Goldmund, Loney Dear and Michael Yonkers

I did end up reviewing that Goldmund album, All Will Prosper, using some of the same language that I first posted here but, you know, longer.

Goldmund
All Will Prosper
(Western Vinyl)


Composer Keith Kenniff recorded this lovely collection of traditional songs over several years, arranging the melodies simply for piano and guitar, and recording them in an exceptionally clear, unadorned way that nonetheless suggests memory, loss and nostalgia. Many of these mostly Civil War-era songs are very familiar. We are, after all, talking about standards like "Dixie" and "Shenandoah", and ubiquitous spirituals like "Amazing Grace." Yet all have a glow of otherworldliness, of spectral weightless-ness, as if they were the memory of these songs, packed away in dusty attics and captured in faded daguerreotypes, and not the song themselves.

More

Also, this ran a long time ago in the Blurt fall print issue, but it's online now, my review of Loney, Dear's Hall Music

Loney, Dear
Hall Music
(Polyvinyl)


Emil Svanangen has often blown his wistful little pop songs out to grand proportions, whether surrounding them with a jubilant indie chorus, as on Loney, Noir, lacing them with pounding drums on Dear John or, this time out, enlisting classical instruments. Here, on a record inspired by his year-long collaboration with Swedish chamber music orchestras, Svanangen's wavery voice flickers in and out of thickets of brass, plays tag with flights of xylophone and emerges, bruised and pining, from fog-bound forests of synthesizer. A broader palette of instruments, however, seems only to accentuate the personal nature of Svanangen's work.

More

And finally, my friend Michael alerted me to a new documentary about one of my very favorite rock and roll people, Michael Yonkers, who, you may remember, I interviewed for Dusted a few years ago. Here's the clip that Michael sent me:



Have a nice rest of your weekend then. We're going to go to the Y later to work out and try to catch a little of one of those football games, I think Saints/Niners. Sucks not having TV this time of year.

M. Ward…just him this time

Whoa, that was quick. I just finished this review of Hold Time, M. Ward’s new album, yesterday and there it is, up at Dusted already. (And a couple of weeks before release date, oops). I found it kind of flat, compared to Post-War, which I liked a lot…

“Hold Time, Ward’s latest batch of songs, seems slighter, happier and louder than those on 2006’s Post-War, but also distinctly complacent. There’s nothing to draw you in like that first melancholy sigh on 'Poison Cup,' nothing to puzzle over like the tangled tale of 'Right in the Head,' nothing as goofily revelatory as 'Chinese Translation.' Instead, you get a few lucky-bastard songs about how groovy Ward feels, a couple of sad-bastard songs about what a drag it would be to die just now when things are going so well, and a whole bunch of new Testament verses ('Fisher of Men,' 'Epistemology') He’s not just in love, he’s gone all Sunday school on us… how disappointing.

More

"Hold Time"


Oh, and in other news, I went to see Loney Dear last night…and damn, he has got some rock show going, way more drum and bass than I remember and super fun. Last night was his first show on the American tour, so you’ve got lots of chances left, namely...

01/30 Boston, MA The Orpheum*
01/31 Brooklyn, NY Sound Fix In-Store 4pm
01/31 Brooklyn, NY Union Hall
02/02 Richmond, VA The National*
02/03 Washington, DC The 930 Club*
02/04 Atlanta, GA Variety Playhouse*
02/06 Orlando, FL The Plaza*
02/07 New Orleans, LA House of Blues*
02/09 Baton Rouge, LA Spanish Moon
02/10 Houston, TX Rudyard's British Pub
02/11 Denton, TX Hailey's
02/12 Austin, TX The Paramount Theater*
02/13 Albuquerque, NM The El Rey*
02/14 Tucson, AZ The Rialto*
02/15 San Diego, CA Soma San Diego*
02/17 Visalia, CA Howie and Son's Pizza
02/18 Los Angeles, CA The Orpheum*
02/19 San Francisco, CA The Fillmore*
02/20 San Francisco, CA The Fillmore*
02/21 Portland, OR Roseland*
02/23 Seattle, WA The Moore*
02/24 Boise, ID The Knitting Factory*
02/25 Murray, UT The Murray*
02/26 Denver, CO The Ogden*
02/27 Omaha, NE Slowdown*
03/01 Chicago, IL Schubas
03/18 - 03/21 Austin, TX SXSW

“Airport Surroundings”


And one more thing, I’m interviewing Julie Doiron this afternoon, so I’d better think of some questions…here’s “Consolation Prize” from the upcoming (in March) I Can Wonder What You Did with Your Day.

