The NBT Review 37

Songs Of Sins And Redemption – The Molenes (Independent Release)

Take in the purity of Roots Americana, dirty it lovingly with hints of feedback, splashes of political anger and huge gulps of driving rock n roll, and you have the first two tracks, the gateway into the world of very human very fragile saints, and  sometimes beautiful sometimes scary and sinister devils.

As just music this collection is oh so easy to fall in love with. There is not an instrument out of place, no arrangement over blown or underdone, and the nuanced interplay between musicians (who follow each others rhythms as instinctively as brothers) is thrilling.

Of course it’s not just about the playing and the tunes, but a journey towards the light with all the perilous thoughts and shadowy images that the odyssey entails.

Stealing from the track, ‘Bring the Bottle’ these are often snapshots onto a world that is ‘One Righteous bloody mess!’ and as the cover of the CD suggests, there is  an allure to the decay, there is something deeply uplifting in the fact that the broken souls will keep standing, keep moving on.

And the Molenes will be the dance band they party  loud to, in wicked stops along the way.

Find out more here

http://www.themolenes.com

And you can hear the Molenes on this episode of the NBT podcast

http://www.nextbigthing.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=495389

Foresight/Poorsight (Ghost In The Cupboard)

Rewind the film, slowly. A train sneaks back tragic into a tunnel, and the sun slipSlides behind a cloud. With rolling thunder, the drama of ‘Sun For Days’ unrolls. This is the end. NO, actually this is a seductively brutal beginning.

The theme of loss continues, made strangely sweet with a power pop chug, kinda like Mathew Sweet fronting a new wave Byrds. These are songs about dancing as close to the edge as possible, sometimes accepting that the fall is the most wonderful thing, these are songs that SEEM to be about giving up, but look/listen closer and they are about surviving the dull chaos of break ups and fractured dreams.

The singer is a cynic, the singer is conflicted, and the singer is a romantic, he searches through the shudders of the songs, through leftovers of a rock n roll explosion, the shattered remains of affairs and love, and he tries to explore the truth of things. And with this band, these are his findings.

This is no one man quest though; this band is a whirling strumming thrumming beating heart of a music machine, creating swirls and harmonies, a subtle modern wall of noise.

Through the loneliness, this band wants to reach out and touch you.

Find out more here

http://www.thejohnschicago.com/

Catch songs from this album on this weeks NBT podcast.. Going out this Friday

http://www.nextbigthing.libsyn.com

The NBT Review 36

Heart Anchors  - Dune Tran (Independent Release)

Think of a movie. The beach at dawn, the film sped up, the sun thrown UP out of the darkness into the sky, the waves crashing senseless lonely.

Think of this movie. The 1^st track of this tender collection is the soundtrack to that movie.

The movie slides into sepia crackle, and we see a young girl skip, dance kinda innocent, then falter walk backwards, the weight of the questions push at her, almost stop the shimmy, too much passion here though, the dance continue, the kites fly.

She can’t help herself she wants to always to hop, canter, swing herself around, then the Internal of the song takes her, things get slower, she allows herself to fall, hoping no, knowing, the music will catch her.

Time shifts, TimeChanges, this is sparkles, sparkling in the darkness illuminating lost lovers sitting quiet on cluttered couches, memories craving release.

Her songs are complicated things who wear a subtle orchestration, they are ballet dancers, half child half ghost.

Imagine another movie. A window, a fluttering curtain, the night sky, now here, now hidden.

She sings from another room, where moonlight shines through another window.

She invites you to dream.

Find out more here

http://www.dunetran.com

My Blacks Don’t Match – Darren Gaines and the Key Party (Independent Release)

Oh I adore this dirty Swing.

Gaines takes his ragged words and pokes them into the skin of proudly bruised songs, howling poetic, scaring the neighbors while seducing their daughters.

Track ‘She Says She Does’ is a poker game between Jim Carroll and Lou Reed, the shock sweetened by jiving horns and vocalist/violinist Sara Syms adding grace to the battle.

This is an alternate universe’s Blues Brothers, who kept their love of classical soul, but shared a beer or twenty with Joe Strummer and played messy and murky with Patti Smith.

While the swagger is infectious, this music has heart too, huge beating bleeding wanting pounding.

There is a true sense of urban epic in these songs that match a beautiful and honest story telling, images, harsh, vivid, intensely moving, completely unforgettable, spill out of the tunes and skitter restlessly around the listener’s soul.

