Dear Life Records
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 …
Premiere: Wes Tirey – ‘Bang The Drum Slowly’: haunting, beautiful Americana with plains dust under its nails
WES TIREY comes to us from the arty city of Asheville, North Carolina, out in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where he’s been plying a trade in well-crafted Americana for nearly a decade with a whole clutch of releases under his belt in that time for labels such as Scissor Tail, Full Spectrum, and Noumenal Loom. …
See: Josh Halper – ‘Honest Feeling’: Dear Life’s alt.country troubadour’s gone fishin’
FOLLOWING last year’s rather lovely album for Dear Life, Alrightnik, Nashville’s guitar essayist Josh Halper has decided to reprise the closing track visually. He’s released a brilliantly conceived and funny short film to accompany that tune, “Honest Feeling” – you can watch it below. By way of introduction and self-summation he says, an eyebrow arched: …
ALBUM REVIEW: Bolomite Jr. – ‘Cold Feet’: classical meets experimental in tectonic layering
BEN CALHOUN has been quietly working away for a while now, leading a double life as a construction worker-cum-experimental musician having begun using Digital Audio Workstations as a creative tool way back in 2014, reconnecting him finally to a performative sphere as a childhood musician he’d left behind Since then he’s digitally released a series of …