Elegy by Hey Marseilles

Finally, a video of Hey Marseilles’ “Elegy” is up! I wrote about this song in last week’s Latest and Greatest. Enjoy!

I stand at the corner of two dead ends / One dies where the other one begins

I am constantly floored by the beautiful, heartfelt music produced by Vandaveer, the Washington D.C.-based duo of Mark Charles Heidinger and Rose Guerin, who met at a DC folk collective known as the Federal Reserve. Their soulful harmonies, instrumental talent and romantic storytelling blend naturally to create sophisticated folk-pop.

Dig Down Deep, released in April of this year, is Vandaveer’s third full length album and blends the diverse influences of Heidinger’s southern, country Kentucky roots with elements of traditional folk. The final product is a cohesive, yet dynamic collection of songs. I’ve selected my three favorites to share, though all 11 tracks are truly fantastic.

Dig Down Deep

The album opens with the title track. The song starts with Heidinger’s pitch-perfect voice and the acoustic guitar, but builds itself up on textured layers of orchestral instrumentation and Rose’s secondary, angelic vocals.

Then you shed your skin down to your bones
You know a house don’t make a home
When you build it all alone
No that’s just a hallow skeleton of sticks and stones

This music video is the perfect illustration of the sound and lyrics of the song.

Concerning Past & Future Conquests

This is one of the most beautiful songs on the album. I am hooked from the very first fingerpick and strum of the guitar and Heidinger’s twangy voice. The instrumentation on this tune is so purposeful and tight, building up to perfectly match the song’s lyrical angst and ending suddenly and without closure.

I dream about you constantly
Side by side, you next to me
Well I want to have it all
I’m gonna have it all

The Nature of Our Kind

This is an incredibly fun track, with a steady drum kick and rootsy vocals from Heidinger. From the moment Rose joins him, singing “OH well the new moon dripped a steady stream / I knelt to wash my face” the song builds its energy, not climaxing until literally the last 13 seconds. It feels like it should be the last song on the album and yet it finds itself exactly halfway through the collection. The song itself is the album’s pinnacle.

 

 

Latest and Greatest

This is the fourth installment of a weekly collection of the “latest and greatest.” I post two newly discovered songs that have captured my attention and two of my longtime (word of warning, this will be a relative term) favorite songs that are building up dust in my music library.

THE LATEST

Eagle’s Nest by Caroline Smith & The Good Night Sleeps
Last night, in a last-minute bout of spontaneity, I decided to run downtown to check out Caroline Smith & The Good Night Sleeps. They played at The Living Room, a low-key, casual venue in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Caroline has an understated, familiar vibe—she’s the wholesome girl next door, with a funky edge. But when she opens her mouth, her beautiful voice hits you in the face and reminds you of her incredible talent.

The modern, indie-folk sound of Caroline Smith & The Good Night Sleeps filled the room from the very first note. Caroline’s voice is unique, quivering, yet controlled, with a timeless essence of Billie Holiday. Her songs are weighty, the melodies etching themselves into you to last long after the final chord.

My favorite of her songs is Eagle’s Nest, from their September release of Little Wind, a haunting tune about the origin of a daughter’s worth. The song starts off slow; Caroline’s voice is only accompanied by the piano and acoustic guitar and eventually soft drumkit after the first minute. But then the song builds to a powerful crescendo, repeating the following line over and over again:

“So bind up the French doors and lace your leather tight
I am taking you to the eagle’s nest tonight”

Elegy by Hey Marseilles

On Tuesday, the Seattle-based group Hey Marseilles will be releasing Elegy, a new 7-inch and the band’s first recording since To Travels & Trunks. In a conversation with Matt Bishop (which will take up a full post soon), the lead singer of the seven-man crew, I learned a little about the band’s instrumental roots:

“We kind of backed our way into the genre that we find ourselves in, in that we were just a group of guys who really enjoyed the complexity of instrumental arrangements and combining that with a pop melody so ultimately it ends up being a very kind of soft sound, in that it has a lot of cello, viola, and acoustic guitar, accordion, it’s not particularly edgy in any auditory way,” explained Bishop. “But it’s also not Americana. You know, it’s not based in the American folk musician tradition. It’s more based in the pop tradition and supported by the complexity of the instrumental arrangements that we have the strength for.”

The Elegy 7-inch is an exciting preview for the Hey Marseilles’ highly anticipated sophomore album, which is expected to hit the stores in early 2012. In the meantime, Elegy and Café Lights demonstrate the band’s maturation and growth, while remaining true to the Hey Marseilles character, with trumpets and strings layered to create a textured, unique sound.

Unfortunately the song is not available to preview yet, so I don’t have a link to stream. As soon as it’s available I’ll put it up. And trust me, it’s worth the wait.

