The Shins, Port Of Morrow It has been five years since The Shins released their last album. During these years, James Mercer, the driving force behind the band, has been quite busy with a number of projects including Broken Bells, his collaboration with Danger Mouse. Back with a new band line up, Mercer's music has never sounded more poppy or his lyrics so understandable (if that is possible). The combination makes these songs catchy and some of the band's most approachable. While I thought that the band's last album, Wincing The Night Away, was the pinnacle of the band's efforts to date, Port Of Morrow, is a welcome addition to their collection and should not be missed. Simple Song
The Lumineers, The Lumineers
With the help of band's such as Fleetfoxes, Neo-Folk Rock has found a wide audience over the past few years and it has become incredibly popular. I for one could not be happier about it. It has allowed a band like The Lumineers to get some well deserved attention. This trio from Denver, CO is set to release their self titled, debut album on April 3rd. While I hate using comparisons when talking about a band's music, one cannot help but hear a little bit of The Head And The Heart and The Tallest Man On Earth when listening to The Lumineers....and that is not a bad thing. Like those bands, there is such life and warmth to this band and this collection of songs. They just crackle with a wonderful energy. Dead Sea
Tanlines, Mixed Emotions When Tanlines' album Mixed Emotions was featured on NPR's All Songs Considered, I will admit that I paid it little attention. Why? I can't say. Perhaps I was just distracted at the time. But then I listened to the album a week or so later, not realizing that it was the same band and album. And a funny thing happened. I really enjoyed it from start to finish. Electro pop with a wink to the '80's seems to be everywhere these days. Some of it is good, take last year's album Zonoscope by Cut/Copy. A lot of it is problematic for me for many reasons. Jesse Cohen and Eric Emm, the duo behind Tanlines, fall into the first category. The two really know how to craft great songs that are both smart and fun to listen to. Brothers
Andrew Bird, Break It Yourself I have been an admirer and fan of Andrew Bird for years. With each new release, Bird, a mult-instrumentalist who is classically trained, mesmerizes with his intricately built songs and music. Layering violins, guitars, whistles, and vocals, Bird creates wonderful and whimsical symphonic landscapes that cross musical boundaries to create his own unique space. Sometimes, I admire Bird from afar, appreciating what he is creating, but not quite able to get 100% behind what he is doing. Other times, like with his latest release, Break It Yourself, Bird captivates me, and I can only sit back and give him my undivided attention. I just love this release and think that it is one of his best albums to date. Danse Caribe
Carolina Chocolate Drops, Leaving Eden
How does a band top a Grammy award winning album (Genuine Negro Jig) that was a darling of critics and listeners alike? For the Carolina Chocolate Drops, they continue to do what they have been doing so well since 2005, which is paying and playing their respects to old time string music. On their latest release, Leaving Eden, the band once again shines with a new collection of original and cover songs. While there is quite a bit that I can say about the new album, I thought that I would let the band's Rhiannon Giddens and Dom Flemons do the talking. Here is a great interview they did with NPR's Scott Simon last week. Country Girl
Bowerbirds, The Clearing I know that Bowerbirds are technically categorized as a folk band. But on their latest release, The Clearing, the duo of Philip Moore and Beth Tacular have moved their music beyond a plain where it can be easily categorized.....and this is a great thing. Always wonderful storytellers, Moore and Tacular embrace bigger and more adventurous arrangements on The Clearing which not only enhances their songs, but helps bring a new level of narration to their stories. I had read that The Clearing reflects the best and most important moments of Moore and Tacular's lives after some significant challenges. Listening to it, you can feel and sense their journey to reach these moments and it makes for an absorbing listening experience. Tuck The Darkness In
White Rabbits, Milk Famous White Rabbit's last album, It's Frightening, was one of the more memorable releases of 2009. Produced by Spoon's Britt Daniel, it was a heavy percussion ladened effort that paid dividends for the development of the band's sound. Back with Milk Famous, White Rabbits does not so much dial back on the percussions, as they take what the learned on their last effort, and use it to color and texture this new collection of songs. It makes for a more subtle usage of percussions, resulting in music that feels more relaxed and sophisticated. I think that Milk Famous is a great follow up album and I am glad that the band did not try to repeat what they did on It's Frightening. Heavy Metal
