Howling Kettles' rabid hoe-down

I've got my first Dusted review of the year up now, a consideration of Howling Kettles' home-brewed string band rambles. Howling Kettles is another project from Sam Moss, who lives down the road in Brattleboro and has appeared on a couple of Imaginational Anthem comps. I still haven't met him or seen him play, but maybe some day...

The Howling Kettles
The Parlor is Pleasant on Sunday Night


When I reviewed Sam Moss’s Neighbors last year, I was struck by how solitary it was, how it explored the lonely, desolate side of the Americana experience in stark, slow-tempo combinations of voice and banjo (and a little guitar). The Howling Kettles, Moss’ string band collaboration with Jackson Emmer, is completely different: giddily communicative, celebratory, and wildly, rhythmically physical.

More here

You can hear the whole thing at the Howling Kettles' website.

In other news, a big shout-out to the cloud, which has somehow preserved a long-lost copy of Art Brut's Bang Bang Rock and Roll and, a couple of days ago, reinstalled it on my iTunes. I'm listening to it right now. What a fun record. Looks like there's also a Stereolab album with my name on it, good times.



Also, I have given up on Pictures in Sound: One Thousand Years of Educed Music from Dust-to-Digital. Turns out that the music of past centuries, laboriously transcribed into pictograms and ressurrected just-add-water style sounds a lot like the static between radio stations (and also some of it sounds like calliope). Anyway, I'm willing to grant it's an interesting idea, but listen to its 28 tracks three more times in a row and then have them pop up sporadically on random shuffle? No thanks.

Art Brut’s new one

There’s a free track from Art Brut’s new album Brilliant! Tragic! up now at Pitchfork, which I am kind of liking even though it seems frightfully suave, well-behaved and vaguely Jarvis Cocker-like compared to Mr. Argos’ other material. (The exclamation points in the album title seem very Argos-esque, though.) Am I imagining it, or is there a little bit of the Temptations’ “Sugar Pie, Honeybunch” in the opening riff? Probably hallucinating.

Anyway, the record will be on Cooking Vinyl, which is one of those labels that you can buy anything they do and it’ll be good. The album’s out, let’s see, May 24th, but the single can be had a week sooner, May 16th.

“Lost Weekend”

I may be flogging stray mp3s quite a lot this week, since Blurt’s editor is off and all my Dusted reviews are somewheres in the May-ish future, so bear with me.

First day of track season, today, too…off to run with the kids again!