THE GREATEST (covers edition)

Heartbeats by José González
José González plays a mean guitar. This Swedish troubadour’s gripping acoustic reinterpretation of the Knife’s “Heartbeats” rips my heart out every time I hear it. Clocking in at well under 3 minutes, Heartbeats is probably his best-known number and is the centerpiece of his 2006 debut-album Veneer. The gently plucked guitar is the only accompaniment González’s hushed tenor needs. Through his unadorned approach, he has created a modern folk classic.

Make You Feel My Love by Adele

In the spirit of brilliant covers, I am struck time and again by Adele’s rendition of Make You Feel My Love by Bob Dylan. As with much of Dylan’s music, which is better heard through the voices of others, Adele breathes new life into Dylan’s beautiful lyrics.

“I could make you happy, make your dreams come true
Nothing that I wouldn’t do
Go to the ends of the earth for you
To make you feel my love.”

There are not enough words to describe Adele. She popped onto my register a year and a half ago, when one of my favorite Pandora stations continued to feature songs from 19, her critically acclaimed debut album. Her soulful voice has been compared to the likes of Kate Nash and Amy Winehouse. Adele has earned every accolade with her powerhouse vocal delivery.

Spotlight: MILO GREENE

This five-piece, LA-based group is, by all accounts, a band to look out for. Milo Greene is gearing up to release their debut album in the spring and I could not be more excited. The band—composed of Robbie Arnett, Andrew Heringer, Marlana Sheetz, Curtis Marrero and Graham Fink—released The Hello Sessions, a 4-song EP, in March 2011 and has spent the fall touring with The Civil Wars, Belle Brigade and Grouplove and generating a lot of buzz.

These folk rockers are reminiscent of The Local Natives in their invigorating, powerful four-part vocal harmonies. Full disclosure: I am a sucker for harmonies, especially those that blend male and female vocals. The band is a collective of songwriters, which shines through in their cohesive recordings and the sharp, almost effortless, execution of their songs.

The interns at NRP recently invited Milo Greene to the roof of their offices in Washington, D.C. to record the inaugural session of a new “Deskless Concert” series. The final product is incredible.

 

Sometimes, for love to come, love has to go

I have fallen head over heels in love with Tyler Lyle’s The Golden Age & The Silver Girl. In love with his soft voice and sweet melodies, his carefully-crafted turns of phrase, his pain, anguish and hope. The kind of love you write home about (mom you can vouch for me here). It has only been sitting in my music library for about a month by now, but time is clearly not a good indicator for my feelings.

This album is a form of emotional education. While Tyler may disagree, as he himself admitted to being afraid of getting hurt, it teaches listeners to choose feeling, always, over being numb. If for no other reason than taking a chance on a guy who would sing you this:

You are my sunshine
You are my red wine
You are my reason to sing
And if that day comes, when a song is not enough
I will learn to paint.

The album charts the emotional highs and lows of a relationship that comes to an end. Tyler does his listeners the great service of providing a beautifully written liner that contextualizes the music. The liner changes the listening experience and makes you feel wholly connected to the songs’ lyrical content. Tyler tells a story of suffering that is both personal and universally shared. He also crafts beautiful melodies layered with gentle sounds of strings that will keep the disc spinning for hours on end.

I had the wonderful opportunity to chat with Tyler and gather his perspective on the (often tenuous) relationship between music and commerce, the vulnerability of performing deeply personal and emotional songs, living in the old, haunted Fleetwood Mac house, his fantasy of being a heady novelist in Paris and his dreams of writing a protest album. I was struck by how thoughtful he was, giving significant weight to every answer and asking several questions of me in return. Check out the interview below and please listen to and support his music.

___________

INTERVIEW WITH TYLER LYLE
November 3, 2011

S4S: At what point did you decide that you were going to pursue music as a career?

TL: Well I grew up with a dad who was a musician and because of that I swore I’d never ever do music and was very serious about that until I was 15 and my sister wanted to learn a couple chords on the guitar. My dad taught her and I kept going with it and she didn’t. And so I started playing in church but it wasn’t until I was living abroad in Paris that I decided that this was something that I wanted to do. And so when I came back from Paris I made Notes From The Parade, which was my first real EP that I released and that’s when I decided that it was something worthwhile to go ahead and do.

S4S: What was it about Paris that gave you that inspiration/impetus to be a musician?

TL: I think Neitzsche says that the only person who ought to write is the person who is ashamed to write. And I think just being in Paris gave me the space. I was far away from everything and looking at it at a distance. And I really kind of found my voice there, I discovered that I had something that I felt was unique and important to say and I also felt that I’d come to a point where I realized that music is a service. You serve the people who are listening rather than seek to be important, which is how most of my friends had acted up to that point. So yea, it was just nice to be able to step back and see things from a different angle.

