Bowerbirds

I was first winsomely lead away by the Bowerbirds when they opened for Bon Iver at Black Cat in 2009. 2008? Though they played for a largely talkative and annoying crowd,

{taking a moment to just put it out there: i get weird juju from nearly every DC crowd I'm obliged to stand with. truly, what is with the apathetic posturing? shaves my buzz every time.}

{there. i feel better.}

the Raleigh, NC-natives Phil Moore {vocals, guitar}, Beth Tacular {vocals, accordion(!)} and Mark Paulson {vocals, violin} are, quite frankly, endearing. Critics toss around the "freak folk" genre, but I'd disagree. Feels more tempered; intimate story-telling over flowing instrumentation. An attentive beak to their glossy feathers. So tonight the four of us will have a bit of a reunion in Charlottesville when they open for Arcade Fire - followed by Régine and I ribbon dancing to Sprawl II.

Bowerbirds // Beneath Your Tree

Andrew Graham & Swarming Branch

I woke up this morning and said to myself, "I want some eccentric, left of center, randomized goodshizza up in my eardurms." So I perused the card catalogue for something to fit the bill, of which Andrew Graham & Swarming Branch does in spades. Graham, at the ripe age of 24,

{I'll take a moment here to mention I've reached the age where I have some difficulty accepting the talent and success of those I tutt-tutt and think "...ah to be [insert # here] again." blarf.},

had already flexed his musical biceps with bands like RTFO Bandwagon, Pink Reason and, my personal favorite, Psychedelic Horseshit. Now he's doing his own thing with a rotating cast, aka Swarming Branch, on the Mexican Summer label. Bluegrass infused with some punk and plenty room to breathe, don't be hating on Kathy. At least she can dance.

Andrew Graham & Swarming Branch // Take It Easy On Kathy At Least She Can Dance

The Head and The Heart

{image from Sub-Pop Records}

Though I didn't get up before the sun to see the Royal Wedding, I'm making up for the day's enjoyment with a patio-sit-work-sesh in 70some and sunny RVA. Feels good. Calls for feel good, Americana music {though I suppose if I was more topical, we'd be featuring some post-punk Brit outfit. But we had The Beatles on Monday, so cut me a little slack?}.

As Seattle keeps cranking out the kids with the good stuff, The Head and The Heart recently signed to Sub Pop Records to release their self -titled debut. An easy six-piece ensemble, piano and guitars dominate with flourishes of Charity Rose Thielen's violin and topped off with ebullient handclaps and footstomps. Think Avett Bros., a little Jason Isbell and the harder edge of Augustana. Lyrics from core songwriting partners Josiah Johnson and {VA-native} Jonathan Russel have you either coming or going – looking for life-lessons and experience in a new land, or missing the loved ones in cities left behind.

The Head and The Heart // Down In The Valley

The Week's Once-Over

Bluegrass Bonanza - Brown Bird, Devil Makes Three {Becki Hoehn}
Perfume Genius
Explosions in the Sky {Dustin Artz}
Under the Covers Monday - The Beatles v. She&Him

cheerio, pip-pip!
xx, chirgo

Fleet Foxes

{image from Spin.com}

Truth: I've had this album for a month, and only started listening last weekend.
Truth: I sold my May 15 tix for D.A.R.
Truth: It's gonna bruise after this amount of kicking myself.

I can't say why I didn't give Helplessness Blues a spin and "replay all" from the get-go. The sole, feeble explanation I can shrug my shoulders over was my head not being ready for the hippie. Because that's exactly the kind of record the Seattle natives created: a sweetly green musing on the esoteric and blue-collar. A life returned to reaping what you sow, "if i had an orchard / i'd work till i'm sore / you would wait tables / and soon run the store" from the sophmmore album's namesake first single. Is it laughable that it's one of the most romantic things I've heard all season?

Pretty sure a certain someone needs to spending more time out on the playground.

If you're not ready for posings of "why is the sky blue?" lyrics, or heavy blushings of The Moody Blues - don't force it. It'll come around when the cicadas start whirring and a caftan sounds like an excellent brunch outfit.

Fleet Foxes // The Shrine / An Argument

The Cave Singers

{front and center at red palace DC}

I bought tickets to see Lia Ices at the Red Palace DC the very day I posted about her. I knew she was the opener for The Cave Singers, who I wasn't familiar with but figured a.) I like caves, b.) I was gonna dig the overall aesthetic, c.) if I wasn't wild for them we had all the more reason to leave early and get back to RVA before the kind of hour I'd keep on the odd upper weekend.

