Americana track
Track: Erin Rae glides into an album and tour in the new year on the psych-country of ‘Candy & Curry’
WITH a sweet, hook-laden but straighter country-pop number, “Modern Woman”, dropping last month, Nashville’s Erin Rae has revealed a more gossamer, delicate psych-folk side to her forthcoming third album in the lighter-than-air “Candy & Curry”, sprinkled with a little retro synth and possessed of a real Margo Guryan harmonic feel; you can swoon for that …
Track: With her British tour kicking off today, Frazey Ford drops the honeyed, spectral folk of ‘Saul’
WITH an eleven-date UK tour beginning this evening in Milton Keynes, former Be Good Tanya and ethereally transporting talent in her own right Frazey Ford has released a track recorded for sessions for U Kin B the Sun but whose omittance from the final running order will surely surprise you as much as it does …
With his debut solo album just a fortnight away, Cameron Knowler invites us to contemplation in ‘Kuyina’
WITH HIS two-hander album with Eli Winter, Anticipation, an excellent study in guitar primitivism, just three months behind us in the rear-view mirror, Texas acoustic explorer is just a fortnight or so away from the release of his debut album proper, Places Of Consequence – a study of roots, memory and the land in the …
See: Rianne Downey seizes the day with the honeyed country of ‘Do Or Die’
INVOKING the righteous bluegrassy, feminine country strength of a fine line of songwriters that stretch back through First Aid Kit and Shelby Lynne, and right on back to Dolly back herself, Scottish country chanteuse Rianne Downey is back and proud with her strumsomely lovely new single, “Do Or Die”, in which she moves on from …
Track: Matt Sweeney and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Joan Shelley and Nathan Salsburg – ‘Watch What Happens’: a good old-fashioned swap and cover two-tracker is out now
WITH their long-awaited third joining together in song, Superwolves, the direct descendent of 2005’s Superwolf, out digitally just a couple of months back, you might think Matt Sweeney and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy could rest easy, take a breather; but not a bit of it, they’ve been up to so much. For a start, Drag City are pleased as …
See: Michael Cormier gathers the undead at the karaoke bar for one ‘Last Hurrah’; ringing Americana warmth and limbs everywhere
GUITARS glimmer with a melodic, picked loveliness that can only bring a smile, kinda post-folky; the vocals are a blissed whisper, and an occasional flute circles and glides among sun-kissed slide guitar and trilling synth. The whole thing is hammock-lazy beautiful. But … the zombies? The undead at the forlorn, roadside strip karaoke bar, extremities …
Track: Michael Cormier – ‘Empty Mugs’: A lovely lo-fi Americana drop about waking from a speedboat dream
CO-FOUNDER of the lovely Dear Life Records, home to rootsy talents such as Josh Halper and Wes Tirey, and also the musique concrète stylings of Bolomite Jr. (see our recent Dear Life coverage here); drummer in the indie four-piece Friendship, Philly’s Michael Cormier makes a potent contribution to the beating heart of the US underground …
Track: Trippers & Askers – ‘Chance’s Wake’: warming, spiritual Americana lays out the path towards an album drawing on the near-dystopian classic, ‘The Parable Of The Sower’
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER was a Californian African-American science fiction author whose 1993 novel, Parable Of The Sower, has rippled out with staying power across culture, with its tale of the marginalised attempting to survive a (really, very) near-future ecological and economic collapse. it was only written less than three decades, in the lifetime of many …
Track: Alexa Rose – ‘Clearwater Park’: those endless childhood summers evoked in rootsy folk magic
WITH a third album of heartfelt, bell-clear folk songcraft due out in the autumn on Fat Possum’s Big Legal Mess imprint, Black Mountain, North Carolina-based Alexa Rose has released a sweet and ethereal evocation of those endless days of childhood summer, the sun hot and high, the evenings endless, the sense of expectancy and joy …
Track: The Mountain Goats drop ‘The Slow Parts On Death Metal Albums’ and announce a tour Stateside
IS IT time that John Darnielle’s purveyors of the great Americana dream, The Mountain Goats, received an award for industry? In the accursed year of our Lord, 2020, when the virus came and we all suddenly became rather better acquainted with the insides of our houses and our heads than most of us could ever …