S4S: How does your dad feel about you following in his footsteps?

TL: I think he’s really proud. I just got off the phone with him; I released my Halloween album, which I thought was a really fun thing to make. He did not. He is a little bit, well not upset, but.. actually that’s probably the right word. Yea he doesn’t like things that rock the boat. He doesn’t really understand my songwriting. He likes some of my songs more than others and then he really doesn’t like some of my songs.

S4S: Does that influence the songs that you choose to write?

TL: I think I’m contentious by nature. I don’t think it plays a role either way. I think I write what I feel like writing. There are definitely some songs that I’ve written and then not released because the content is just too much, but.

S4S: I’d like to hear one of those. So what does success as a musician mean to you?

TL: Um. That’s a good question. As a musician. You know, if you’re a career musician it’s nice to be able to pay your rent at the end of the month. Beyond that I think you are a success if you’re writing things that you genuinely believe in and things that other people genuinely believe in too.

S4S: So, how do you necessarily produce something you believe in that is also going to pay the rent? And does that influence what you choose to write?

TL: It doesn’t influence what I choose to write. I think money is a fantastic motivator. I was at the bookstore yesterday and I saw a book—I think it was a collection of columns written for some journal—the title was Shakespeare Wrote For Money. Hah.

I did this little campaign when I first moved to LA, I didn’t have any money, and I said I will write a song on any criteria that you give me, if you’ll donate money towards my rent. And so I did, I ended up writing a Jimmy Buffet tribute song for somebody’s best friend. I wrote a song for a fictional character that some author is writing a book about. It was really bizarre. But it was fun and it helped me pay the rent during that month.

So obviously, if you’re into music for the money you’re an idiot because maybe two or three months in the last year have I been comfortable, like have lived comfortably off of music. The rest of the time you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel and wondering how it’s going to keep going.

You know, it’s nice to get paid for what you do. I think there is a dignity in that. I think if you work a trade, if you’re a woodworker or a plumber, there is some dignity for getting paid for what you do well. Initially I was totally against that idea, but I think I’ve passed the point where I think I’m practicing songwriting, now I actually think that I am a songwriter and it’s something that I spend a lot of time working on and developing. It is a craft and it’s a trade and I don’t know how much value it really has in the end but I think there is a dignity to make money off of what you do well.

S4S: In the liner that you wrote for The Golden Age & The Silver Girl you talked about how writing the song Anyhow… was very different from the other songs. What was that experience like and do you want to continue writing in that way and in that style?

TL: I just did actually. I spent a week with two out of the three Dixie Chicks and a couple of their writer friends in Florida at a writing retreat. And it’s great, I love writing with other people. I was actually supposed to have a co-writing session yesterday that I totally forgot about and flaked out on. Everyone has something to bring to the table. And I think writing with other people forces you to understand more where you’re coming from.

The experience I had in Paris with writing Anyhow… was probably the best experience I had co-writing. The people I wrote with were very successful writers and they acted more as editors. It’s was as if I was writing a paper. Every word that was written was scrutinized. The melody was scrutinized. The song came from me, it was totally the song that was in my heart and in my head and the initial melody came from me, but they were wise editors that knew how to craft a song perfectly.

S4S: So I particularly love the lyrics in the song Things Are Better: “You are my reason to sing / And if that day comes when a song is not enough, I will learn to paint.” So what makes a song enough and when will you know when you need to paint?

TL: Haha. Well I recorded a Valentines Day EP and gave it to my girlfriend at the time and that song was on there. It seems to me that you can sooth people, at least in romantic relationships, it always helped for me to grab the guitar and sing (her name was) Anna to sleep; it seems like things were easier for me that way. I would write her songs and make her happy and it made things just go easier. And I was jokingly concerned about when a song was not enough and you know it’s never enough. It’s just not enough to make somebody stay. And it’s not supposed to be enough. But in the song it was a lighthearted joke.

S4S: I’m struck by how personal all of your albums are and particularly The Golden Age & The Silver Girl. What is the experience for you of playing such deeply personal and emotional songs in front of an audience?

TL: It varies, you know. A song is different every time you play it. I firmly believe that. I have a song about heartbreak that I wrote a few years ago called Cyprus and I’ve never properly released it. I enjoy playing it now because I remember how sad I was at the time and when I play it again I don’t feel that sadness anymore. I remember distinctly where I was and where my head was and I think about the distance between then and now. And it’s kind of a happy thing. I had a house show in Atlanta last weekend—the people who flew me out were kind enough to allow me to fly into Atlanta so I could be home for a couple days—and I played in the same room where I wrote When I Say That I Love You and it was hard, I choked up, and it was hard for me to get through. Because it was such a personal and very specific to that room and to that audience, but I think that’s the first time I’ve ever really choked up.