Today I got bags under my eyes, 32oz of coffee and came in to work 30 min late. Whoopsies. F*ck yeah, Cave Singers.

Playing to a pretty packed house, this WA-based trio clearly already have an established fan base with the neo-hippie sect. Cuz they wuz dancin'. So I danced too, duh. Hard not to when the seated Derek Fudesco, {whom my bestmate Andi and I renamed Animal}, heavy picking the electric while playing a distortion pedal with such gusto that he nearly comes out of his chair with every sway into the bass line. Can't deny it when Pete Quirk is doing crazymanlegs dancing punctuated by occasional wild screams. You're a soulless robot if you can ignore Marty Lund's stomp-inspiring floor tom. They're deconstructed gritty folk rockers, and they'll be yowling into your town soon.

track1 off their new release on jagjaguwar, track2 because i spilled my beer when it was played due to enthused shimmying.

and p.s., Lia? Thrashing-lovely set. We're going to be seeing more of her, guar-on-teed.

The Cave Singers // No Prosecution If We Bail
The Cave Singers // At the Cut

Windsor For The Derby

{hollywood cemetery, rva}

Windsor For The Derby // Queen of the Sun

Peggy Sue - folk noir bandits

If you're gonna name yourself after one of the most famous songs of the '50's by one of the most famous '50's boys, you're gonna have some guts.

And blues.
And grit.
And woozy laments that feel like being entangled in damp sheets, caught in the throes of remembered heartachey noir dreams.

Formerly Peggy Sue & the Pirates. Then Peggy Sue & the Pictures. Now Peggy Sue, comprised primarily of Rosa Slade and Katy Slade, songs on their Fossils & Other Phantoms have lots of sweet little beginnings that build to ferocious crescendos. Now recording a second album in Bristol, these Brighton, UK lassies have my attention.

i only came here to see you see me ?

flippin' story of my life.

Peggy Sue // Watchman

Wye Oak - the truth about being earnest

If you're Andy Stack of Baltimore-based Wye Oak, and you can play drums with your right-hand and keyboards with your left, you are one badass motherfather. True & livin'. And if you're Jenn Warner, holding down guitars and vocals - you ain't lyin', either.

You'll hear some more earnest folk rock truths with the release of album, Civilian, March 8 - then check them out at Black Cat that Friday.

Oh and I just saw their free download card at Starbucks. People like some honesty with their latte.

**3.8.11 update**

chirgo, mcgaw and mckay will be in attendance at the Black Cat show. huzzah!

Wye Oak // Civilian

Loch Lomond - lexicographers

Ritchie Young started Loch Lomond in 2006 as a solo project, with players coming and going in accordance to requirement, summer vacation and what day Easter fell on that year. Currently a six-piece, the Portland, OR band of chamber-folk merrymakers released a fourth album under beloved Tender Loving Empire label. Mixed by Adam Selzer {M Ward}, Tucker Martine {The Decemberists, Laura Veirs}, and Kevin Robinson {Viva Voce} - Little Me Will Start A Storm is a menagerie of fantastic instruments, crafty rhythms and unconventional lyrics. All tied up with the Youngs' zigzagging vocals, zooming from high up in the register rafters down to an alto.

In truth, whenever any band incorporates a musical saw, they've got my vote. I'm a cheap date.

"Wax & Wire" from 2009 Fruit Bats lightly hearkens to the Scottish lochs of their namesake. "Elephant & Little Girls" is the first single off the Feb. 22 release, who's humid, ambient base track of crickets and hush makes me want to stretch out in a backyard. Under a tarp, wearing a down jacket - weather permitting.

Loch Lomond // Wax and Wire
Loch Lomond // Elephants & Little Girls

Sea of Bees - ocean's a-buzz

I had been eyeing the hull of the ES boat with thoughts of pulling myself back in for weeks. Stockpiling tracks and chuckling over self-amusing quips that I have, inevitably, all forgotten. Well-enough I did as they never really are as quippy as I'd like them to be once they're a day stale.

The King of Limbs put me up and over, but even before that I have been so entirely swept up in Julie Braenzinger's debut album that I knew I just HAD to start pulling the oars again. Just had to! Gorgeous vocals this side of Bjork over earnest lyrics with a folksy-sad edge. She plays all the instruments. It all sounds so confident. She's probably an alien.