Already, for me, an album of the year.

Find out for yourself

http://www.thekeypartynyc.com/

Hear Darren Gaines and the Key Party on this episode of the NBT Podcast

http://nextbigthing.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=495389

and Dune Tran on this weeks broadcast (either Thursday or Friday)

 http://nextbigthing.libsyn.com

The NBT Review 35

As NBT head honcho Martin Smit is down with the Flu this week,( yes summer flu in a heat wave, not wonderful!)  He just reviews Tag by Adriana, second in command William Elliot takes the reigns for Nick Daugherty

Movin’ Higher – Nick Daugherty (Sky Rocket Records)

The title track sets the mood, a song for flying, for those thoughts that touch a soul as you travel to a loved one, a gentle gliding melody full of bright easy harmonies.

This is summer drenched pop, evoking the same laidback rock and jazz tinted soul journeys that Jason Mraz and Jack Johnson often take, and in the track ‘Out of My League’ Nick even adds a hint of cool gospel.

The album is full of accomplished emotional ballads like ‘A Thousand Times Tonight’ and ‘ Please Come back Home’ showcasing a heartfelt vulnerability  counterpointing the amiable swing of other tracks, during which Daugherty invites you to slow dance the humid sultry night away with him.

All is not just unruffled and dreamy though, in standout track ‘Staring At The Sun’ Nick allows his voice to get a bit rougher, and rocks out with the best of them.

This is a fine pop album of the sort that will always be full of sweet summer breeze, that was made for lazy Sunday afternoons, and that brings a little bit of California to the room where ever it is played.

http://nickdaugherty.com/

 

Tag –Adriana (Independent Release)

This collection is sneaky and delightfully seductive, it is wicked, human, and heartwarming, sometimes all these things resting gleefully together in one song.

It carries a European chill into the sweaty jungle rhythms, an ice cream swirly centre covered by day-glo  PoP Art laughter.

It slinks along, big back cat like, growling, purring, elegant and oh so  deliciously dangerous.

Adriana refines what worked so well with her previous band Kid Creole and the Coconuts, and disregarding nostalgia, she slips and slides onto wry modern dance floors, letting the words bite and kiss as the beat clitterClatters ambiguously across the dancers’ bodies.

Best of all, there is nothing shallow about these nightclub confections, layered in between the loops and licks  is the soul of the edgy, the thoughtful, the ironic and the daring.

An album that subtly surprises with every new spin, gently hypnotizes and revamps, rejuvenates the tired listener.

Get your own seduction here

http://adrianakaegi.com/

 

Catch both these artists on this week’s NBT Podcast

http://nextbigthing.libsyn.com

The NBT Review 34

BQEP – The Bloodsugars (EngineRoom Recordings)

The song glides into focus, shivery buildup then POW, a PoPManAngel floats, no, swoops down, grabs us, and now we fly, now dance in this cool indie heaven. This wicked angel sings of the Quiet of Space and we find ourselves slow dancing beneath glitter ball sparkleStars.

This then is the single, ‘’Purpose Was Again.’’

Then guilty pleasures taken, with 80s keyboard kisses, the melody flirts but the lyrics are sharp, anger wrapped in sweet shy hooks.

Cinderella drum driven, chart song tensionNfrenzy recalling  the days when MTV, showed shy daughters sway and strut with lines of highly choreographed boys behind them.

Polished and shiny sure, a gentle post punk song-craft here, allowing the harmonic dangerous to slip through, ripples of disturbance, softly softly maybe, but these songs are not fragile things.

Get your sugar high here

http://thebloodsugars.com/

http://www.engineroomrecordings.com/artists.html

She’s Like A British Car – The Thromboes (CatErratic Records)

Oh its back to the garage, and just in time too, its dirty delightful here, oil stain glamour, spare part rough slinky raw rock squeezed into 3 minute nuggets.

Its Iggy meets the Yardbirds picking a fight with those freaky Monks (ironically a copy of ‘Black Monk Time’ >from 1966> fell into my hands about the same time I received ‘British car’.) Its twisted and sneering, the Troggs watching the Kingsmen, SLOUCHING around, waiting around for Punk to hit them hard.

Every tune makes you want to do that strange shuffle, where the body hardly moves but is full of poetic slinky menace.

