New Wax I love folk music, but let's be honest, the indie-folk genre has been flooded by mediocrity in recent years. Luckily, Toronto's The Wooden Sky doesn't fall into that category of derivative hacks. I praised their 2007 debut album When Lost At Sea , which was released under the band name Friday Morning's Regret. The band has since wisely changed their name to The Wooden Sky and they are back with a brand new LP entitled If I Don't Come Home You'll Know I'm [...]
New Wax The ill-informed may confuse J. Tillman's solo material as a side project, but alas, Tillman was a solo artist long before he was the drummer for it-band Fleet Foxes. Tillman's hypnotic, deep lull of a voice is quite different when contrasted with the sweeping pastoral harmonies of his other band. Throwing his name in the hat of uber-prolific singer/songwriters, Tillman returns with his second album in a year entitled Year In The Kingdom . Whereas most of Tillman's previous material owed much of its charm [...]
New Wax New Jersey's The Roadside Graves have a name fit for a death-metal band, but they deal out jangly folk-rock as effortlessly as anyone. Taking a page from Bob Dylan and The Band (what folk-rock band isn't?), The Roadside Graves turn in a sprawling collection of narrative-rich songs on their new album My Son's Home . Lead singer John Gleason's vocals warble with wit and flair and he's backed by an onslaught of accordion, piano, and loosely strummed guitars. The band shines in the stripped-down intimacy [...]
New Wax I mentioned The Silent Years a few years back when they offered their self-titled album for free. The band has since released a follow-up album entitled The Globe and they're back with a brand new EP entitled Let Go . The mini-album was recorded in the span of a week in a variety of Detroit locales: from lead-singer Josh Epstein's bedroom studio to an empty health department building. While Detroit doesn't exactly conjure up the rosiest of images, the band has created a [...]
New Wax On their new album The Perch , San Francisco's Trainwreck Riders, who have been labeled "cowpunk", meld a wide variety of genres and sounds. A track like "Three To The Clouds" seems like it could easily serve as a backtrack to Jay Farrar's vocals, which is understandable considering the band is often compared to Uncle Tupelo. There is certainly a familiarity about Trainwreck Riders' sound, who have cited the Meat Puppets and Dinosaur Jr. as influences, but it's a good familiarity comparable to the smell [...]
New Wax Without discerning ears, it'd be pretty easy to lump Edinburgh's We Were Promised Jetpacks in with fellow Scottish indie outfits Frightened Rabbit and The Twilight Sad. They are all FatCat labelmates. They are all, well, Scottish. Of course the bands are, in actuality, all very different, and We Were Promised Jetpacks infuses a post-punk sensibility that harkens back to early 90's emo with its angular guitar work and loose-yet-unbridled drums. Lyrically, lead singer Adam Thompson doesn't exhibit the same complexity as some of his fellow Scots, [...]
New Wax Humility is a virtue lost on many a younger musician these days. One album into a career, and you are likely to hear posturing the likes of which might shame an NBA player. What humility you do see is usually calculated and superficial; designed to fit the expectations of a certain genre and not reflective of anything substantial. Leonard Cohen has had a long career, in literature and music, and more than anything else it is his humility that shines through in this recording, from London [...]
New Wax With Fondo, Vieux Farka Touré’s sophomore release, the young West African gunslinger makes great strides toward establishing a musical identity that continues his late father’s legacy while at the same time moving in an original direction. Of course, when your father is African blues legend Ali Farka Touré, continuing the legacy is not such a bad thing. Longtime Farka Touré, pére collaborators Toumani Diabaté and Afel Bocoum make appearances, with Bocoum singing on three of the tracks and Diabaté and the younger Touré having a lovely kora/guitar [...]
New Wax Having toured with the likes of Bon Iver, Phosphorescent, and John Vanderslice, North Carolina duo Bowerbirds will follow up their impressive 2008 album Hymns For A Dark Horse with a new album entitled Upper Air on July 7 via Dead Oceans. Album opener "House Of Diamonds" is an outright gem. Opening with a lightly strummed acoustic guitar riff and sparse piano, the track finds lead vocalist Phil Moore and backup vocalist Beth Tacular harmonizing on a beautiful hook: "You are free, you [...]
New Wax I can only hope to be as cool as John Vanderslice when I'm 42. The indie-rock elder-statesman continues to pump out his own brand of polished-yet-innovative pop songs, and his new album Romanian Names sounds decidedly... well, John Vanderslice. That's not to say there's not a subtle shift in tone. Where his two previous albums, 2005's Pixel Revolt and 2007's Emerald City , were wading knee-deep in post-9/11 paranoia, Romanian Names trades in the politics for a more personal feel. [...]