In the moment, in the microsense, yeah these were all things that happened to me and that I felt. But if you get any distance at all from it, it’s something completely universal. I think it’s personal to everybody. I think it was just me being honest. And I think once you release music and put it out there, it’s not completely yours anymore. Everyone that listens to it shares in their own experience of it. Even in time, I haven’t listened to the whole album since I put it out, but one day I will listen to it again and I will have a different experience with it. Yea, it’s personal but it’s not completely mine.

S4S: One of my questions was going to be “Is your story of love and loss universal and can it be at once personal and universally shared?” but I think you just answered that one.

You’re liner notes are really beautifully written and I think, for me in particular, provided a really great way to understand and experience the music. Was that purposeful?  What were you going for when you decided to write those?

TL: They asked Jean-Paul Sartre what he would be if he weren’t a philosopher and he said he would be chanteur (a singer). My first love has always been books and ideas. I secretly want to be a novelist living in Paris and writing these big heady books to nobody that’ll ever read them. My way of understanding the world primarily is through writing and through discussion. I was in debate in high school, I was a philosophy major in college. So I kind of prefer being a musician first; I think of the world like a writer thinks of the world.

Baudelaire says that there is a type of man called the “man of the world” and I think that is who I am. I try to understand things. And I know a few writers who are musicians and so when the written word has kind of failed you you jump off and sing. But I like singing first because you don’t really know what you’re doing, which direction you’re going when you’re writing a song. You don’t really know what it means when you start it off. And sometimes you don’t know what it means for a few weeks or a few months or for a year or two. And it’s nice to be able to have the songs in a collection to listen back to and then you can kind of make sense of it after the fact. At least personally that gives me some kind of sense of what I’m doing.

S4S: But you didn’t write liners for your first two EPs. Would you be interested in going back and writing those?

TL: Yea, I might do that, I could certainly be interested in doing that. I know what each of those albums means. I know where it fits in the time-frame of my life and what I was going for at the time. Yea that’s not a bad idea.

S4S: As a listener, my experience of the music was so changed because of the liner. Usually when I listen to music I’m so out of context; I first listen to the melody and then listen to the lyrics on my second play. But when I listen to your music I feel so connected to what you’re saying as opposed to just what you’re singing and just the melody. It really changes the listening experience and makes it more emotional and powerful I think. So I’m glad that you write them.

TL: I appreciate that. It was a struggle. I had this tragedy and comedy class in college. And I leaned a lot about Apollo and Dionysus and the paradox between the two. Dionysus is sort of wordless and drunk and otherworldly and musical and Apollo is more intelligible. And I really want to be Dionysus; I want to not add commentary, but I kind of can’t help myself. That Apollo, the desire to shine this intelligible light on things, is inside of me. I used to think that was a bad thing, now I’m not sure.

S4S: I also really loved the liner to your Halloween release and the description and what appears to be your inspiration for the release. It seemed a little bit more political. And it is also a very different sound. So is this an indication of a shift in your lyrical content and melody?

TL: No, all of those songs actually were written during the same time that The Golden Age & The Silver Girl were written. The decision to produce it in that way came right after The Golden Age. We thought it would be fun to make a Halloween special, just to do something funky. It is more political, I definitely agree with what I wrote, I feel that and I think the beginning of that is introspection, kind of confronting the darkness within.

S4S: It reminded me of a Dylan protest album.

TL: Well I went to Occupy LA yesterday for the first time and I came back really wanting to write a protest album. I have three songs already that I would put on there. Yea it’s something that I would like to do. I talked to my dad about it and he’s a hardcore Republican and he’s very upset with me right now.

S4S: So what would you want to write about?

TL: I don’t know. It’s tricky. Most protest songs—like Woody Guthrie or Bob Dylan copying Woody Guthrie—they are just kind of hymns with very little content in them. It’s completely different than writing a pop song and I think all of my songs are in the pop format. I don’t know how I would approach it but I don’t feel the need to be out marching everyday or to get a tent. But I do feel like I want to offer myself to these people who are out there offering themselves, you know?

S4S: So it was Occupy LA that inspired this? Or was it something that you’ve been thinking about for a while?

TL: Actually Notes From The Parade initially was conceived as this sort of revolutionary collection of songs. I lived in Prague for a while and I wrote a song about a Cvech revolutionary named Jan Palach. And he set himself on fire in protest of the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in January 1969. But I became very involved in that idea. The first line was:

“Martyrs and thieves live inside of me, a whole history of blood shed. Judas and Christ, my fathers and mine, a task that we choose or are chosen for.”