Oh, and check out Doug Mosurock's excellent podcast, which accompanies the latest installment of "Still Single."

Okay, I'm going to stop now.

I guess the winter slowdown is over…

There’s an ever-shorter break for music writers, starting a little after Halloween and stretching towards…well maybe now. That’s because no one but rappers, American Idol types and ex-Beatles want to release an album in December, after all the best of lists have been finalized and during the great distraction of the holidays. I’m thinking it was over yesterday when a big pile of those manila envelopes showed up again, with some interesting stuff in them, namely:

Dan Kalb, I’m Gonna Live the Life I Sing About”…founding member of the Blues Project (with Al Kooper) reinterprets blues classics like “Can’t Judge a Book By the Cover” (Willie Dixon) and “I’m in the Mood” (John Lee Hooker), also slips a few originals in. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a one-sheet with quotes from Muddy Waters (“You really got to me.”) and Bob Dylan (“Always a powerful guitarist.”) Nice.

Loney Dear Dear John …the Swedish pop songwriter is at it again with songs that are both spare and lavish, melancholy and full of joy. On a first listen, I’m thinking maybe not as good as Loney Noir, but a first listen is never very definitive with this kind of thing. He’s switched from SubPop to Polyvinyl, wonder why?

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, ST…I have been a little savage about Slumberland Records’ string of 1980s replicants (Crystal Stilts, The Lodger, cause co-MOTION) lately, but either they have worn me down or this one is better. Listened to this three times in the car yesterday, sort of a dark J&MC pop, like the Raveonettes but less polished. The best song is about a furtive hookup in the library…hah, I knew I was missing something…all those hours in the stacks wasted.

And finally..
Where's Captain Kirk? The Very Best of Spizz…unlike Slumberland, Cherry Red traffics only in genuine 1980s material, this one a band that got its big break opening for Siouxshie…of note so far, two songs about Star Trek. (I’m reviewing Season 3 of the original series for PopMatters right now, so it’s serendipitous to say the least.) I’ll be writing about this one for Dusted, so hopefully I’ll get a handle on it at some point.

One more thing, I have a short review of a very interesting electronic improvised record from Berlin up at PopMatters today. Watch me flail around in a genre that fascinates me…but which I know next to nothing about.

Klangwart, Stadtlandfluss (Staubgold)
For nearly a decade, the Berlin duo of Markus Detmer and Timo euber have been developing an improvisatory piece, built on loops and electronically generated sounds, which they perform in concert. The piece, called “Stadtlandfluss”, is never exactly the same. Its permutations of tone, concept and rhythm vary according to the venue, the audience, and countless random factors that have impact on the two principals’ creative state of mind. As a result, this album is not really the Stadtlandfluss but a Stadtlandfluss, one iteration among many.

The piece is divided into seven tracks somewhat arbitrarily. You will not
know where one ends and the other begins, unless you are listening on a player that intersperses silence between cuts. There is, however, an arc of movement, a narrative almost, in a piece that progresses from near silence (I thought my speakers were broken the first time) to euphoric cacophony, from far-off machine sounds to distant transmissions of radio voices. It starts slowly, a patchwork of long hanging tones and the zing of metallic power tools. You will not hear any overtly human element until “Radio” about 13 minutes in, and even then, the voices are obscured by static and erratic swoops of strings. And yet, though, rare, human sounds make up an essential element of the story. The piece crests in its two central cuts, “Hamanamah” and especially “Telemann”, the first a shivering adrenaline rush of electronic anticipation, the second all clangorous bells and frictive, rhythmic bowed strings. These two cuts are exciting in some primal, limbic way, particularly when they crescendo in a wordless female voice. The energy ebbs, the calm returns in “Strom” and by closing “Mein Herz, Mein Haus”, the sound has died down to a subliminal duet between a woman’s whispers and synthetic tones. It is, overall, quite a journey, one that brings you back to equilibrium, but not quite the same as before.

Klangwart at work...