New Wax If you pop in mewithoutYou's new album It's All Crazy, It's All False, It's All A Dream, It's Alright and expect the same old mewithoutYou, prepare to be initially disappointed. I say intially because you're not going to find what you more than likely know to be the same band that wrote Catch For Us The Foxes or Brother, Sister . Sporadic ranting, dual electric guitar, lyrics not about animals or fruit... these are all things of the past and the future [...]
New Wax The success of Seattle shoegaze outfit Tresspassers William's first album Different Stars propelled the band into the public eye and they have since toured with the likes of Damien Rice, Explosions In The Sky, and Broken Social Scene. The band, which is now officially a two-piece consisting of guitarist Matt Brown and singer/guitarist Anna-Lynne Williams, has just released a new EP entitled The Natural Order Of Things . The mini-album kicks off with "Sparrow," a dreamy track highlighted by reverb-heavy guitars and Williams' [...]
New Wax On "Jim Cain," the opening track on Bill Callahan's new album Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle , Callahan muses: "I used to be darker/ Then I got lighter/ Then I got darker again." It might be a reference to his uncommonly upbeat 2007 release Woke On A Whaleheart , which was a bit of a grab-bag of various styles. While Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle may be a slight return to the melancholy of his Smog records, Callahan's [...]
New Wax For Portland's The Decemberists, the idea of a rock opera involving a pair of lovers, a rake, and a forest queen, isn't all that weird. The uber-literal folk-rock collective released The Tain EP in 2004 and it contained one 18-minute song based on an Irish folk legend. Storytelling has always been the focus of the band's material, but with The Hazards Of Love the band has forayed unabashedly into prog-rock territory. Is it somewhat pretentious? Absolutely. Are there missteps? Yes, especially when the band [...]
New Wax Arkansas songwriter Joe Purdy has been putting out albums at a dizzying pace. In six years he's penned ten albums of original material, with six of those seeing daylight in the last two years. While his songs have appeared on a number of hit TV shows such as "Lost," "Grey's Anatomy," and "House, M.D.," Purdy opts to release his music independently rather than deal with record companies who would most likely try to impede his torrid pace. Purdy's latest album Last Clock On The Wall [...]
New Wax I've always wanted to like The Knife more. I know, they make masterful, provocative music, and they even have some fun tracks, but quite frankly, they frighten me. The ominous overtones and crazed videos have kept me from loving them. Recently, the female half of the Swedish sibling duo has returned with a carefully crafted, melancholic project of her own in Fever Ray. In doing so, she's helping her cause. Not to say that Fever Ray is any less frightening (because it isn't), but the fright [...]
New Wax Besides being your one-stop shop for used furniture and creepy sexual encounters with strangers, Craigslist is apparently where you should go if you want to start a Pitchfork-heralded indie band. New York-based Cymbals Eat Guitars was assembled by lead singer/guitarist Joseph D'Agostino through an ad on Craigslist, and after more than a year of writing and recording, the band has graced us with an impressive debut album entitled Why There Are Mountains . It shouldn't take more than ten seconds of opening track "And The [...]
New Wax Great Lake Swimmers' 2007 release Ongiara was one of those albums that slowly revealed its beauty to me. Each listen unearthed overlooked subtleties and the album grew into a personal favorite. Now the Toronto-based folk band is back with a brand new collection of songs entitled Lost Channels . Principle songwriter Tony Dekker and company recorded the album in a variety of locations in and around the Thousand Islands, including Singer Castle in Hammond, New York and St. Brendans Church in Rockport, Ontario. [...]
New Wax In Guy de Maupassant's short story "Minuet," the 19th-century French writer describes an old couple dancing in a nursery garden: "They advanced with childlike grimaces, smiling, swinging each other, bowing, skipping about like two automaton dolls moved by some old mechanical contrivance, somewhat damaged, but made by a clever workman according to the fashion of the time." Dan Deacon's new album Bromst evokes a similarly odd juxtaposition of imagery and emotions. While it's still brimming with the same childlike creativity of the Baltimore electro-maestro's [...]
New Wax The most effective songwriters are able to tap into a seemingly infinite well of emotion not easily accessed by the general population. It's a mystical gift that often comes packaged with a heavy burden of despair that artists of every ilk have battled and often succumb to. Sometimes loss breeds self-destruction. Sometimes it opens the floodgates of introspection and creativity. We've all heard the cliche: "What doesn't kill us only makes us stronger." Elvis Perkins seems to embody this overused, yet fitting sentiment. In case you [...]
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