5 posts tagged “folk”

Hello.

Is this thing on? Test....test.

So it's been a while. I used to keep up with this whole daily MP3 thing on this here little Vox blog, but it's been *checks archives* just over a year since I actually did anything here. In fact, I was 27 when I stopped this. Now I'm 29.

A lot has happened and I'm not going to tell you about any of it. This is not the place for me to do that, and no one is here to read it anyways (if anyone is here to read this at all).

But I'm going to try it again. As a refresher: this is a pseudo-daily excercise in sharing music. One song a day, plus one to two paragraphs of commentary. New music, old music, long time favorites and fresh discoveries. Novelties, gems, guilty pleasures. Whatever. No promises, I may skip days or disappear completely (again). So we'll see where this goes.

To start off, here is a song by my favorite band from Bellingham. I only know one band from Bellingham (other than Death Cab For Cutie, who got their start there), but still. I can't imagine liking another one better than I Love You Avalanche. It's a solo-ish project that I saw opening for a Northen California band called the Americas last year. Everything I've heard from her/them is super lo-fi, covered in tape hiss and room noise, but the sweetness of the songs shines through, and the layers of vocals are perfectly wispy and tender. This song in particular kills me. It gets stuck in my head from time to time, and I find myself needing to listen to it regularly. The lyrics, the wavery vocal melody in the bridge, the Major lift into the chorus, the overlapping counterpoints towards the end....it's like this song came forth as a fully formed ideal of the solo female folk song. It's also a perfect song for my life at the moment, all about friendship and loss, exciting and bittersweet, painful and exhilirating all at once. I hope you love it as much as I do.

I skipped yesterday, so here's a doubleshot for today.

Norway's Hanne Hukkelberg has an airy, jazz influenced approach to pop music that is refreshingly creative. While many other Scandinavian acts are getting a lot of attention for their bent pop stylings (Björk, The Knife, El Perro Del Mar, Peter Bjorn & John, etc etc), she has somehow slipped past all but a few attentive listeners. Her US debut Little Things, featuring members of Jaga Jazzist, is full of confident yet subtle songs built on whispery vocals and chiming instrumentation.

San Francisco based minimal techno producer Sutekh has an excellent remix of her song Ease, from the Little Things album, leading off his gargantuan remix collection Born Again. It was this version that led me to the orginal, and onward to the full album. His delicate approach suits the original to a tee, with a Steve Reich influenced synth part anchoring the wispy melody.

On a day when I could use a touch of optimism, here's a song that pretty much defines an optimistic outlook. What else would you call it when a perpetually single gentleman considers the acquisition of a girlfriend merely the first step on the road to fulfilling a certain fantasy?

Most people who recognize the name Jim O'Rourke probably recognize him as either a member of Sonic Youth (for a brief period), or as the producer for the most recent Wilco albums, though his musical resume is far broader and deeper than even that odd pairing would suggest. Aside from a myriad of production credits under his belt, plus a stint as a member of Gastr Del Sol (seemingly a nexus of Chicago's experimental music circuit), he's released several albums of guitar and piano based rock music under his own name, as well as some experimental electro-acoustic work (most notably the breathtakingly gorgeous Oval-influenced I'm Happy And I'm Singing And A 1 2 3 4). He also collaborates with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy and Glenn Kotche as Loose Fur, and still manages to find time to fit in other odd recording, performing and remixing jobs for acts all across the musical spectrum. A quick glance at his Allmusic.com biography reveals 4 pages worth of published credits in varying capacities.

Last night was the show I've been looking forward to for a while. Joanna Newsom was playing with Smog at the Showbox.

I was surprised at the turnout. I mean, there was obviously some serious hype behind her epic new album, and there were feature articles about her in both of the Seattle altweeklies, but I wasn't expecting a sold-out, completely rapt crowd for a harp-wielding songstress with a voice like Olive Oyl. It's a voice you either love or hate, and usually you start out hating it before you love it. Last night's show demonstrated a new restraint though, and found her tempering her vocal quirks, using them to her advantage, rather than just letting them shine through unpolished.

Smog opened the show alone, with an acoustic guitar and that deep, haunting voice he's known for. It seemed like there was an extra depth to it that you don't always hear on record, and his long, drawn-out songs were mesmerizing in person.

But we didn't even know the meaning of drawn-out until Ms. Newsom took the stage, alone for the first few songs, then backed by a 5-piece band given the unenviable task of recreating dense orchestral arrangements with simple folk instruments. But they passed that test with flying colors. After her solo performance of a couple of highlights from her debut album, The Milk Eyed Mender, they proceeded to play through all 5 songs from Ys, in order, at their full lengths. It was surprisingly dynamic, with the accordionist perfectly filling the role of a string section, and guitars, banjos, drums, glockenspiel, and other instruments fleshing out the arrangements. Even the multi-voiced harmony that opens "Monkey & Bear" was flawless. "Cosmia" finished out the set, trailing off into a dramatic, blissed-out duet between harp and singing saw, peaking and then falling into silence as the last metallic scrapes rang out.

The audience response was incredible, between songs and after the main set. I've never heard a crowd resort so quickly to floor-stomping demands for an encore as I did last night. And thankfully, it was a short wait before she reappeared to play "Sadie," "Clam Crab Cockle Cowrie," and of course, "Peach Plum Pear," all unaccompanied.

I was on the wrong side of the stage, and only able to see her during the solo sections of the set, but I did manage to get half-decent footage of "Peach Plum Pear," which you should take a look at, if you're so inclined. If she hasn't already stopped in your city, make it a point to catch this tour.