The idea to value something more than yourself. So I have a couple songs—there is one protest song called The Weeping Bombs that I had written a few years ago that would go on there. But no, this incarnation would have been inspired by the Occupy LA and Occupy Wall Street, even though I’m not all in on it because I think there are some fringe elements that are dangerous and people that I don’t agree with representing the movement. But all in all I think it’s a beautiful thing.

S4S: For you, does every album need to be cohesive and have a theme. You could never record The Weeping Bombs on an album that didn’t also have other protest songs?

TL: I think I’m coming out of the need to have everything intelligible. I guess it’s the Apollo in me wanting to make sure everything has a theme and a purpose. But I feel like I’m coming out of that. So no, the answer to that is no, it can be disjointed. I think there are themes that undercut. That we understand on a more intuitive level than me, the author and the editor trying to make connections.

S4S: One thing I was struck by in the liner of The Golden Age & The Silver Girl: “I say that we find ourselves in spite of ourselves, and the answer comes on its own, without fanfare.” You’re kind of expressing this lack of control.

TL: I wrote it because I’d seen a lecture by Marina Abromovic at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta. She was talking about getting over her ex and she staged this big show where she publicly denounced her former self and denounced the relationship and she said that you have to stage your pain to get over it; that was part of the motivation for me putting together The Golden Age & The Silver Girl–to stage my pain in a way to get over it. And it didn’t help and that was why I wrote what I did. The answer comes on its own without fanfare. You just wake up one day and things have changed and you don’t have to put as much effort into getting over things as you think you do. You just live. Even if you do put effort into it, it doesn’t really help.

S4S: So who are you listening to right now?

TL: This past week I’ve been listening to Tom Waits’ new album and Gillian Welch’s new album.

S4S: What would be your dream band to open for or co-headline a tour with? Living or dead?

TL: I think I’m supposed to say The Courtyard Hounds which is the band that I wrote with in Florida. I guess I have my answer, but I’m curious to know what your answer to that question would be.

S4S: Well I’m not an artist. But, probably Simon & Garfunkel.

TL: Yea I love Simon & Garfunkel for sure. I think the backing band I would love would be The Band—that was Bob Dylan’s backing band. I got to sing one of their songs with the Dixie Chicks in Florida last week, and that was pretty cool.

S4S: How is living in LA influencing you at all, as a musician?

TL: When I first moved here I actually lived in Fleetwood Mac’s old house. It’s totally haunted by the way. But I wrote a lot of really introspective songs. I was still kind of sad and getting over Anna at the time. But then I moved to the beach in the middle of August. And I just started writing happy and weird dark songs, which is an indication that my heart is happy; these weird dark bluesy songs. I am not sad at all. And that’s awesome. Because if I were in Georgia I would be sad because it would be cold and it would be fall and I would go into my hermit mode like I always do. But out here, the weather is perfect and I live within walking distance of the beach.

S4S: How is the music community out there?

TL: It’s hit or miss. There are a lot of good people. Actually a lot of southern musicians have taken up residence out here that I’ve gotten to know.

S4S: Do you consider yourself a “southern musician”?

TL: I do now. I was living in Paris and I played a show at the Troubadour in London and of course I was trying to be Damien Rice back then and this guy came up to me after the show and he said “I didn’t know that’s what Southern music sounded like.” And I was thinking it’s not what southern music sounds like. I’m trying to get as far away from the South as I can. But after he said that I decided to take a couple years and I went back and listened to the anthology of American folk music and bluegrass and blues and that’s kind of where Bad Things (& Collard Greens) came from. But yea, I’m proud to say I am a Southern musician. My dad is a musician; I was raised on good ole’ country gospel and bluegrass. And those are the melodies that come naturally to me. You can pick up all sorts of different aesthetics but that is where I am at the core of my development.

Latest and Greatest

This is the third installment of a weekly collection of the “latest and greatest.” I post two newly discovered songs that have captured my attention and two of my longtime (word of warning, this will be a relative term) favorite songs that are building up dust in my music library.

THE LATEST

Anyhow… by Tyler Lyle
Tyler Lyle’s The Golden Age & The Silver Girl has been playing on repeat for the past three weeks, and for good reason (a longer post and interview is on the docket). Anyhow… is one of the strongest songs on the album. Lyle’s honest and heartfelt voice is complemented by the ongoing plucking of the banjo and adorned with pristine strings.

I heard you say you loved me in your sleep
What I’d give to be in that dream
When you finally bloom for me
I wonder what color you will be

That Moon Song by Gregory Alan Isakov

Gregory Alan Isakov’s This Empty Northern Hemisphere is an exciting new addition to my library. Adam over at songsfortheday wrote about Second Chances last week, and after getting jazzed about how great the song was, I quickly realized he would be opening for Blind Pilot at both of their New York shows. Isakov, with his acoustic guitar strumming and vocal hints of Dylan, fits the folk mold. His songs stream pleasantly through my headphones. But he really comes alive in concert. That Moon Song stands out on both the album and live. The song is outfitted with the full, vibrant sound of strings, beautiful harmonies (between Gregory and the Brandi Carlile on the album!) and the unique blend of Isakov’s voice through the clean and “tinny” sound microphones.

