The Blind Boys of Alabama @ Town Hall, 5/17/2013 (via @ danatrixieflynn Instagram) The Blind Boys of Alabama tour hit NYC on Friday (5/17) at Town Hall with Betty LaVette . The group have just announced they've signed with Sony Masterworks who will release their new album this fall. "We are thrilled to be on our new label, and we have a real surprise on the way with this new album. I think it's the coolest thing we've ever done," says 80-something singer [...]
This is the first installment of Cover Up!, something we hope will become a regular feature here at TWJ, where we examine covers that - albeit debatably - surpass the original. The first album I ever bought, consciously thinking it was an Important Album, was Peter Gabriel’s Us (1992). It was also the second [...]
Here's the playlist from today's My Old Kentucky Blog Radio on SIRIUS XMU , Channel 35! Tune in to channel 35 on either SIRIUS or XM at Noon ET or 12am ET/9pm PST each and every Tuesday! AELIUS - Echoes ASTR - Operate Joywave - Tongues (feat. KOPPS) Airbird and Napolian - In The Zone [...]
Filed under: News AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Depeche Mode , the Cure , Muse -- this year's expanded Austin City Limits Festival will feature something of a European invasion with five of eight headliners at least partially coming from across the Atlantic Ocean. Also among the list of headlining performers announced Tuesday were Atoms for Peace , Phoenix , Lionel Richie and Wilco . The festival in Austin, Texas, [...]
2012 didn't bring the accolades to Poliça that their fans thought Give You the Ghost deserved. It's an album I shrugged off at first and little by little I became attached to their songs until I finally bought their album and eventually saw them live. Now, months later I still find myself going back to that album on a regular basis. Now we've got a new song to lust after.
Not much is left to say about Colin Stetson , but if you haven't gotten caught up yet, here's a brief rundown: Colin Stetson is a musician on a whole new level for musicians. He plays saxophone (and pretty much everything else with a reed) like a professional athlete, wrestling, pushing, and generally torturing his instrument, utilizing a technique called circular breathing to play for, sometimes, 15 goddamn minutes straight! Wikipedia has generously compiled a list of artists he's recorded and performed with, and it's even larger than I recalled: [...]
Colin Stetson is a classically trained saxophone player who uses circular breathing to play more notes in a song than Steve Vai and Joe Satriani combined and plays them on the outré four-and-a-half foot tall bass saxophone. That would ostensibly make Stetson something like a prog musician, no? That word "prog” - one of the most vulgar invectives in music. Prog means lauding technique over emotions, showmanship over honesty, 7/8 over 4/4. The stigma of prog is that it's music of the bourgeois and the privileged, dismissed easily as a selfish exercise with no politics, no agency, or worst of [...]
Justin Vernon tries on southern rock with The Shouting Matches. Brian Moen, Phil Cook and Justin Vernon played one show as The Shouting Matches nearly seven years ago. They reunited in Eau Claire,...
Normally a tiff isn't a good thing, but in the case of Poliça and Bon Iver's Justin Vernon it's a marvellous thing. "Tiff" is so good, that it's today's Song of The Day and you can download it now on iTunes .
Escucha el nuevo disco de Colin Stetson, New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light El virtuoso saxofonista Colin Stetson ha puesto en línea su nuevo álbum, New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light , una semana antes de su lanzamiento oficial (30 de abril vía Constellation Records ). Escúchalo en NPR . La tercera y última entrega de la trilogía del también músico en directo de Bon Iver , New History Warfare , se grabó en [...]
Bon Iver's Justin Vernon has a bug for collaborations, which is evident from his work with artists varying from Peter Gabriel to Kanye West. Now he's gotten together with Brain Moen (Peter Wolf Crier) and Phil Cook (Megafaun) to write some good ol' blues rock as The Shouting Matches . Though the group's debut record, Grownass Man , still features delicate, pretty songs like " I Need A Change " and the Bon-Iverish " Gallup, NM ," it's tracks like the lazily rocking "New Theme" that are the heart of the record. The tune is [...]
