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Track Of The Day: The Pass - "Trap Of Mirrors"
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My favorite Louisville electro-pop band, The Pass, announced their release date (Sept 21st), album art (above), and gave away their first single (below) for their debut LP BURST. I'm super excited to unwrap what is set to be the most danceable and infectious release of 2010...too bad I have to wait until September. Listen to this free mp3 to tide you over until then. If you like what you hear, go to their BANDCAMP page and show them some love.
REQUIRED LISTEN: SOARS
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Music can often play on memory, personal experience, dreams, and emotion. Great music can make the listener feel something they never knew existed, filling a void that was never acknowledged. This is my experience with the dreamy outfit SOARS. There have been very few albums that twist and turn in the mind, every note a little bit off but only because of how we have been conditioned to listen. The Lehigh Valley, PA band is releasing their debut, self-titled LP in October which is perfect because the sounds they create will be a gentle warning of the oncoming cold of winter. The music is a journey into an unknown soundscape that guides the listener through a gambit of reactions. I compare the listen to the first time I heard Radiohead's Kid A. They sound nothing alike, but SOARS, like Radiohead, have created a sound that defies time, space, memory, and ultimately life. Jean-Pierre Melville once said, in Godard's masterpiece À bout de souffle, when asked about his life ambition, "To become immortal... and then die." After hearing SOARS, I think I understand.
REVIEW: Mountain Man - "Made the Harbor"
If you want to know where the Carter Family intersects with Joanna Newsom look no further than Vermont-based Mountain Man. These ladies are why people describe harmonies as "gossamer." Their debut Made the Harbor is one of those records that takes time, that takes a little osmosis, that takes a good thunderstorm and nothing to do to appreciate.
Mountain Man -- besides the wink of the name of the band when it includes 3 women (Molly Erin Sarie, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, Amelia Randall Meth -- isn't reinventing any formula. The songs are deceptively simple usually just a single guitar over ethereal harmonies (this is where the Newsom part comes in, not in the structure, but complexity of vocal harmony) recounting old world times. It's almost white people mountain spiritual. The way the great acts of yesteryear (see the Carter Family) used to do it.
Perhaps what makes Mountain Man so arresting in a year of music that seems to be all about "chill" or "electro" this is very much not. "Buffalo" asks us to "Follow, follow, follow the buffalo." "Sewee Sewee" turns the onomatopoeia of the title into a gentle call to lie down in a field. Unlike the singular forces of notable female singer-songwriters like Neko Case or Jolie Holland (tho Mountain Man does intertwine somewhat with Holland's previous outfit the Be Good Tanyas, but less jazzy) Mountain Man is content to lie back and let simplicity take over. But, in no way does that mean that this work is less musical, just less willful. Tracks are interspersed with the subtle clicks of recording, with the ladies priming and readying one another for the next song. Without these, each track would seem to evaporate into the next gliding on the voices.
Someone once said, and unfortunately I think is was Bono in reference to Woody Guthrie, that all you need is 3 chords and the truth. Mountain Man has 3 voices and the truth. And amid the thunderstorm that's about to light the air here, it seems like anything else would be too much.
Hip Hatchet
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"I ain't got a gun, but fists will have to do."
"Stare all you want...but this train won't take you home."
Hip Hatchet is the project of a mysterious person named Philippe from Middlebury, Vermont. I couldn't find too much information about Hip Hatchet but I have the important pieces to write. First, the music is gorgeous introspective folk. The melodies seep into the body as they slowly stride forward with poetic lyrics flowing from a voice that calls on Nick Drake. Hip Hatchet is highly recommended. Check out my favorite song, "Sun Can't Walk" and if you have any money in your account throw this amazing independent artist a few dollars for his art HERE.