tonya’s then-boyfriend Jeff Gillooly hired an assailant, Shane Stant, to break fellow figure skater NancyKerrigan’s leg at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships at Cobo Arena in Detroit, so that she would be unable to compete at the upcoming Winter Olympics. The after-math of the attack was recorded on camera and ultimately set off a media frenzy (and an FBI investigation). Gillooly and Stan were eventually found guilty, and Tonya pleaded guilty to hindering the prosecution, and was subsequently banned for life from the U.S. Figure Skating Association. Nancy Kerrigan recovered from her injury and won a silver medal at the Winter Olympics. Tonya Harding finished eighth.
But that’s not even half the story. When Tonya and Gillooly got married, they filmed themselves having sex on their wedding night and produced one of the first-ever celebrity sex tapes (which they sold to Penthouse for $200,000 each). Tonya also had a brief career as a boxer, and is most famous for her bout with former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones (whose sexual harassment suit against Bill Clinton precipitated his impeachment in 1998). Tonya was also (very briefly) in a band called the Golden Blades (they were allegedly booed off the stage during their first and only performance). She also raced vintage automobiles (setting a record by driving a Ford Model A over 97 miles per hours on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah). And in 1996 Tonya used mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to revive an 81-year-old woman who collapsed at a bar in Portland while playing video poker. That’s a lot to accomplish before the age of 30!
Tonya Harding’s dramatic rise and fall was fiercely followed by the media, and she very quickly became the brunt of jokes, the subject of tabloid headlines and public outcry. She was a reality TV star before such a thing even existed. But she was also simply un-categorical: America’s sweetheart with a dark twist. But I believe this is what made her so interesting, and a true American hero. In the face of outrage and defeat, Tonya bolstered shameless resolve and succeeded again and again with all manners of re-invention and self-determination. Tonya shines bright in the pantheon of American history simply because she never stopped trying her hardest. She fought classism, sexism, physical abuse and public rebuke to become an incomparable American legend.
I admit, early drafts of this song contained more than a few puns, punch lines and light-hearted jabs—sex tapes and celebrity boxing make for an entertaining narrative arc. But the more I edited, and the more I meditated, and the more I considered the wholeness of the person of Tonya Harding, I began to feel a conviction to write something with dignity and grace, to pull back the ridiculous tabloid fodder and take stock of the real story of this strange and magnificent America hero. At the end of the day, Tonya Harding was just an ordinary woman with extraordinary talent and a tireless work ethic who set out to do her very best. She did that and more. I hope the same can be said of us all. – Sufjan Stevens
Fall(Studio 57 Recordings) is one of the first songs ‘our’ Emma Jones has written. It just pours out of the speakers showing the craft and style she’s already developing. But just listen to that voice. As the wistful trumpet seeps in, consider that the back backing is mostly provided by schoolmates, and hope is provided as well as entertainment.
‘Fall’ is the debut single from singer/songwriter Emma Jones. Her folky tone is soothing and unique. Emma’s writing is mature well beyond her age. Emma discovered her love for music in primary school and has devoted herself to honing her craft ever since. After recently taking up song writing Emma completed her first original song ‘Fall’. Her lyrics are meaningful and passionate as she hopes to encourage resilience among fellow young generations and help to encourage people to learn from their mistakes. She combined with a group of talented teenagers on drums, bass, guitar, keys, trumpet etc to bring her track to life. Her debut single ‘Fall’ is just the start of a journey which she hopes will be one filled with new experiences and opportunities to learn. Emma is currently working on a follow up EP with producer Marc Scully at Studio 57 Recording. emmajonesmusic.bandcamp.com
Five years following 2012’s Charmer, and some choice hang time with New Jersey bard Ted Leo as The Both, Singer Songwriter Aimee Mann decided it was about time to create her “saddest, slowest, and most acoustic” album to date. Needless to say, she succeeded on all three counts with her ninth studio album, Mental Illness, a lush tapestry of sounds that are about as melancholy as they are embalming. Mann writes musical snapshots, documenting the smallest details to convey rich inner worlds. By eschewing the lush instrumentation of some of her early solo work, Mann and producer Paul Bryan give the record an exceptionally spacious feel; most songs find her singing over a piano or single acoustic guitar, augmented occasionally by strings or subtle harmonies. The spare arrangements highlight Mann’s melodies—contemplative, longing, vulnerable—as well as her words—solitary, reflective, honest.
Melancholy feels good sometimes, and with a voice as affecting and nuanced as Mann’s, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the drama. Songs like “You Never Loved Me”, “Simple Fix”, and “Patient Zero” reel on by with poppy melodies that stick in your head long after you’ve tossed the vinyl back in its sleeve. Aided by strings, piano, soft percussion, and a choir comprised of Leo, Jonathan Coulton, and longtime producer Paul Bryan, Mental Illness capitalizes on our curious attraction to sadness, for instance, those lonely nights we often yearn for amid happier times — and that’s an illness we’ll never shake.
‘Goose Snow Cone’ was enough to convince me. If you’re not familiar with this album then I imagine it will be enough for you too. It’s a pretty much perfect bit of songwriting. The melody is outrageously catchy, the arrangement perfectly matched and the performance utterly commanding.
The best cut off Aimee Mann’s stunning, new record, Mental Illness, shows how much can be done with a straightforward strum, plaintive singing, and a few background strings. On “Simple Fix”, she captures the universal feeling of being in a relationship that falls into the same rut time and time again. Unfortunately, the simplest solutions are often the hardest to follow through.
No song on Aimee Mann’s excellent Mental Illness addressed that album title as bluntly or as unsentimentally as “Lies of Summer,” a story-song about a bipolar kid who loses himself in an institution while his family untangles his lies and crimes. Mann’s tone alternates between wry dismissal and clinical fascination, as though the face behind the Plexiglas was an intriguing specimen to be studied and dissected.
True to the title, ‘Winter’ from Donegal singer-songwriter Rosie Carney who paints an picture through gentle folk atmospherixs. Carney’s vocals are hauntingly beautiful and she says of the song:
“Winter is a confessional song written about knowing when something is over. It’s inspired by the brutally honest truth experienced when realising something is coming to an end regardless of whether or not that’s what you want. It captures the true cold essence of winter which can be felt when letting go.. It was, of course, written in the winter.. The instrumentation and production were very much inspired by the cold and bare landscapes around me. Everything is raw and minimal.”
Rosie Carney brings a worldly confidence and maturity well beyond the stereotype of her years.
The Fat Angel Sings 