This is music made by handsome savages sound tracking wry  17 year olds, on their brand new adventures.

This is ancient voodoo messy unapologetic , it is the return of the Junk and the Jive.

Get hooked here

http://www.myspace.com/thethromboes

Hear both these bands on this upcoming podcast Friday 12 June

http://nextbigthing.libsyn.com/

The NBT Review 33

The Color Of Sunshine – Lawrence Blatt (LMB Music)

What instruments were played, who played them, who produced this collection, (Grammy award winner and Windham Hill founder, William Ackerman as it happens) are all technical facts that can be found on websites and on the CD cover, and need not concern us.

We are here for the journey.

Gliding across the oceans, the deserts, we slide in and out of the reflections, the shadows, the moods, the mystical yet unpretentious expressway of colour that starts in the chaos of the sun and learns to be beautiful, scary and gentle by the time it hits our Earth.

Blatt, in his music, reveals a simple secret, Nature can be harsh, can be fragile, can destroy and create, but it is never evil, never petty. The smallest sparkles of light, the unseen rhythms played out on the edge of the spectrum, have an internal grandeur, an incorruptible dignity.

His tunes seek out the honest soul of the landscape.

Travel with him.

http://www.lawrenceblatt.com/

 

Ermine EP – Marilyn Roxie (independent release)

The songs come at me random, sometimes slouching, sometimes deceptive sweet, cruel child ballerina tiptoe.

So I get the first last, ===(!) ,  I am swooshed into childhood, dropped in the centre of the harum-scarum bliss of the amusement park, many shiny things grinning their come on, come on, step inside, all sparkle, all devious, all yummy.

Then an epic escape is promised, the vision willfully snatched away as it implodes, the air is thin here, can hardly breathe, nice to float (also: clever this, an entire Harold Budd album in just over 2 minutes)

People say this is cold, oh damn, people just don’t know what they are talking about.

Not a violin, IS a hymn, has desires, has such longing, self destructs with a sigh and a question.

Then

The voices within the downward swirl, this lovely storm fragmented sampled, saved.

The voices again, another place another heat, a certain time, still trapped though. Her sunset does not soothe, but is easy to love.

http://marilynroxie.com/

Both these artists will be heard on this upcoming NBT podcast Friday 12^th June

http://nextbigthing.libsyn.com/

 

The NBT Review 32

Barbara Gilles Favoriti Quartet – Barbara Gilles Favoriti Quartet (independent release)

This is not a review this is a Quest.

How do I capture the essence of this music?

Do I wait till the sky grows stormy, so that the light is strangely refracted, sharp and pulsing? Closing all the windows so that the traffic battle cries diminish?

Then play the music loud.

Then in the hush after the 5^th track has concluded, I listen to the echo, the ghosts still dancing, asking.

Merry now, thoughtful now.

Or

Do I take the earth brown square, that enfolds this music, walk the midnight streets, until I find a basement of old men, wounded artists, casual drinkers and sped up ravers, do I demand this music be played in the battered CD player behind the bar, and sit back and watch…

I watch an old ravaged man, wasted elegant, waltz strange with a boneless fluid jazz Lady.

I watch the hip click their fingers like they saw French movie stars do.

I watch the lonely caress the dew upon their tall glasses, connecting with the fragile of the new song.

I watch strangers ask other strangers to dance.

Or

Do I siphon the juice from this recording into my pocket player, catch a bus, train, crowded anything, watch the harsh normal unfold, as the dreamlike sighs from my too tiny earphones.

Then I realize that the essence of this music is that it is a portal.

Away from HERE.

An escape. A rescue, a sometimes sly often sensual deliverance, almost 22 minutes of beauty.

Begin YOUR quest here:

http://www.barbaragilles.com.ar/

Catch songs from this EP here (and in many other NBT shows)

http://nextbigthing.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=481028

The NBT Review 31

Echo Slightly reviewed by Martin Smit

Greg Copeland reviewed by Alexandra Smit-Stachowski

Birds Fly South  – Echo Slightly (NonExistent Recordings)

We are wrapped nostalgic as the electronics sigh into focus, synths shuffle slide across the tracks caressing, covering the delicate vocals.

We are sucked into this ambiguous calm, only to find the dance storm growing in strength, the drums skitter clean industrial, guitars swoop in like sexy fighter planes and all is popSwirl, PoPSwaY.

