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Tommy Burgers every day for a week, ride a Greyhound bus thousands of miles or attempt any other noble pursuit and the vision of the Gourds’ new album starts to come into focus. There is a distinctive patina attached to the music that gives it an odd glow, one that doesn’t look like anything else. It would be easy to call it roots music and compare it to a hundred other bands that plow the same field, but that would be wrong. The quintet doesn’t really approach their songs like other musicians. It’s like they let the sounds mutate overnight (after all, how many singer-guitarists are named Shinyribs?) and start from there. Sure, there are plenty of banjos, accordions, mandolins, resonator slides, fiddles and assorted other known sound effects, but the results come out all crooked. The Gourds have invaded the folk songbook, ripped out all the pages and glued them back together upside down, which makes them eventually irresistible. Herky jerky rhythms somehow feel right, and all five voices combine for a kind of street corner singing society that has no rules except for full-on emotional dedication and complete instinctual guidance. These fellows will climb into your heart, even if the idea of wearing overalls isn’t an option or you’ve never spent the night in jail. They put glow worms inside their music, and Haymaker!, like every album they’ve made, has peculiar gifts completely unique, except it’s obvious all the songs the Gourds ever recoded capture that same magic. This is small town music for big city folks, and no matter where you call home now the boys are rolling out the welcome mat. Always open. 0 Comments
It’s not always easy finding new bands that capture the excitement of the psyche-exanding attributes of the psychedelic era. Not necessarily the bone-rattling aspects, but more the idea that anything goes and experimentation is the essence of More | 0 Comments
Folk guitarists, especially in England during the 1960s, could do no wrong. They had centuries of sounds to play with, and thanks to the British Invasion going all introspective on us, it seemed like any avenue was a good one to explore.
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2008 will be the year when it felt like the bolts were coming off the wheels. A brutal election year leading up to the economy tearing into tiny pieces, followed by question marks everywhere.
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It had to happen. The Radio City Rockettes, known for kicking their legs up toward heaven and delightfully dancing their way through a thousand holiday spectaculars, start singing.
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Taking their inspiration directly from Sixties bands like Buffalo Springfield, the Byrds, Moby Grape and Love, Diesel Park West are immensely proud of their forebears.
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Jazz pianists live in their own world. Because they can’t walk into a room carrying their instrument, it takes a certain degree of strength to chase beauty on the keyboard.
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It’s hard to capture lightning all the time. Matthew Sweet’s album Girlfriend practically defined alt-rock in the early ‘90s.
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Mike Bloomfield is one of the greatest guitarists of our era, someone whose ability to understand the blues and translate it into a stratospheric elegy for the human heart remains unequaled.
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Not many albums start with a prison guard telling the singer as they’re being released to stay out of trouble. And while that might sound somewhat pretentious, for Jamey Johnson’s That Lonesome Song it fits.
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Africa had acid. And why shouldn’t they? There is no other way to explain the music on Nigeria Rock Special, handily subtitled “Psychedelic Afro-Rock & Fuzz Funk In 1970s Nigeria.” That’s a mouthful.
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The new movie Cadillac Records is a thinly-veiled story about the Chess music company, the little record label that could. By releasing early electric blues they changed the history of music, laying the foundation for rock & roll more than any other enterprise.
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What a grand collision of rootsy grooves. It’s like a ’55 baby blue Ford fueled by blues rams into a ’63 yellow Corvair running on rock & roll, and what comes out of this crazy collision is Eve and the Exiles.
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Set a musician free from their regular band and odds are good something strong is going to happen. Rodrigo Aramrante from Los Hermanos and Fabrizio Moretti from the Strokes join with Binki Shapiro in Little Joy.
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The studio is an infinite instrument for those who learn how to play it. It can also be a rabbit hole to fall into if you’re not careful, but for those who know when to finally quit, the studio is a best friend.
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Scorched earth blues. That’s what the two albums collected on Sing The Blues are. Originally released by Blue Thumb Records in 1969 and 1971, they’re before the Turners had really captured America’s full attention.
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To anyone who’s followed rhythm & blues and jazz the past half-century, the name David “Fathead” Newman is an instant friend.
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Music comes at us from all directions. Sometimes a short review will catch your eye and lead to an overwhelming discovery.
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There aren’t many real-deal blues players left. Not the kind who come up out of the ghetto, maybe get a chance to find a fleeting fame before hard times and bad habits shoot them down...
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Southerners understand murder and disaster. They lost the Civil War, and some wounds won't heal. Singers below the Mason-Dixon Line have a direct connection to hurt, and often find solace in pain too unspeakable for words.
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It must get old being picked as the next new thing. Over the past five years and three albums, it felt like the door was opening for Jolie Holland to walk through with a crown on her head and flowers in her arms.
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TODAY'S BOOM TUNE
