La Grande sees Portland, OR folksinger Laura Gibson keeping faith with her muse- honed over four studio albums- yet in a more expansive mood. There is still room for otherworldly ballads but also greater variety in tempos, song styles, and instrumentation. Some effects recall her 2010 meditative collaboration with Ethan Rose, Bridge Carols , in their delicate, soft, repetitive layers, but these are equaled by a newfound stridency. The album title references a picturesque transit town in NE Oregon, and much of the content deals with journeys and transitions, with as much forward thinking as reflection. [...]
I grew up under tall Douglas-fir trees near the coast of Oregon, about as far west as you can get in the United States. When I was young I wanted to be a detective. I tend to talk with my hands, and I am very often solving a math problem in my head. I only dance to two-step music. I own an orange canoe that I don't use often enough. I want to start a memorization club and I am haunted by a desire to travel to South America and write poetry. If you switch around the letters in my [...]
Laura Gibson 's new record, La Grande - is named after a small town in Portland that she says has a curious energy. The record, which comes out on Jan 24th via Barsuk feels like it's from another era. The title track, "La Grande" has this sort of galloping percussion, with old Western folk elements, while Milk-Heavy, Pollen- Eyed is a drifting, delicate ballad of a woman who's will is weak. There's a sense of awe in her voice - the twinkling instrumentation in Lion/Lamb evoke waterfalls and lazy rivers. That song in particular is about [...]
Click here for download Sounds like: Fiest, Department of Eagles, Alela Diane, Joanna Newsome, Regina Spektor Song: Laura Gibson - La Grande [download here ] What's so good? At times it's haunting, like a forest of nymphs, or a secret society of hippie pirates. Or maybe I'm just thinking of [...]
Mondays are for having guts. Laura Gibson - 'Le Grande' Isidore - 'Reappearance' Theophilus London - 'Last Night (LVRS ANTHEM)'
It’s fitting that Laura Gibson ’s latest effort La Grande , her second full length and follow up to 2009’s Beasts of Seasons , is named after a small town in her native Oregon. Like recent tourmates (and grizzled travellers themselves) Richmond Fontaine, the music of Gibson and La Grande is firmly rooted in the boxcar-jumpin’ spirit of the American West, by turns joyous and tragic. However, whilst the connection is obvious, the songs spun by Gibson throughout La Grande ’s course are anything but. And that’s because Gibson, in fine [...]
Laura Gibson's new album La Grande drops on January 24th via Barsuk, and the singer/songwriter recently recorded a session for Mason Jar Music, sharing a live rendition of a new song "Milk-Heavy, Pollen-Eyed” off her upcoming album. Check out the video after the jump. Read more »
We've got new mp3s and downloads coming out of our ears...and hopefully into yours. So, here is our pick of the best new tracks currently doing the rounds. They include the cantering desert folk of Laura Gibson , the uncannily Syd Barrett like individual psychedelia of The Doozer , some primal garage rock from both King Khan & The Shrines and the wonderful Mind Spiders , some brain splintering psych-rock from Disappears , and a welcome return from alt-country Canadians The Wooden Sky . Enjoy six of [...]
Laura Gibson - The Fire (Live)
For her fifth solo album, Portland native Laura Gibson brings together a collection of modern folk and roots tunes that have their foundations laid firmly in the distant past but a delivery which is very much in and of the modern world. At first glance and indeed on first listen you’d be hard pushed to differentiate Gibson from a whole clutch of post-folkies from both sides of the Atlantic – from Laura Marling to Kate Rusby to Joanna Newsom it’s easy to pick up on the superficial similarities. Indeed, like an American [...]
Photo by Parker Fitzgerald Singer-songwriter Laura Gibson is releasing a new album on Barsuk Records called Le Grande on Tuesday, January 24th. The album is streaming in its entirety at NPR Music; you can listen to it here . Laura plays at Johnny Brenda's on Thursday, January 24th. Tickets and more information is here . Below, download the title song to Laura's new album. (Photo by Parker Fitzgerald) La Grande by Laura Gibson from La Grande [...]
Our friends over at NPR have just posted Laura Gibson's forthcoming album - La Grande - in their First Listen series. I've been eagerly awaiting this release, Gibson's third, and can honestly say that it has been worth the wait. In many ways, this is a more complicated, confident affair than her previous efforts. For me, La Grande is the sound of an artist who has found her feet, and now wants to fly. Indeed, as Stephen Thompson writes: It's the sound of a confident artist stretching her own limits, without losing [...]
Up until now, Laura Gibson has always seemed like a bedroom folk performer, intimate and mild, softly serenading away. Now, the singer/songwriter gets a little dirt in her fingers and a little fire under her boots with her new album, La Grande . Named for the town in northeastern Oregon where the record was written and pronounced "without any hint of French inflection," La Grande is set to be released January 24 via Barsuk/Jealous Butcher records, but our "First Listen" friends over at NPR are streaming it exclusively right now . [...]
Two ladies of Oregonian and South African descents respectively, two acoustic guitars, one Berlin-based label , and one day upon which two toe-warming records are outed. Hardly The Twelve Days of Christmas, although that aforementioned day has finally dawned as the latest efforts from Laura Gibson and Dear Reader have eventually emerged like newborns wriggling free from cocoon-like blanket, bathed in daylight for the very first time. Indeed both La Grande and Idealistic Animals add some vivacious flicker to the slow-roasting embers of the New Year as Gibson and Cheri MacNeil masterfully [...]
As its title implies, the new La Grande finds Gibson expanding her sound in bold and ambitious ways. Read more »
LAURA GIBSON | LA GRANDE JEALOUS BUTCHER Portland, OR singer-songwriter Laura Gibson is joined again by an impressive cast of backing musicians on her latest full length, La Grande . As with her 2009 album of sparse folk, Beasts of Seasons , cameos include Nate Query and Jenny Conlee (The Decemberists), Joey Burns (Calexico), and Meric Long an Logan Kroeber (The DoDos). Finding inspiration in the beauty of the landscape of La [...]
Portland singer-songwriter Laura Gibson releases her new album 'La Grande' this week and you can pick up the spooky country-folk of title track below. Laura Gibson - La Grande by cityslang
Portland's own Laura Gibson is prepping for a big 2012 with the release of her much anticipated third solo album La Grande , out January 24th on Barsuk . Just ahead of a string of European tour dates, she joins us with her band this coming Monday, January 9th at 2:30 to showcase songs from the new record and talk about its creation. Better yet, if you'd like to be a part of our in-studio audience for the session all you have to is send us an email at opbmusic@opb.org requesting [...]
A selection of clippity-clop words gallop confidently with the drum pattern on La Grande , the signature song on this third album from Laura Gibson. “Starlings return to the old sugar mill, stealing the corn from the grower’s field” is a paean to Oregon – the brittle dryness of its terrain and the parochial peculiarity of its industry are evoked immediately. Lion/Lamb has a framework wrestled from The Girl From Ipanema mixed with a splurge of The Gentle Waves. There is an attempt to blacken both of these upbeat influences with a backwash of howling reverb, [...]
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