Damien Jurado, Maraqopa The Seattle Times recently named Damien JuradoSeattle's folk-boom godfather. This title is a bit lofty, but well deserved. Since the mid 90's, Jurado has been enchanting the city and independent music circles with his wonderful lo-fi and hi-fi recordings. On his tenth album, Maraqupa, Jurado once again does not disappoint. Picking up musically where he left off on his last album Saint Barlett, Jurado moves to a darker space with a subtle but noticeable edge. This slightly altered space lends some additional weight to Jurado's lyrics and creates a different kind of emotional connection between his music and the listener than what I have experienced on past recordings. While Working Titles, maybe my favorite song on the album, Nothing Is The News, cannot be missed. Nothing Is The News
Yellow Ostrich, Strange Land In December of 2010 I stumbled upon Yellow Ostrich's first album, The Mistress. A truely independent effort by Alex Schaaf, I was mesmerized by his complex vocal arrangements and the minimal and spatially interesting music. By the time I had an opportunity to interview him, he was already altering his sound with the addition of musicians Michael Tapper and Jon Natchez. Now, after a big year of touring and national exposure, the band is back with a new release, Strange Land. Once again, minimalism and space are esencial elements of their music. What has changed is that this minimalism has been applied to vocal layering that dominated The Mistress. This lack of layering of Schaaf's vocals allows the music to behave differently than it did on The Mistress. It makes for some wonderful interplay between the music and vocals and proves that sometimes less is more. Daughter
Josh Ritter, Bringing In The Darlings
I had written quite a bit about Josh Ritter's new six song EP, Bringing In The Darlings, and then decided to delete it all. If you are familiar with Josh Ritter, then you know that he is one of the most gifted songwriters of his generation. From one album to the next, Ritter's words and music reminded us of his talent and thoughtfulness. Bringing In The Darlings is simply a stunning collection of songs that is a must have for anyone who has every enjoyed his music...frankly this is a must have for anyone who enjoys....music. Why
In 2009, Speech Debelle's debut album, Speech Therapy, won Britain's Mercury Prize for best album of the year. Now Debelle is back with her second album Freedom of Speech.
Where Debelle turned inwards on Speech Therapy, putting her personal life under a microscope, for a kind of self diagnosis, Freedom of Speech is squarely focused outwards.
Speech Debelle, born Corynne Elliott, has been an outspoken advocate for environmental causes and women's rights, including gender equality in Britain and abroad. Over the past few years, Debelle has been involved with the User Voice campaign, an organization for supporting disadvantaged youth, Oxfam, the Hope Not Hate campaign, the Care campaign, and has served as an ambassador for UN women. Her work also includes writings, such as A Woman's Woman's Woman's World,written for the Godmothers Campaign. Now on Freedom of Speech, Debelle uses her artistry to advocate for all those that don't have public voices.
Debelle has called Freedom of Speech a "sonic declaration of independent control over rhyme and reason" and a "celebration of female power and identity." The album is packed with stories and imagery as she takes on social and environmental injustices. She has said that the songs on Freedom of Speech are freer and less self-conscious. "I needed to express myself in a new way and this is where I am now."
In some places on the album, Debelle can be controversial, such as on the song Blaze Up A Fire. On it, she takes on urban rioting, such as the ones seen last summer in London, from the standpoint of the rioters. She has said that the song was not mean to condone their actions, but to attempt to be a voice of understanding for how they have come to such a place. Debelle wrote about the song, "People have asked why they are destroying buildings and property from their own communities but they look at them as just buildings that do not belong to them, and never will. Only people who cannot envision a positive future will take part in the destruction of their own community and if we acknowledge that, then we need to ask the question why somebody so young feels they have so little to look forward to? I cannot allow myself to de-humanize these kids and see them as my enemy."