Ahh and that full bellied moon she’s shinin’ on me
Yeah she pulls on this heart like she pulls on the sea
And those broken heart lovers,
They got nothin’ on me.  

It is no surprise that at the end of their set I immediately purchased the album.

THE GREATEST

Kiss Quick by Matt Nathanson
Matt Nathanson’s Modern Love was the soundtrack of my summer. The San Francisco-based singer-songwriter’s album is filled with catchy, up-beat tunes, many of which are sure to be live show sing-a-longs. But the standout is Kiss Quick, whose seductive lyrics and delivery draw you in.

Kiss Quick, I’ve got a line out the door
Who all think they can save me.
One by one they lay the world at my feet,
One by one they drive me crazy.

The Rider. The Horse. The Land by Bryan John Appleby

Bryan John Appleby is an incredibly talented folk musician writing songs out of a warehouse in Seattle’s Ballard neighorhood. His recently released 11-track debut album, Fire On The Vine, is soaked in soft harmonies and spiritually and historically inspired lyrics. The Rider. The Horse. The Land, full of bells and horns, is the most vibrant track on the album and was Friday’s KEXP Song Of The Day (free download available!)!

A change is gonna come

Last week Pickwick released a stellar music video of Blackout, recorded acapella in the library of University of Washington. Within hours the video had received over 2,400 hits. This, for a band that has not yet released a full album. That gives you some indication of how huge these guys are going to be.

Galen Disston and his crew belt out passionate soul music, with a pop-rock spin. Not the usual for the Pacific Northwest, which is spitting out indie-folk bands daily (see The Head and The Heart, Fleet Foxes, Hey Marseilles, Blind Pilot and others). Pickwick started along a similar path of these bands, dabbling in the folk scene. But after struggling to compete in a flooded indie/folk market and after a moment of inspiration from Sam Cooke, the band experimented with a wholly different sound. Pickwick reinvented itself around the talents of Disston, whose stunning, unchained vocals have carried the band to local fame.

Between 2010 and 2011, Pickwick recorded and released three EPs, Myths, Vol. 1-3, which have received acclaim in the Seattle music scene. Pickwick played a set at Doe Bay Festival, a music festival set on Washington State’s picturesque Orcas Island, in August, where they were joined by enthusiastic fans singing and dancing along (witness the magic here). They played at Bumbershoot, performed live on KEXP, Seattle’s famous radio station, and saw Hacienda Motel make it to KEXP’s Song Of The Day. This past year has seen the growth and development of a band poised to explode onto the main stage.

They are truly a dancing and singing band. It’s nearly impossible to listen to any of their songs without at least tapping your foot or bopping your head; more often than not I find myself getting caught full-on dancing to their rootsy tunes by a coworker. It’s so worth it.

Though they haven’t made it to the East coast yet, I am anxiously awaiting their arrival in New York City and the release of their highly anticipated debut album. In the meantime, purchase Myths, Vol. 1-3 and feel free to let yourself go a little–it improves the listening experience.

Here are a few of my very favorites jams:

 

Latest and Greatest

This is the second installment of a weekly collection of the “latest and greatest.” I will post two newly discovered songs that have captured my attention and two of my longtime (word of warning, this will be a relative term) favorite songs that are building up dust in my music library. 

THE LATEST

We Will All Be Changed by Seryn 

You know when a song captures your attention and you put it on repeat, for hours, sometimes even days? Well that happened to me when I first heard We Will All Be Changed by Seryn, a five-piece band from Denton, Texas. We Will All Be Changed lives on Seryn’s debut album, This Is Where We Are, which was released in January of this year. The album is filled with beautiful, big sounds that can fill a whole room. We Will All Be Changed stands out, though, for its display of the band’s vocal and instrumental strength and its blissful choruses. The song features ukulele, banjo, violin, accordion, cello, and trumpet. Seryn distinguishes itself from the folky bands of Denton, Texas and beyond with their expansive instrumentation.

This video from Paste Magazine is a great display of Seryn.

Old Pine by Ben Howard

The theme for today’s latest must be songs with perfect crescendos, climaxes, and instrumentation. Ben Howard’s Old Pine is an example of a song that builds and builds and builds. If it were a building, it would surpass than the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Just when you think it’s reached its climax, it keeps getting bigger and fuller and more perfect. Howard is an acoustic troubadour. He released his debut album, Every Kingdom, in September of this year. Old Pine is the opening act, though it’s hard for any song to follow this one. In some ways, the song is instrumentally simple; unlike Seryn’s 8-plus, instruments, Old Pine reaches its heights with simply a guitar and violin. Howard’s delicate fingerpicking and breathtaking voice have created a treasure.

