Posts tagged folk

It’s been raining all day so I’m thinking about listening to this version of “Evelyn” by Boulder, CO singer-songwriter Gregory Alan Isakov on loop while putting a serious dent in Gabriel García Márquez’s 100 Years of Solitude. If you’re unfamiliar with Isakov’s music, I recommend starting out with This Empty Northern Hemisphere.

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Vance Joy is yet another great artist out of Australia. The Melbourne based singer songwriter, who has just signed a five record deal with major label, Atlantic, gained a ton of notoriety for his single, “Riptide.” Check it out.

Check out Hudson Taylor, two singer-songwriter brothers from Dublin. The duo, who first came to fame via their Youtube channel as Harry & Alfie performing covers and original songs, have since moved to London to pursue music full time, which is good news given their solid lyrics and Marcus Mumford level strumming.

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I’ve recently gotten into Chi City’s Maps & Atlases and listening to Perch Patchwork at ton. Almost every song on the album is great but right now my favorite track is “Israeli Caves.”
Dave Davison’s vocals have that perfectly imperfect thing going on that also drew me to bands like Bombay Bicycle Club.

I’ve been listening to this song pretty much non-stop for the past week. I’d write something cool about Avalanche City but the actual band bio is already pretty cool.

“Six months after taking the first steps towards singing, Dave Baxter played his first solo show as Avalanche City. Six months after the first show, one year after beginning the process of teaching himself how to sing, the first tracks were laid for Avalanche City’s debut album Our New Life Above The Ground.

Armed with a sack full of vegetarian single serve curries Dave Baxter headed into the countryside and moved into a little community hall called the Kourawhero Hall, just north of Auckland. There he spent the week alone recording and playing everything himself with only the cows and the milk trucks as company.

The album was available free to download for four months.”

With our GI and Renal exam coming up on Monday I’ve been pulling 20 hour days studying but on the bright side I’ve got at least twenty new bands I’ve come across while studying and will be putting together the July Indie playlist after the test. In the meantime here’s a great live version of “Submarine” by The Lumineers.

Randomly came across “Bloom” by The Paper Kites on an 8track mix I had running in the background while studying. About 10 seconds in I stopped studying with a “What is this?! How do I not know this?”

You can pick up their Woodland EP on iTunes or, if you have happen to live in Australia, check them out live on their Heavy Reins Tour which kicks off this week.

The latest edition to my studying has been James Vincent McMorrow. McMorrow’s self produced debut album, Early In The Morning, has earned him some well deserved buzz and performing spots along artists ranging from Bon Iver to Al Green; the album was self-recorded in a cottage over 5 months with McMorrow playing all the instruments himself.

His soulful indie/folk sound can be traced back to his influences: Neil Young, The National, and Otis Redding.

I rarely post two mp3’s back to back but this is literally blowing my mind right now. I’d never heard of John Hearts Jackie before 30 minutes ago but they just earned a fan. This is an amazing Prince cover. Okay, going back to hit replay. That is all.

Yesterday The Civil Wars stopped by The Horseshack to record the latest Daytrotter Session. The session features great live versions of four tracks including a haunting cover of Smashing Pumpkins’ “Disarm.” As always, the session is available as a free download here. If you’re unfamiliar with Daytrotter Sessions, here’s what the team behind it has to say about the sessions and the artists who stop in to record them: They use borrowed instruments, play with their touring mates, utilize an often unkempt toilet, eat some food and then cram back into their vans for the last half of the drive. What they leave behind is a pile of ashes, sometimes a forgotten stocking hat and four absolutely collectible songs that often impart on whomever listens to them the true intensity that these musicians put into their art, sometimes with more clarity than they do when they have months to tinker with overdubs and experiments. These songs are them as they are on that particular day, on that particular tour – dirty and alive.

Yesterday The Civil Wars stopped by The Horseshack to record the latest Daytrotter Session. The session features great live versions of four tracks including a haunting cover of Smashing Pumpkins’ “Disarm.” As always, the session is available as a free download here.

If you’re unfamiliar with Daytrotter Sessions, here’s what the team behind it has to say about the sessions and the artists who stop in to record them:

They use borrowed instruments, play with their touring mates, utilize an often unkempt toilet, eat some food and then cram back into their vans for the last half of the drive. What they leave behind is a pile of ashes, sometimes a forgotten stocking hat and four absolutely collectible songs that often impart on whomever listens to them the true intensity that these musicians put into their art, sometimes with more clarity than they do when they have months to tinker with overdubs and experiments. These songs are them as they are on that particular day, on that particular tour – dirty and alive.

This live performance by Villagers front-man and songwriter Connor O’Brien is the kind of performance that gives me hope for the singer-songwriter art form in a time that seems to only care about learning how to “Dougie” and using auto-tune to fuel comebacks.

The clip comes as the first offering by Snakeweed Sessions—a new and very cool conglomerate composed of Singapore music bloggers who decided to get together and invite artists in for interviews and a quick song or two in an effort to expose them to a wider audience in the Asian world.

During their SXSW set City & Colour decided to break out a new track titled “Silver and Gold,” which has me pretty amped up about their upcoming album Little Hell. The track takes a definitively “blues-ier” tone than any of the bands previous work, bespeaks a grittier approach to songwriting by Dallas Green which I can totally get down with.

On top of the new song, Green and his backing band laid down excellent renditions of old fan favorites which you can watch by clicking the following links: “Sleeping Sickness,” “Waiting,” and “As Much as I Ever Could.”

Interesting Tidbit: The name “City & Colour” stems from Dallas Green’s name which, when broken into it’s components is just that: a city, and a color.

SXSW is in full swing again today down in Austin and luckily for those of us who couldn’t make it out to the festival, there’s tons of media outlets who are doing live-streams of performances and/or posting them online after the fact. One such outlet is IFC—The Independent Film Channel—which has been posting some awesome performances like this one by The Civil Wars. 

I’ve posted about The Civil Wars and their powerful indie-folk vocals before but this video should seal the deal for any of you who were on the fence about them. You can pick up their album, Barton Hollow, for $5 on Amazon.

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Here’s my buddy & singer-songwriter Brett Randell with “The End,” off his debut EP, Glow. Having come a long way from the late night jam sessions we used to have in college, Brett is currently touring the US & Europe (see dates). For more Brett Randell music visit his website/YouTube channel.