Blaze Up A Fire
I'm a big fan of Speech Debelle and I think that Freedom of Speech is step in the right direction for her as an artist and activist. With its thoughtful lyrics, rhythmic raps, great beats, and grooving music, this album is both thought provoking and entertaining, and one of my early favorites of the year. I'm With It
Field Music, Plumb XTC is one of my favorite bands of all time. There was so much to love and admire about the band's creative approach to making music. Every song and every album made you pay attention to what they were doing. Field Music, the brother act from Sutherland, England fall into a similar creative bucket as XTC and may just be the most interesting band, creatively speaking, in England right now. Listening to Plumb, I felt like I had been handed an invitation to go into the minds of these two musicians as they were conducting a grand experiment. As David and Peter Brewis play with every aspect of their music, timing, sound, space, and styles, I found myself engrossed in Plumb. And like with XTC, every song made me sit up and pay attention. A New Town
Bahamas, Barchords Last year I fell hard for Afie Jurvanan's debut album Pink Strat. So much so, that I had to track him down for an interview. Now Jurvanan, who records and performs under the name Bahamas, is back with Barchords, the follow up to that great album. It is another fine album that picks up where Pink Strat left off. Jurvanan's music has a relaxed and breezy way about it and the general mood of both albums reflects this. What separates Barchords from Pink Strat is the way in which Jurvanan stretches musically. His songs here have a bigger and richer sounds and Jurvanan shows us just a little bit more of his wonderful talent as a guitar player. Lost In The Light
Chairlift, Something
The first time I listened to Something, all I really heard was what I perceived to be an '80's knock off album by bands like Ah-Ha. But on my second listen I was able to take the album on its own merits and found the pure joy of Something. Caroline Polachek and Patrick Wimber, the duo behind Chairlift, definitely have a strong affinity for the synth pop from a few decades ago, but by paying it with respect, they are able to take the best of what that music represented and give it a contemporary twist. This album really charmed me and while it made me a bit nostalgic for the music of my youth, I chose to listen to Something one more time instead. Wrong Opinion
Islands, A Sleep & A Forgetting Islands wrote that their new album is "a bummer of a record, pretty much the whole way through. Do you like to commiserate over things that go sour in your life? Do you feel better when someone pours their heart out on wax? Cool." Nick Thorburn and the band were being a bit cheeky when they wrote this, but lifting the title of the album from a William Wordsworth poem, you know that there is seriousness behind them. Thorburn's lyrics, if read on their own, might actually take the wind out of your sail, but the beauty of this album is how he wraps them in music that is so warm and comforting, he makes you feel like everything is going to be just fine at the end of the day....and I can live with that. This Is Not A Song
"I read this quote by a poet that said ‘all poetry is a love
act.’ I really think that so much of what I do really comes from that space. I
feel most able to write from this place of caring."
Many years before Laura Gibson was a songwriter and
musician, she was a young girl living in the small isolated logging town of
Coquille, Oregon. In this town, folks moved to the same rhythm, at least while
the mills were running. When the whistles blew everyone knew what time it was.
Time to work, time to break, time to go home. Laura wrote poetry, she
participated in math competitions, and she sat beside her father with her
mother and others from hospice when he was sick and dying from cancer.
Laura came to music later in her life. She actually did not
pick up the guitar or start writing songs until she was half way through
college. Laura said that she started
playing as a means to put words together in a different kind of a way.
“College is a place where I was first starting to look at
and explore my place in the world. It was a time when I discovered that
songwriting was a way to understand myself and understand the world. It was a
revelation for me. And so I really had to catch up on guitar in order to get
out these songs that I had in me. It was really a means of making songs.”
As a child, Laura had a love of putting words together and poetry
helped Laura set her foundation for expressing all the thoughts and feelings
running through her head. I asked Laura if she always wanted to share her
thoughts and words with others or if this came later.
“I think that a part of it was there. I remember the first
poem that I ever wrote. Everyone was writing letters to this little boy from my
Sunday school class who was sick in the hospital with cancer. I wrote this this
short little poem to him. His parents really loved the poem and they published
it in a magazine and a newsletter. I just remember this feeling……that this was
important to someone and that this had meaning outside of my own head. That
really impacted me. I was somewhere around the age of 8.”
As Laura started writing songs in college, she said that
there was a desire to share them with others as well. “Your putting words to
something and putting music to something that you just can’t quite say in a
normal communication. When I first started writing songs I dreamed about there
being a listener because it is a way of saying what you can’t say. “
When Laura did finally begin share her songs with others,
she did not choose to perform them in coffee shops or clubs. Instead she
volunteered her time to sing and play at Our House Of Portland, a community
that supports people with advanced HIV/AIDS. For Laura, she remembered all of
the support that she and her mom received when her dad was so sick and she felt
that this is where her time and music belonged.
“I read this quote by a poet that said ‘all poetry is a love
act.’ I really think that so much of what I do really comes from that space and
I feel most able to write from this place of caring. It may come in the form of
grief, or in a form of frustration with injustice. But I think that there is a
string of affection even when I am really not writing traditional love songs. I think of them as love songs, but not romantic in nature.”
That figurative space led Laura back home to an actual
space, her childhood home, where she spent a month reading through love letters
that her grandparents had written back and forth to one another. She had never
met them, but during this quiet and isolated time with those letters, she felt that she
grew to know her grandparents in an intimate way. These letters, her connection
to them and to her grandparents, and the connection between her grandparents inspired
her first album If You Come To Greet Me, which was released in 2006.
“When people ask me what I tend to feel inspired by, what I
write about, human connection is always one of the themes of what I do.”
On her second album, Beasts Of Seasons, and on her new album
La Grande, Laura’s songs continue to explore themes of caring and love, loss
and grief, time and space. But a noticeable difference between the albums is
the evolution and expansion of Laura’s sound.
With Beasts of Seasons, Laura’s intention was to ensure that
her compositions remained delicate and personal. She said that she “wanted them
to feel fleshed out but still feel true to the fact that you’re singing a song
on an acoustic guitar.”