“We stood / steady as the stars in the woods / so happy-hearted / and the warmth rang true inside these bones / as the old pine fell we sang / just to bless the morning.

THE GREATEST

Two Points For Honesty by Guster

Guster was the most formative band of my youth. I was exposed to Guster for the first time at camp and latched on just as I was emerging from the awkwardness of middle school. As my self-awareness grew and interests took shape, Guster remained my soundtrack. I clung to the catchy beats and never really let go.

I will never forget the first time I saw them live (at Sayreville Ballroom, yep the concert from my first post). They put on a high-energy performance, with drummer, Brian __, pounding his heart and soul out. They closed with Two Points For Honesty, a song rarely heard live. The sound is so full, building up and literally bouncing off the walls. I felt so privileged to be in that room with them, like I was part of something special. While they make few appearances on my playlists in recent years, Guster remains high on my list of best live performances and even higher on my list of meaningful artists.

“If that’s all you will be, you’ll be a waste of time / you’ve dreamed a thousand dreams / none seem to stick in your mind / two points for honesty / it must make you sad to know that nobody cares at all.”

Offering By The Avett Brothers

Talk about harmonies. About a raw, gritty voice. Honest, heartfelt lyrics. Perfect fingerpicking. Seth and Scott Avett. They have mastered it all. Offering is my favorite of their songs and the most perfect of love songs—a true offering of the human heart. My good friend passed it along to me after he featured it on one of the many mix tapes he sends his girlfriend (yeah, they are that cute). No doubt, it has become one of their special songs. To me, it’s perfect.

“I’ve known others, and I’ve loved others too. But I love them ‘cause they were stepping stones on a staircase to you.”

We’re standing in the street / staring at a blood red moon

Melancholy. Emotive. These are the words that come to mind as I sit down to write about Blind Pilot, a brilliant six-piece band from Portland, Oregon. Blind Pilot started as a two-member (Israel Nebeker and Ryan Dobrowski) band in 2008, when they biked their way down the Pacific coast, instruments in tow. In three years they have tripled in size, graduated from bikes to a school-bus and have taken the indie-folk scene by storm.

I can’t say enough about these guys. There isn’t a single song that doesn’t strike a chord in me; hit me in the gut; literally bring tears to my eyes. Israel Nebeker is the band’s leader, singer, songwriter and gets down on the guitar, ukulele, and… wait for it… harmonium. Nebeker crafts thoughtful and complex songs, layering instruments and vocals to create a uniquely textured sound. Blind Pilot’s sound is enhanced by introspective lyrics about love, loss, and home.

3 Rounds and a Sound, the title track of Blind Pilot’s 2008 debut album, is a standout masterpiece. Like many of the others on the album, the song builds to climaxes. The first verse opens with Nebeker’s sweet, steady voice, at first hesitant, then quickly gaining strength. He is joined in the second verse by a second layer of vocals, growing the sound until it meets the chorus, drenched in warm, golden harmonies.

“Soil and six feet under, kept just like we were before you knew you’d know me and you know me. Blooming up from the ground. Three rounds and a sound, like whispering you know me, and you know me.”

Despite my undying affection for their debut album I, like many others, was eagerly and anxiously awaiting the release of their sophomore album, We Are The Tide. I imagine that if it were possible to wear an mp3 thin, my copy of 3 Rounds and a Sound would be worn down to a sheet of paper. A few weeks before its release, NPR, in typical NPR fashion (read: I’m a huge fan of NPR), featured the album in their program “First Listen”, allowing eager and impatient listeners to stream the songs for free. By the time the 10 tunes finally downloaded on my computer on September 13, I already knew the nuances, notes, and lyrics to each track.

The album opens to Half Moon, a beautiful display of the musical growth Blind Pilot achieved in between their first and second albums. While Nebeker’s vocals remain as tender and touching as they were on 3 Rounds and a Sound, he is accompanied by a stronger, fuller sound. The song flourishes with haunting background vocals, groaning keys, and soft fingerpicking of the banjo. The best moment of the song comes at 2:41, where the vocal cohesiveness of the band shines through. It literally gives me chills.

“It’s not hard to live like a ghost / I just haunt all that I’ve wanted and leave what I don’t.”

 We Are The Tide, the title track of the band’s sophomore album, pulses with tribal drumming and a swelling sound that never quite breaks. Somehow, I always manage to listen to this song on my way home, riding the oh-so-lovely M15 up First Avenue and smiling at Nebeker singing: “Tonight I’m in love with everybody on the city bus / I feel the push and pull / keep sayin’ that it doesn’t mean much.”

