Seattle has long been a hot bed of great new music and that’s still true today. Today’s Two’fer Tuesday post highlights two new Seattle groups that are making music that you need to hear. First up is a great new female group called La Luz (pictured above).
La Luz started in 2012 and features Shana Cleveland (guitar), Marian Li Pino (drums), Abbey Blackwell (bass), and Alice Sandahl (Keyboards). Sure As Spring, from the girls debut album (It’s Alive), features four part harmonies, surf guitars, and some amazing organ all of which combine to create a sound that transports me right back to the 60’s. Really good stuff!
La Luz – Sure As Spring (great 60’s girl group pop)
Next up is Pillar Point, a solo project of Scott Reiterman who previously started Throw Me The Statue. With Pillar Point, Scott produces a glorious synth pop sound that would have been right at home back in the 80’s. You can hear that sound for yourself by listening to Eyeballs from the group’s self titled debut album. Enjoy!
I first told you about NO in a post on February 9 of last year. Since then the group has released their debut LP, El Prado,…..very much worth picking up if you like their sound. In case you missed last year’s post and don’t know about the group, here’s a great NO live performance at KEXP. Really good stuff…….
My friend Gerard gave me a tip this weekend about a group from the Netherlands, Vander and Bloom. He and his daughter attended one of their concerts in Ultrecht last week and really enjoyed the show. After listening to a couple of their songs I can understand why….they have a really nice nice folk sound and have written some great songs. It doesn’t hut that they are also quite attractive :-).
As you can tell from the pictures above the group has been paying their dues by traveling around the Netherlands in a van and playing small concerts. You have to appreciate that kind of commitment! They have released two albums, as best I can tell. You can find them on Amazon. Let’s listen to a song from each…..
Brilliance Of You from Simple Peace Of Mind (released 20010)
Not Like You from Shouldn’t Say This (released 2012)
I think Vonder and Bloom has a shot at hitting it big. What about you?
If you aren’t convinced yet….look for them on YouTube and listen to a few more songs. I think you will change your mind.
Hopefully we can convince Gerard to comment on this post and share a little more information about the concert he attended.
Singer/songwriters are able to paint pictures with their words.
My very favorite singer/songwriters manage to paint moving picture, i.e. movies, with their songs.
Mary Chapin Carpenter has consistently managed to do exactly that throughout her career. Let me give you an example via the lyrics for her song I Am A Town.
I’m a town in Carolina, I’m a detour on a ride For a phone call and a soda, I’m a blur from the driver’s side I’m the last gas for an hour if you’re going twenty-five I am Texaco and tobacco, I am dust you leave behind
I am peaches in September, and corn from a roadside stall I’m the language of the natives, I’m a cadence and a drawl I’m the pines behind the graveyard, and the cool beneath their shade, where the boys have left their beer cans I am weeds between the graves.
My porches sag and lean with old black men and children Their sleep is filled with dreams, I never can fulfill them I am a town.
I am a church beside the highway where the ditches never drain I’m a Baptist like my daddy, and Jesus knows my name I am memory and stillness, I am lonely in old age; I am not your destination I am clinging to my ways I am a town.
I’m a town in Carolina, I am billboards in the fields I’m an old truck up on cinder blocks, missing all my wheels I am Pabst Blue Ribbon, American, and “Southern Serves the South” I am tucked behind the Jaycees sign, on the rural route I am a town
Every time I hear this song it triggers not only a movie….. but a movie of my life….I know the places of which she so eloquently sings.
Based on the above, I really wasn’t surprised when I heard late last year that Mary was going to release a new album, called Songs From the Movie, consisting of some of her best songs re-recorded with full orchestration. After listening to this album for the past couple of months I’m happy to tell you that it’s a thing of great beauty. Although I already have have all of the original versions of these songs in my music collection, the new orchestrated versions compliment Mary’s great cinematic lyrics and make them essential additions to my music library. Here are three great songs from that album to let you experience what I’m trying to describe…..
I’ve waited way to long to discuss Jason Isbell’s, Southeastern, album that was released last year. It has been on heavy rotation in my car over the past several months.
Jason grew up very close to where I live in North Alabama so I feel compelled to support him based on just that but let me tell you……he deserves my support, and yours, based on raw talent. He is, without a doubt, one the favorite new singer/songwriters that I have discovered in years.
Jason may be best known as a member of Drive By Truckers but for the last 6-7 years he has focused on his solo career. His hard work paid off with the release of Southeastern which was, and continues to be, a huge hit. Tonight I have two of my favorite songs from that album for you. First up is Traveling Alone followed by a live performance of Different Days.
My first offering for this Two’fer Tuesday post comes to us from Iceland by way of Sindri Már Sigfússon side project Sin Fang. His album Flowers was released last year and featured Look At The Light which is the song I have for you today. I think you will like…..if you give it a listen……
Sin Fang – Look At The Light
The bonus is a live Sin Fang performance on Look At The Light……
My second offering for this Two’fer Tuesday post is from indie rocker Kurt Vile (pictured above) who released his fifth album, Walking on a Pretty Daze, last year. This album features much longer songs that his other releases and I have to say I really like the Neil Young kind of extended jam sound. Here’s the title track from that album so you can see what you think.