Now, on her third album, rhythm and volume play a larger role
in helping deliver her stories. I told Laura that one could hear a bit of this evolution on the song Spirited from the Beasts Of Seasons album. I asked
her how conscious she was in wanting to have this evolution. She said that Spirited
was a really good song to bring up.
“When I first started to write that song I almost felt like
it was so poppy and that it could not possibly be meaningful. I did not even
think that it fit within the themes of the record, so I was hesitant to include
that song initially.” But she said she realized that it was one of the most
meaningful songs on that record.
“I learned from Spirited that I can still focus on the craft
of writing and have meaning within the more upbeat moments. So this time around
I really wanted to let go of that limitation that I had chosen for myself. What
moves me in making and listening to music is that intimacy and vulnerability
that happens. I got really interested in this kind of experiment of whether or
not I could achieve that by exploring and indulging with my songwriting.”
Laura said that she has found that there is more than one
way of achieving intimacy with a listener. In some respects, Laura felt that
she was able to give more of herself and be even more vulnerable within her new
songs even though it does not seem like a more vulnerable record.
No longer armed with simply an acoustic guitar, Laura
approached her new album differently, working and writing from day one with two
drummers as well as herself. Rhythm became the backbone of La Grande.
“Rhythm always had a place in my music. A lot of times songs
would start with me and a guitar and I would let that set the rhythm. I am definitely
not one to keep or require perfect time on my records. There are a lot of ebbs
and flows as far as speed and rhythm. There is almost a breathing thing as far
as how I approach how songs flow. This time around I was excited about
percussion and having this real heart beat behind everything. Something that is
a bit more driving to set the pace for what I do.”
Rhythm became so important to this album, that she even
sings about the idea of rhythm in the opening song. “In the line of the song I was imagining this
train coming through and rattling by and all of these whispered conversations
being turned into music by the train coming by. I like thinking about this in
the context of my own understanding of rhythm.”
Laura first started working on the new batch of songs for the
album when she was visiting the Eastern Oregon Community of La Grande. She said
that the town's geography, and history of
wagons, courage, and moving forward resonated with her own sense of moving
forward and asserting her being into the word. “I became really interested in
the history of the La Grande area. It is a place that represents both the
triumphs and tragedies of the American West.” She said the town and history helped
give her clarity and confidence in terms of where she wants to go musically.
“So many times I have been to a place where I have felt the
landscape and the culture was giving shape to something that I was feeling or
wanting to understand. Going out to that place whose identity is very much
about the idea of moving forward both in the positive transcendent ways and
tragedy and grief that comes with moving forward really did that for me on this
trip. I almost feel like I have these feelings welling up inside of me about
where I wanted to go and what kind of musician I wanted to become.” La Grande,
she said, gave her the images that she needed to help explain where she wanted
to go.
I asked Laura what she meant when she talked about the tragedy and grief that comes with moving forward. She said that specifically, historically in the west there is a lot
of tragedy with the native American population, including some specific
to the areas in and around La Grande.
"There was and is much to be grieved about that movement forward. In my own life I
feel like one of my gifts in a sense is to be a griever. I think that connects
to the choices that I have made in my life and the songs that I write. I feel
like that is a gift. But I was also interested in what does it mean to move
forward and not be bound by grief, to try and transcend it in a way.”
With La Grande, Laura has arrived at a new musical level and
space. Yet the essence of what makes her so special as an artist has not changed; her
ability as a songwriter to share with you the world, as she experiences it, through her open heart and eyes. La Grande, with its heartbeat like rhythms and beautiful musical texturing, elevates this experience for the listener, creating imagery behind the words. This imagery not only enhances her stories, but works to draw the listener in closer. And in doing so, she continues to create the intimacy with her music that she will always seek out.
Laura is out touring in support of her album now. You can check out her tour dates here.
What I love about music is its power to transport me. Sometimes it’s unexpected, sometimes it’s exactly where I want to be. A single melody can unlock memories I didn’t realize I still carried, while certain chords or lyrics take me to another time or place. Some songs feel like home, offering shelter, while others deliver me to an unknown place or space, stirring emotions I can’t quite name. In this way, music isn’t just sound—it’s a sonic subway, delivering me to a station of refuge or one I never knew existed.
Music has always been an important part of my life. My family and friends knew this well, often asking me what I was listening to and what I liked. It was always humbling to be asked, and eventually, I gathered the courage to create this music blog—to put into words what draws me to certain music and why.
Over the years, my passion for writing has grown, along with my excitement for sharing musical discoveries. I hope your time here sparks excitement and leads you to a musical discovery of your own. More than anything, I hope your visit brings a little joy to your day.
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