There is no better song in Blind Pilot’s catalog that captures their essence, strength and the emotions they evoke than New York. The song was built around the melancholy groan of the harmonium whose singular hum is present from start to finish. The song swells with tension. Heather at Fuel/Friends captured the song perfectly when she described it as “somnolent, redolent and perfect.”

“And don’t keep me like you have me / and don’t kiss me like you don’t.”

To top off the excitement oozing from this post, I will be seeing Blind Pilot play at Bowery Ballroom on 11/4 and Music Hall of Williamsburg on 11/7, both shows with support from Gregory Alan Isakov! So, really, the Blind Pilot love has just begun.

BLITZEN TRAPPER / DAWES 10/26

Last night I saw Blitzen Trapper and Dawes, who have been co-headlining their national fall tour, at New York City’s Webster Hall. In my haste to leave the office and make it to the concert on time, I made the uninformed decision to leave my raincoat and rainboots behind. But somehow, walking to the train this morning in the pouring rain was the perfect way to digest the incredible music I heard.

Blitzen Trapper, a six-piece band from Portland, Oregon, evades typecasting. Despite calling it their hometown, they don’t quite fit into the indie-folk scene emanating from the Pacific Northwest. Really, they are just all over the place. On certain songs they reek of Lynyrd Skynyrd-style classic rock; on others, especially enhanced when Eric Earley (lead vocals/guitar) rocks his cowboy boots (as he did last night), they evoke alt-country. But, not surprisingly, my favorite of their songs (studio-recorded and live) are reminiscent of an edgier Bob Dylan/The Band-style folk-rock.

Blitzen Trapper has mastered a sound infused with tambourines, harmonicas and acoustic and electric guitars. Having never before seen them live, the majority of my favorite songs live on their 2010 album, Destroyer of the Void. Pitchfork adeptly characterizes the album, which mixes “Beatles harmonies, sci-fi synths, classic rock guitars, country-rock twang, and album-oriented rock (AOR) sentimentality into one big, ballsy package.” While they only played one of my favorite songs from Destroyer of the Void, make sure you check The Tree (which features beautiful acoustic fingerpicking and Bob Dylan-style gritty, nasally voice), Sadie and Heaven and Earth, all of which are drenched in golden harmonies.

Despite my tendency toward Destroyer of the Void, last night’s setlist unsurprisingly featured many songs from Blitzen Trapper’s recently released ninth album, American Goldwing, which has been described as the “Dylan-est” exhibit in their catalog.

Astronaut is perhaps my favorite song and the standout track on the new album and did not disappoint live. Amidst funky guitar hooks, twang of the harmonica and the upbeat sound of the keyboard, Eric’s foggy, croak gives the song a timeless feel.

“But I lost my cool and fate loves a fool / Now I’m standin on the edge of the pack / In my spacesuit hopin that this women will call me at last / Cuz’ I’m an astronaut on the shores of this grand illusion / and I’m fallin down at the sound of this beating heart.”

Love The Way You Walk Away is a story of lost love set to a funky banjo and steel pedal guitar. “The old joke stands ‘cause its true I guess / That when you get what you’re lookin’ for ‘ya want it less.”

Furr, the title track of their 2008 Sub-Pop debut, is a flawlessly executed organic, folk Americana song complete with harmonica.

Dawes was the most pleasant surprise of my evening. Though I had come across a few of their songs before, I knew relatively little about this band. When their set started, I decided I would stay for one or two songs before I retired to my apartment for the evening. 14 songs later and two purchased records in hand, I left the grimy venue a converted Dawes fan.

Dawes has a contagious energy that infected me from the first song. Taylor Goldsmith, the band’s front man, literally bounces around stage and appears almost as happy to be there as Josh Ritter. The band, musically influenced by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, connects on a deep level and creates a cohesive unit. Taylor’s vocals are fleshed out by harmonies with the warm voice of the drummer, Taylor’s younger brother Griffin.

Highlights of the Dawes set included:

The following heartfelt portion Little Bit of Everything: 

It is waking up before you,
So I can watch you as you wake.
So in the day in late September,
It’s not some stupid little ring,
I’m giving a little bit of everything.

And witnessing every single person in the 1,400-person capacity venue wail out to When My Time Comes.

Oh you can judge all the world on the sparkle that you think it lacks.
Yes you can stare into the abyss, but it’s staring right back.
When my time comes,
Ohhhhh, oh oh oh.

Here is the official music video:

 

The best part of the night? Realizing that I was going to be seeing these guys again in December when they play with The Head and The Heart at Beacon Theatre!

Taylor from Dawes and Me at the Beacon Theatre, 12/5/11