Each ballad is merely an entry into the rampage, the sky bleeds gothic colours, the metal twists and grins are barely restrained.

Tightly wound, the explosions are suggestive, the tension delectable.

There are Robyn like CandyMusic nuances, and the band gaze back into the 80s darkly, for every shiny moment, there is shy shadow.

Beguiling

Find out more here:

http://www.nonexistentrecordings.com/?page_id=16

http://cdbaby.com/cd/echoslightly

Diana And James  – Greg Copeland (Inside Recordings)

Greg Copeland’s debut album, ‘Revenge Will Come Back’ in 1982 was produced by school friend Jackson Browne, the album made an impact and tracks were covered by Joan Baez, Browne and David Lindley. Copeland then disappeared from view – 25 years later, he returns with ‘Diana And James”, again executive produced by Browne.

 “There oughta be a law,“ sings Copeland on the opening track, too true – those keen on good music should be legally bound to listen to albums like this one. Packed with great violins and nyckelharpa (a traditional Swedish instrument), the title track sees Greg play electric, acoustic and baritone guitars producing dreamy twangy sounds.

 Heather Waters does harmonies with Copeland to lyrics including gems like: „Dear Reader right about now we’re tearing up our tickets for your long black train.“

 The melodies are gorgeous – this is story music that you need to listen to over and over again and each time you’re bound to hear something you missed, it’s that layered.

 Copeland sounds like he could be Mark Lanegan’s older brother – both have blood-soaked lyrics with the same type of vocalising.  The ghost of Hank Williams is in the guitar-playing of the song, “The Only Wicked Thing“ while the track, “Between Two Worlds“  brings to mind memories of lazy autumn days with leaves blowing.

The 25-year break in between records didn’t harm Copeland, he’s used the time to explore his darker country roots. The music sounds like it would have been a good soundtrack to HBO’s ‘Deadwood’ series about legendary gritty cowboys in America’s early days.

 Backed by many Californian musical heavyweights including Jay Bellerose, Gabe Witcher, Bob Glaub, Patrick Warren, and Phil Parlapiano– Copeland plays with violinist Carl Kihlstedt who sings with him on ‘Count the bodies on My Crown’.

 Listening to this album and the lyrics – you’re left wanting to see the accompanying music videos, the songs deserve a visual backdrop to complement them further.

 All in all, this is a beautiful album which should be critically-acclaimed by the mainstream music press but I have the overwhelming suspicion it has been unwisely ignored. Music will out and if justice serves, ‘Diana and James’ will get the credit it deserves.

 Find out more:

 http://www.insiderecordings.com/

http://www.hemifran.com/artists_g-h.html

You can hear tracks from both of these albums on the NBT Podcast

http://nextbigthing.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=472349

The NBT Review 30

Shotgun Daisy – Stacie Rose (Enchanted Records)

She is not going to wait around while we wake up, in her driving harmonic bittersweet world, she believes and sings for the strong, the ones that will find their way aided by a giddy mix of the ragged poetic and the sleek rock n roll.

Her instincts tell her, that love saves, that her tunes can be played without compromise floating subtle on summer TV screens broadcasting emotional misadventures.

She left turns into tales of break up, twisting the confession/recollection by getting Shawn Mullins to join in the chorus, adding dimension, deliciously distorting the point of view.

Sometimes the words tumble out double speed like school kids as the bell rings, sometimes the words sigh and float, stretched across the music like torch songs refugees that have found their hook.

Sometimes this all happens in the same song.

 She is comfortable with soul ballads and country raunch.

She is Stacie Rose and this is Shotgun Daisy

Find out more

http://www.stacierose.com

The Big Pretend – All Day Sucker (Trademark Entertainment/ big WOW music)

Outside while the wannabe starlets hustle and the cool boys glide, where the Eagles and America are NOT the wild bird and country, but the larger than life glossy surreal epic music groups, all is hot chaotic, beautiful and lost.

Inside the theatre lights dim and the movie begins. The Big Pretend begins.

First, there is car chase, Hollywood love letter style, driven by ‘Who’s Next’ keyboard riffs and frantic country rock vocals.

Then wry prayers, soaked in harmonies that even a cold lost European will know and love as Californian, and then baked in the POP oven Warren Zevon was known to use.