Over the course of two full-length studio albums and an EP Bon Iver front man Justin Vernon has enchanted us with his heart-tugging falsetto vocals and lushly arranged folk-rock. If you think you've got him pegged as just the poster child for the beard-rock movement then think again, as Vernon has unleashed a new side with his latest project The Shouting Matches . The three-piece act, that also features Brian Moen (Peter Wolf Crier) and Phil Cooke (Megafaun), originally came together back in 2006, in the wake of the break-up of the much mythologized DeYarmond Edison. The band, [...]
The Shouting Matches' debut album, Grownass Man , is a throwback to an era when friends would get together just to play music. They weren't playing to make money or have a career, but to just jam together for the fun of it. Occasionally, they'd play in front of their other friends or at parties. Other times they'd have hootenannies in a barn, filled with dancing, barbecue, beers, and good times, playing until the sun came up or the cops came by. Grownass Man is just [...]
On Colin Stetson's new album New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light , "Among The Sef" comes right in the middle. Stuck between two extremely powerful songs featuring Bon Iver's Justin Vernon, this track bridges the gap between his demonic shouts on "Brute," and the angelic crooning of "Who The Waves Are Roaring For." "Sef," works well as a bridge, but also as reminder (between two strong vocal tracks no less) that while Stetson works incredibly well with collaborators, even alone the man could out-play a small band. Read More...
God. This is just bliss. If you're unfamiliar with Poliça , today is your lucky day. The band, led by sensual vocalist, Channy Leaneagh , put out an excellent debut in 2012. Titled Give You The Ghost , it was the perfect combination of sexy electronica and smooth R&B — I mean, it's certainly etched a spot in my playlist even after more than a year(!) — leaving many listeners anxious for more. Now, this week we get a new single called "Tiff", featuring another infallible singer, Bon Iver 's Justin Vernon . By default, [...]
Poliça’s new track, “Tiff” (featuring Justin Vernon), is another seamless blend of electronic and R&B the band does so well. With the rest of Poliça nailing down a sultry, vaguely threatening atmosphere, the star is singer Channy Leaneagh, who seductively delivers a scattershot dramatic monologue brimming with vivid details and dark suggestions. She manages to make her words drift, stretch, and snap in a tumble of bewitching poetry; the story may be murky, but her emotions are searing and unmistakable. The cause of all this luxurious desolation isn’t clear; “need my TV, need my meds”, she sings at one point, [...]
On the heels of their Coachella 2013 gig this past weekend, Minneapolis indie act Poliça have returned with some new studio-recorded newness in the form of "Tiff", a record that finds the outfit continuing apace with the fantastical art-rock-esque riffs on electronic R&B that was lain on last year's mostly well-received debut effort Give You The Ghost . Arguably the act's most sensual moment thus far, "Tiff" aims straight for the nether-regions as a deeply seductive bump n' grind pose, its slow churning bed of spacey synth [...]
I can't understand half of what she's saying, but whatever it is she says it well. Polica came onto my radar once I got to know the Midwest super group, GAYNGS , which they're a part of. Justin Vernon is also involved with the supagroup and features on this newest Polica track, 'Tiff.' Vernon might actually be the only thing I didn't like on 'Tiff.' His intro half way through the song doesn't sound right and just wasn't blended well, though his eerier presence afterwards fit in right. Other than that the song [...]
Poliça play a dark yet delicate brand of ambient rock that, if you haven't heard, you must check out now. Fronted by Channy Leaneagh, the Minnesota band ends up approximately halfway between Joy Division and The Cocteau Twins. Their 2012 debut "Give You The Ghost" and its single "Dark Star" landed the band toward the top of many best-of lists, and, as they get ready to release a follow-up this year they stream a new track, "Tiff," which features Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. They unveiled the track at Coachella last weekend. No surprise—it's gorgeous. Listen below. [...]
"They're the best band I've ever heard", claimed Bon Iver's Justin Vernon when he first heard Poliça last year. Now he's lucky enough to collaborate with the American band on their latest single Tiff , released ahead of a second album due later this year and performed for the first time at this year's Coachella Festival in California (see below). Vernon's input into Tiff appears to be pretty minimal, besides trading vocal duties with frontwoman Channy Leaneagh. You'll find none of his soft falsetto or gently plucked guitars here - this is a [...]
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THE GIZZLE REVIEW
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Listen to CHVRCHES’ Lauren Mayberry cover of Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name”