Kurt Vile – Walkin on a Pretty Day
The bonus is a live Kurt Vile performance of Walkin on a Pretty Day
The Dum Dum Girls are an American band that was formed in 2008. They just recently popped onto my radar and I have to say that I’m entranced at this point. Their new album, Too True, was released earlier this year and it is a really solid effort. Here are two of my favorite songs from the album. See what you think.
Rimbaud Eyes
Are You OK
Wondering where the group’s name came from? I’m betting it has something to do with the Iggy Pop song Dum Dum Boys….let’s listen and you can make up your own mind…..
This song had me immediately with its great female rock/pop group sound. I miss the Go Gos and the Bangles!
Cloud Control – Scar
When this song hits the chorus it make my heart sing! It transports me back to much of the great pop group music I listened to as a teenager.
Warm Soda – Tell Me In A Whisper
I was a big fan of the Flaming Groovies back in the 1970s. They single handedly tried to bring back mid-60s rock sound. Warm Soda is a 2014 vocal group trying to bring back the Flaming Groovies and thereby bring back the mid-1960s power pop sound. I know this sounds way too complicated so just listen, enjoy, and be amazed.
One of the things that I dislike about becoming older is that I find it very hard to find new music that surprises/amazes/entertains me. Back in the late 60s and early 70s (when I was a young man) it seemed like every week I discovered some great new musician, artists, or song that just blew me away. These days that doesn’t happen very often…..but today I’m sharing one of the rare cases where it still occurs.
The group Elbow, out of Manchester England, has been around for over 20 years with exactly the same personnel but somehow they totally escaped my attention until a couple of weeks ago when I happened upon their new album named The Takeoff and Landing of Everything. From the very first note of the very first song of that album I was surprised, amazed, and entertained.
The Guardian recently featured a great interview with Guy Harvey, Elbow’s lead singer, that I encourage you to read (click on the link below to access the article):
In case you don’t read the article here is an excerpt where the author discusses the album and I have to give him credit, he says most of what I feel about the album/band a lot better than I ever could.
The Take Off…, Elbow’s sixth, has many of the band’s hallmarks: moments of majesty, strings provided by Manchester’s Hallé orchestra; choruses that bury themselves deep after only one or two listens; astonishingly deft character portraits – of an ageing, bitter drunk (Charge), or a girl who was always better than where she came from (Colour Fields); funny lines (“she and I were for a burton tailor-made”); and beautiful, strong human sentiment. Garvey is known as a romantic but he has many sweethearts. Over Elbow’s 24-year career, he’s sung of his love for his home city, Manchester, of the joy of other people’s company, of the romance of drinking and smoking, the wonder of teenagers and the bittersweet pleasure of getting older. His tenderness extends to friends, alive and dead; his family, all generations; old loves and old foes, now reconciled to him through song. Garvey’s emotion transforms the quiet trials of everyday life into a magical thing.
The only thing that I would add is that Guy is an amazing singer. There is something about his tone and phrasing that reminds me of Peter Gabriel (with Genesis and early in his solo career) and that is probably the best compliment I could ever give a singer. So….on to the music. I had to make this a bonus edition of Two’Fer Tuesday because I was unable to pick just two songs to share with you! The three songs I have for you are New York Morning, Fly Boy Blue/Lunette, and My Sad Captains (a live version recorded on BBC Radio 2 last week). Enjoy!
The way the day begins
Decides the shade of everything
But the way it ends depends on if you’re home
For every soul a pillow and a window, please
In the modern Rome where folk are nice to Yoko
Iska Dhaaf is a band out of Seattle that I recently discovered via the KEXP Music That Matters podcast. Here is what the KEXP site has to say about the band….
Local duo Iska Dhaaf take their name from Somali words meaning “let it go” and say that they’re inspired by Sufi poetry and the ideas of limitations and patience. “It’s very rare that we finish a song in a couple days or weeks,” says singer Nathan Quiroga, who also goes by Buffalo Madonna when he’s part of the Mad Rad crew. “Mostly it takes months, and in some cases, years or more. We’re not interested in rushing the process.” Despite this, Quiroga and his bandmate Ben Verdoes, who you also know from Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band, have been busy lately, releasing the new single, working on a music video, playing live.
Here is the band’s video for their song Happiness……
Happiness is the title song on the band’s second release which you can purchase from their website (http://iskadhaaf.com) The second song I have for you today isn’t included on their Happiness release but if it is any indication of things to come from the band I will be first in line to buy their next release. The song is called All The Kids and it is a stunner. Let’s listen…….
If you liked All The Kids, I have good news for you. You can download the All The Kids mp3 for free at the following link (enjoy)!
thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard 