noisenursery

Matthew Houck, the man behind Phosphorescent, has meandered, like the dazed post-hippie soul that he is, from extreme pastoralism (2007’s Pride, which sounded like the work of an agrarian tribe that had never seen electricity) to extreme debauchery (2010’s soused, country-rock tumble Here’s to Taking It Easy) and back again. At every step of the way, he’s sounded dazed, trembling, and awestruck: his voice, a small, hiccupping drawl, is a fragile instrument with a thousand built-in soul catches, and he hits every single one like a drunk tumbling down a staircase.

On “Song For Zula,” off of the upcoming Muchacho, he sounds like he’s died and woken up on an unknown shoreline somewhere. The sound is bigger, airier, and more mysterious than anything the band’s ever done. Lightly skirling violin lines and gull-cry synths circle above, and silvery threads of pedal-steel guitar waft gently by. He opens with a mumbled quote from Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” and then spins out a difficult-to-parse, metaphysical-feeling tale of abjection (“I lay my face to the salt”) and throwing off offered support: (“You will not see me fall/or see me struggle to stand/To be acknowledged by some touch from his gnarled hands.”) It is a stunning piece of music; it sounds like an allegory, like a dream.
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“My favorite Alex Chilton live moment occurred sometime during the ’80s at the (long gone but much lamented) Backstage in Seattle. Chilton, in the midst of a good-humored R&B set with his nifty three-piece electric combo, lurched into an appropriately creepy version of Porter Wagoner’s “The Rubber Room.” Alex, playing a Les Paul Jr. borrowed from the opening band, took off into an extremely long, out-of-this-world solo. When he finally came back to earth, it seemed like he had lost himself so deeply in his playing that he wasn’t entirely sure what song they had been playing when he started! A very enlightening moment from a very enlightened man.” Scott McCaughey
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Just when we thought that genuine, deep roots folk blues music was only a domain of previous generations, the fodder of adoring revivalists, archivists and folklorists, a dead, fallen tree laying in the meadow, here is a beautiful, strong new sprout from an old tree. Valerie June is a powerful folk singer who directly descends out the old traditions, not an admirer or emulator, but an unexpected, wonderful, truehearted authentic outgrowth of traditions. She is not just keeping the old music alive, this is and was always her music. The adjective “awesome” is often overused, but for this singer, it should be restored to its original meaning. This is original folk music, played as fresh and sincere as it gets.
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A very fine piece of vintage rockabilly. Definitely one of my favourite dancing songs!

“I took me a fifth and poured me a shot/and thought about all the things I haven’t got” opens this, the first non-album release from Uncle Tupelo. Recorded in 1990, right after the release of No Depression, this is Farrar, Tweedy, and Heidorn at their most defeated, smoldering, and uncompromising. In “I Got Drunk,” drinking hasn’t yet acquired the pathos and sense of alienation that it would on Still Feel Gone, and there’s still something redemptive, adolescent, and political about the pleasures of self-destructive consumption. But the lyrics, the opening one especially, have a descriptive poignancy that escapes listeners now. Finding the world wanting and drinking to forget described a state of feeling and a response to a set of conditions, neither of which exist any longer. In 1990, white youth were growing up in a post-Marxian cultural and economic malaise that emerged out of the new century’s consumer society where politics and art live on in suspended animation, where the world is never found wanting because it no longer makes sense to ask it for anything, and “all the things I haven’t got” is a turn of phrase that lilts strangely on the ear — almost foreign, most archaic. Backing up “I Got Drunk” is an excellent down-tempo version of the Gram Parson’s classic “Sin City.”
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Willie Hugh Nelson (pronounced /wɪli nɛlsən/; born April 30, 1933)[1] is an American country music singer-songwriter, as well as an author, poet, actor, and activist. The critical success of the album Shotgun Willie (1973), combined with the critical and commercial success of Red Headed Stranger (1975) and Stardust (1978), made Nelson one of the most recognized artists in country music. He was one of the main figures of outlaw country, a subgenre of country music that developed at the end of the 1960s as a reaction to the conservative restrictions of the Nashville sound. Nelson has acted in over 30 films, co-authored several books, and has been involved in activism for the use of biofuels and the legalization of marijuana.
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Gorman Bechard’s Color Me Obsessed is the rare music documentary that lavishes admiration not only onto its subject, rowdy Minneapolis cult rock band The Replacements, but on the band’s fans as well. The doc doesn’t feature a single song by The Replacements, nor does it feature interviews with any of the three surviving members. Instead, Bechard lets the fans tell the story. Over the course of the film, he interviews dozens of subjects: the musicians, misfits, and devotees whose formative years were sound-tracked by The Replacements. We hear conflicting opinions about nearly everything – favorite songs, band dynamics, the point at which things turned sour. And we hear story after story about how the band changed (and in some cases saved) people’s lives.
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Here’s one of my personal Replacements fav’s

Advance Base is the new musical project by Chicago, Illinois singer/songwriter Owen Ashworth (formerly of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone). A Shut-In’s Prayer is Ashworth’s first full-length release in over three years, & the first by Advance Base. Recorded at home & in piano practice rooms at the Chicago Public Library, A Shut-In’s Prayer is an intimate collection of deliberately crafted blues, waltzes & ballads. Ashworth sings nostalgic stories about lost loves, childhood friends, estranged siblings, & other hard feelings over simple drum machine rhythms & sparse hand percussion. Warm & twinkling piano lines fill the spaces between harmony vocals & strummed autoharp chords, with the occasional creaking floorboard or snapping reverb spring to remind you where you are. It’s a different atmosphere than one might expect from the dude from Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, but clear that Ashworth’s keen ear for melody & idiosyncratic lyrical abilities have only expanded in recent years. At age 35, Ashworth has a lot of music left in him, & he’s just getting started again. The album will be released on CD, vinyl and digitally. More information soon at http://www.caldoverderecords.com and http://www.advancebasemusic.com.
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Everything on Feeling Mortal is original. The songs themselves are mostly spare, embellished by stray squeals of harmonica, picked guitar, a little pedal steel and an extraordinarily weathered voice that seems freighted with so much hard wisdom.
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Named “Best Country-Western Artist in L.A.” by Los Angeles magazine and called “the uncrowned king of the L.A. neo-honky tonkers” by Billboard, Mike Stinson is in a class by himself among Southern California country performers.
The universally respected singer-songwriter has issued two widely admired independent albums, Jack of All Heartache and Last Fool at the Bar, and 2009 will see the release of his third CD, The Jukebox In Your Heart, produced by the noted Austin, Texas musician Jesse Dayton and recorded at Willie Nelson’s Pedernales Studios.
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