Tag: song embed

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Late Night Listening: Eyreton Hall, Featherstitch

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A home for things that might be fleeting, might be soothing, might be weird, might be soothing and weird. The blogging equivalent of sitting in the garage twiddling radio knobs just to see what might be out there.

Featherstitch is the first single and title track from Featherstitch by Eyreton Hall (Toni Randle and Andrew Keegan) of Auckland, New Zealand. It’s sweet, lovely and lovingly-crafted folk music, spare and delicate and sad and beautiful. I may or may not have listened to it three times in a row after the first time I heard it. And three more times while putting this post together. It’s kind of seductive, this tune.

You can listen to the rest of the record (and, you know, buy it) at their bandcamp.

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Two Songs From: Johanna Glaza

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The first polar vortex of the season arrived in New York yesterday, bringing with it icy temperatures and blustery winds. Like it or not, winter is here.

And in the spirit of all things frosty and beautiful, here are two songs from Johanna Glaza: Paper Widow and Winter Song, due out at the end of November, which embody, in sound, all of the best parts of the season: windows full of delicate frost fronds, the smell of fresh pine, the crunch of new snow.

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Dead Professional, Hard Hard Hard

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Hard Hard Hard, by Dead Professional (John Harouff) is the sort of record that sneaks up on you. A bass line gets lodged in your head one day; you find yourself humming along with a melody the next; the day after that a particular lyric strikes home.

For example, I was just briefly arrested by I can be your baby / or I can play the sitter from I Can Deliver, which has both sharp edges and Replacements-style catchy grooves:

Another one I’m fond of is Bad Memory, because it’s a love song, if love songs were written by sharks:

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Video: Heart-Ships, Undress Me To The Bone

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The last time we checked in with Heart-Ships was last October, and since then they’ve released a bunch of new music including a full-length record called Foil (YAY!) and split up (NOT YAY, MASSIVE :().

I listened to Foil late last night, and on the whole it is breathtaking. But there are a few songs that sank their claws into me. One of them was Undress Me To The Bone, which I present here in video form, because they did a “garden session” and sang it acoustic and it sounds like a diamond being wrenched out of them by force.

Heart-Ships - Undress Me To The Bone

This is the album version, which is worth listening to for the contrast: the lament sounds almost like an anthem.

Also strong: Nadine, Heart of a Wrestler and We Were Quick to Bang The Drum.

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Late Night Listening: Mt. Wolf, Red

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A home for things that might be fleeting, might be soothing, might be weird, might be soothing and weird. The blogging equivalent of sitting in the garage twiddling radio knobs just to see what might be out there.

After an extended hiatus, Mt. Wolf, from London, England via Guernsey, Dorset, and Brighton, have decided to be a band again, and come back with Red, which is something of a haunted lullaby. It is but a taste of what will come in the new year.

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Sirena, Chemicals

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And now, some synth-pop confection for Saturday night: Chemicals by Sirena, who claims both Stockholm and Barcelona as her home towns.

Because sometimes people are what they look like under the light of the disco ball, and sometimes that light (and other substances) plays tricks upon our eyes and hearts.

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Three Songs From: Vinnie Ferra

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One of the many joys of Soundcloud is that you can press play on one song and then, left unchecked, it will play affiliated tunes. Sometimes that’s more work by the same artists, other times it’s other artists on the same label, other times it seems kind of random.

My Vinnie Ferra Voyage of Discovery was the first kind of situation: I listened to his current single, called God Forbid, and then it gave me his previous work.

This is God Forbid, which . . . I am going to be blunt, I’m not super excited about. It showcases his range, and objectively speaking it’s pretty, but it didn’t grab me and make me want to listen to it again.

On the other hand, Destroying Me, which popped up next: yeah this I’m into, because I’m always here for songs on the theme of “I love you and it is going to drive me around the twist” especially when I can sing along:

The third song I listened to was Bad For Business, from Man vs. Machine (2010), and at that point, I was in. This is good stuff.

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Late Night Listening: Unfathomed of Abyss, Arisen Upon Oblivion

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A home for things that might be fleeting, might be soothing, might be weird, might be soothing and weird. The blogging equivalent of sitting in the garage twiddling radio knobs just to see what might be out there.

unfathabyss

Because sometimes, twiddling knobs in the virtual garage, you get some static followed by atmospheric creaking followed by a roar straight from the dungeon. Or: “symphonic black metal” may initially sound like a contradiction in terms, but I promise it isn’t.

Unfathomed of the Abyss (Kevin Price) spent 14 years (!) working on Arisen Upon Oblivion and the result is a complex collection of sounds, some delicate, others more like a sledgehammer. That said, while it’s heavy, it isn’t suffocating.

For example, there’s To Unequal the Balance of the Cosmos, the first song on the record, which is fourteen minutes long, but not one single minute drags:

And then there’s The Figment Unadulated, the second song, which grinds on the bottom but soars at the top, and is what I would use to score a scene with a scrappy crew exploring a mysteriously abandoned spaceship:

And the rest of the record is much the same: loud, majestic, and cinematic in scope. For those of you busy NaNoWriMo-ing right now, it’s also good writing music.

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Covers of Note: Strangers, Stay

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So here is a story I have to tell you about Stay by Shakespeare’s Sister: The first time I heard it I was in the Arizona desert with my youth group, about three-fourths of the way through a week-long mission trip. We were out driving around looking at rocks, or something, I don’t remember, but it had been a long week. Tempers were fraying. Teeth were being firmly clenched. Required daily notes of affirmation to each other (yes, really) were becoming more difficult to compose.

But we had the radio on, a) because it was 1992 and b) I think choosing one tape or CD to listen to might have been the last straw for all of us, and – this song came on:

http://youtu.be/Tosky-ZNbRw

It was like someone had kicked down the door to a sex dungeon and it was full of fresh air. I didn’t quite understand what all was going on in there, but it surely was better than a car full of my seething peers.

I bought their CD as soon as I got home (as well as a Patty Smyth CD; I was looking for Patti Smith and missed) and had that song on repeat for some time.

Strangers have just released a cover of it, which is less sex dungeon and more new wave dance party, but still very good: