_heads_up - Bon Iver Live!

Those crazy kids over at daytrotter have done it again - they’ve managed to jag another beautiful recording from an artiste du jour (certaintly round these parts).

Bon Iver deliver 4 tracks from the haunting For Emma, Forever Ago, with some extra percussion and additional guitar work fleshing out the tracks nicely.

You can get them ( and heaps of other cool stuff ) here.
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_wednesday_weview - Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy - Lie down in the light

Every now and again one of us falls behind.
I think that you may have gathered by now that I love music. I spend a (scarily) large amount of my life with a soundtrack. Each of my moods or periods of my life have had an appropriate backing track. ’Lie down in the light’ is almost the diametric opposition to the previous post, it’s more like ‘hands in your hair’. (Sorry.)

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s (aka Will Oldham) 9th album ( under this name) is the warm embrace and consoling words of a friend. Warm and honest songs delivered in ‘a fragile sort-of warble frittering around haunted melodies in the American folk or country tradition’. But don’t let that put you off. Produced by Steve Albini (producer to Pixies and Nirvana), Bonnie is said to bring punk’s honesty to American folk. I wouldn’t say that, but you know….someone somewhere did.

I know my way around the world, it’s a circle - it starts and it ends.
If you need a some music that doesn’t demand you dance, or wave your hands like you just don’t care, then chances are you’ll enjoy ‘Lie down in the light’. It’s an album that won’t challenge you immediately. You’ll listen and think ‘I know where this is going’ but next time you look up you’ll be somewhere other than you expected.

For Every Field, There’s a Mole.
Clarinet swirls behind bare folk bones. Jews harp twangs act as exclamation points. There is reward for the attentive listeners that will make this album a consoling friend to all.

THINK: The Punk John Denver
READ: An interview with Bonnie PB
WATCH: Cursed Sleep clip
BUY: ‘Lie down’ at Spunk!

_wednesday_weview - Fleet Foxes

Fleet Foxes released their self titled debut yesterday, to much anticipation. ‘Fleet Foxes are not hippies - Don’t Let the Floppy Hats, Jesus Beards and Five-Part Vocal Harmonies About Rivers, Trees and Sunshine Throw You.’announced a Seatte Arts paper recently.

They describe themselves as Baroque pop, and that’s a pretty good pigeon hole they’ve carved out for themselves. Not many contenders for iTunes Baroque Pop album of the year. Crosby, Stills and Nash style harmonies over american west coast folk tunes.

With dreamy choral passages akin to Sigur Ros, but with a little more structure and intelligibility and lyrics taken from ye-olde-folk-lyric-book, this release has instant folk classic written all over it.

‘White Winter Hymnal’ is impossibly catchy, but you’re not sure why and it is difficult not to turn to your partner and curtsy mid way through ‘He Doesn’t know why’.

Following Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes is proof that folk is alive and well, but is being taken in unexpected and wonderful directions by the next generation of protagonists.

THINK: Crosby, Stills & Nash meet Sigur Ros in 1886
READ: An interview with the band
WATCH: White Winter Hymnal
BUY: Fleet Foxes at SubPop

Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever ago

Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever ago is featured in the ‘what I’m listening to now’ sidebar of triplejaysus. The idea was that I would feature albums that i wasn’t going to review. And already that plan has fallen over. After almost three weeks of constant rotation I’ve realised that a _mood_indicator and a sidebar link is doing Bon Iver a disservice.

For those who haven’t heard the back story, this guy hides away in a cabin in wisconsin following a breakup, and spends three months writing an album about it. I can understand that you wouldn’t rush out and buy the album based on that sentence. And while I love meloncholic music, this is so much more.

While only 9 songs long (unless you preordered in iTunes), ‘For Emma’ is a beautiful and haunting contemporary folk album. Vocals are laid layer upon layer until every corner is filled with a choir, but the restraint shown using this choir is simply beautiful. ‘Lump Song’ opens with such a passage, but you know immediately that Enya is no where to be seen. And, without putting too fine a point on it, thanks be to christ above and his legions of saints that she’s miles away.

‘For Emma’ is a beautiful album, remarkably accomplished for a self produced, self released debut. Detractors will point to jangly guitars, falsetto and hymn-like passages, and they’re right. All of the above are present, but used with such confidence that they cease to be negaitve discriptions. I highly recommend you seek this album out, if only to remind yourself that music can be an emotional discourse. 

THINK: In beauty lies hope.
READ: An indepth interview with Justin Vernon
WATCH: ‘Flume’ performance
BUY: ‘For Emma…’ here

Devendra Banhart - Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon

Sometimes I decide that I won’t like an artist or band before I ever hear their music. Sometimes that’s because of their name, the album graphics, or just because everyone seems to be telling me how good they are. I’m not sure how I’m going with that, I haven’t been keeping a chart or anything. I haven’t really questioned it up until now, but sometime last week curiosity got the better of me and I decided to give Devendra Banhart a whirl.

I’m happy to report that I am pleasantly surprised that I was wrong. The face painted hippy with an Oompa Loompa name is actually quite good.

Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon is his eighth album, just so you’ll know. I can’t claim ( so I won’t) that I know what the back catalogue is like, but reviews I’ve read sound promising. But who has time to look back when there is so much to look forward to. Maybe one day I’ll check them out – I reckon ole Dev* is worth it

Smokey is a long album – 16 tracks over 66 minutes. It’s a great album to cook to, because the highlights come about 12 minutes in (‘Seahorse’), and lasts for 13 minutes. (If you cook for more than 25 minutes you need to take a long hard look at yourself.)

The next 8 tracks provide a pleasant backdrop to Lamb Shanks, maybe in a nice CabSav reduction. The last three tracks ramp up again, ending with another album highlight, ‘My Dearest Friend’ – leaving you with a warm and cozy sense of contentment.

*Apologies to any Michael Collins haters out there for the misappropriation of that particular abbreviation

THINK: Layla + Golden Brown = Seahorse
WATCH: ‘Sight to behold’ live in Poland
LOOK: SF MoMA to display Banhart Artwork
READ: A Banhart interview
BUY: SRDTC at Amazon