These are often sunny, sun glare bright stories, waiting while in midst shimmer, to flip over to the darkness of the over populated, ultra lonely big city night.

All Day Sucker love, have been seduced, have been hurt, scarred, saved by their city, and these are the songs, the films of the mind, that show it.

And in Riddles and Rain, this sensual tryst ‘tween the cinematic and the closely observed, transforms into a subtle classic that Brian Wilson and Craig Finn would be  proud of.

Find out more here

http://www.alldaysucker.net/

Hear both of these bands and a lot more on the NEXT NBT Podcast 26^th April 09

http://nextbigthing.libsyn.com/

The NBT Review 29

Springboard –The Water Callers (Independent Release)

And so we shuffle soft into the music, watching the couples sway lightheaded, giddy, entranced by the rhythms of a ‘Night Like This’ and ‘Mama’

 We are soon to discover that this is not JUST a dance band fashioned old.

As we are seduced by the sparkles of reflected mirror, polished hazy from times somewhere long ago, we are startled by what seems to be the ghosts of the Band when Levon Helm took them to a rougher sweeter darker place. This is the Duo, The Water Callers, who initiate this sound, these voices that sometimes wrap warm and bright, sometimes pulse desolate.

Not dusty sepia antiquated, this music still is not afraid to take you back to less rumbling shallow times, though there is an ambiguity in the harmonies offering both honey covered Hope, and frissons of ambrosial Peril.

And as the Lullaby morphs onto cinematic swaggering Ballad, and the Electric kisses and nibbles dirty into the Acoustics’ ear, we walk out into the comfort of the full moon, the music refusing to let go,

Get caught up for yourself

http://www.thewatercallers.com

http://jasonfagg.com/

One Thousand Words – Jenny Gunn (Independent Release/Asoma)

Slip into the Dreaming here, the place of the flickering restless shadows, where the flute, carnal, strangely skittish, reverberates around the voice of the magic maker, the seeker of the secret inside the heart of the incorporeal.

This is the mystical other world, the world that overlaps ours, full of the grey brash ordinary, coated with the reds and blues and scares of her imagination.

She is the Monster-Finder, the Creature friend, who sings in fairy tale sighs. She will be compared to Joanna Newsome or Victoria Williams, but as her name suggests she is her own real spirit, forged in the harsh modern but free to fly, sidestep, into this agitated wonder reverie.

Never has the storm been so soothing while it frightens.

Jenny Gunn’s dream world opens up here

http://www.jennygunn.com

Hear both these artists on the NBT podcast this Friday 17^th April

http://nextbigthing.libsyn.com/

 

The NBT Review 28

Hard Road/Muddy Track – Dennis Kolen (Wyatt Records)

Kolen approaches the themes inside this lovely collection of songs  from two different points of view. Sometimes he is the thoughtful observer, sketching for us, portraits of lonely, often faded, still beautiful creatures, creatures that inhabit the shadows of the too glistening palaces we call entertainment. Sometimes, however he is the star of these stories, road movies, and he shows us what haunts him in hushed detail as he travels.

Alluring moments are many, like the harmonies approaching gospel folk wonder in ‘God of the Mountain and the James Taylor intimacy of’ Elementary’ and ‘Macabre Disneyland.’ Best of all are the subtle sways of country ballad ‘Stand Inside Love’ which seems to offer some sort of hope for his wounded characters.

Find out more

http://www.denniskolen.com/

Gentle As The Sun – Naomi Sommers (American Melody)

The first thought that strikes me, is how appealingly free of angst this music is, as the song ‘two Sparrows’ settles into my subconscious I realize that in just 5 verses Sommers has created a complete picture of two people comfortably fearlessly in love.

But don’t, for a second, gentle reader, think this is some smug family rustic collection; there are tingles of the cold beneath the warmth, for example the perfectly realized tale of a woman’s fears for her lover at war in the song ‘Come Home’

Sommers explores the emotions and observations of someone adjusting to the impassiveness of the city dweller. This tale,(‘Grey Sky Girls’)is constructed and played  with an intuitive feel for traditional country that a Dolly Parton or Emmylou Harris would approve of.

Mention must be made of the only non original in the set ‘Sea Of Heartbreak’ which the artist makes her own with the aid of lilting strings and gentle banjo

This Sun in the title is the welcoming presence of Dawn, and the forgiving friend of the Sunset.

Find out more

http://www.naomisommers.com/