The whole album goes down like a spoonful of lingonberry gelato. You'll probably hear tracks like "Willis" on Parenthood or used over a spot for nappies, but until then.
Until then, you and I can sail in the ES boat on this sea of bees.

Sea of Bees // Marmalade

Under the Covers Monday - Freedom or Death & Nas

An unsigned Toronto-based duality, Steve Fernandez and Sway are DIYers of production and songwriting. With classical training in piano, DJ creds, and band-fronting history, their self-titled debut takes them away from the major hitmaker machine so they can do whatever they like. Goddamn right, and as this 1820's Greek War for Independence war cry crows along for their namesake:

Its the way I want to live my life
Having the freedom to make my own decisions
and not adhere to the rules of others
To make art for my own well being, not for acceptance from the masses
To listen to what my heart beats to, not to slave for anothers
Give me the FREEDOM to make a life I choose - or hand me my DEATH

If you play the "sound-likes" game, you'll have a substantial list by the end of the album - Broken Bells, Radiohead, TVOTR, Massive Attack, maybe even a little Citizen Cope? But we're supposed to loathe the sound-likes game if we're one of those who knows the what-for, right? So we'll take that list, slice it into thirds and masticate it knowing it's not NEARLY as dirty as it reads on-screen.

After you've finished up, digest with some visual collaborations with Spike Jonze and a gorgeously synthed-out snowy lovestory. {warning: not everybody keeps their shearling loincloth on}

Freedom or Death // If I Ruled the World

Lydia Ooghe {& the Lux Vacancy}

I don't flirt nearly enough with the local scene, with the exception of my dedicated groupie-attentions to Autocue. No longer! I'm completely diverting my eyes from the PacNW and Brooklyn scene, and lay gaze solely upon RVA.

That is total horseshit malarkey, but I do intend to love on my citymates more.

This coming Sunday, Nov. 14, let's meet up for some grenache at Ipanema and check out Lydia Ooghe. Her songs are stuff of sugar and batting, helium-balloon pop on acoustic guitar and occasional pedal steel. And she looks a-freaking-dorable. By my professional estimation, she's impressing the River City with her talents and gracefully sunny stage presence. We shall see, Lydia.

See you Sunday evening cheetahbabies.



Lydia Ooghe and Lux Vacancy // Baby Yay

James Vincent Mcmorrow

A young man wanders along salt roughened Irish cliffs, returning to a cabin teetering over the sea. Over a season's change, he writes lyrical prose of ghosts and loves, towering trees and keening winds. He recalls times of great change and scrawls their desertion in rushed strokes of ink, spatters bleeding through the paper's fiber.

He returns to Dublin and squints into the glare of a life lancing forward, rushing past him as water breaks around the rock. He holds in his hand a humble EP, nothing much but a man and his words playing instruments in a solitary room. It is February of this year.

once i had a dream
once i had a hope
that was yesterday
not so long ago
this is not the end
this is just the world
such a foolish thing
such an honest girl

James Vincent McMorrow // If I Had a Boat

Pearly Gate Music

There's a good possibility I'll sway up the cloud escalator to a predetermined destination by this soundtrack, created by Zach Tillman (aka Pearly Gate Music). I think it would be downright fitting to skip up and along to toothy guitars, vocals hearkening of Leonard Cohen and pervasive percussion, tattooed by older brother Josh Tillman (singer/songwriter, Fleet Foxes percussion).

Until I executed a quick suicide bomb dive during the growling bridge.
That's the good stuff right there, son! PGM is not all lilting folk, aiming from a dustier age. It does it's bit of rough-housing, though shaded by, admittedly, achingly pretty lyricism.

when we get married
I think it be best
if you wore that blue sweater
instead of a dress
-Navy Blues

yep.

A bedroom artist of sorts - the self-titled LP was written and recorded in Tillman's Seattle living room, friends and brethren pitching in where needed. The ambient sounds of an apartment; the front door opening, someone looking lazily into the fridge, are neat whispers. Maybe makes you feel like it isn't that far of a stretch to be a part of that lo-fi world, adding your claps and kneeslaps to the din. In the den. {insert groan here}

Pearly Gate Music // Gossamer Hair

Lost in the Trees

Ari Picker (B-Sides, the Never) grew up in a small, skipped-over town outside of Chapel Hill, NC back in the early 80's. The Picker family didn't have much; but unlike the cozy fairytales where the family lives on laughter, air and maybe some loaves of sweet brown bread - they didn't have much in the way of anything. The house was one of hostility, sadness and loss. We're talking the major, scary things - parent's who loathed the space the other existed in, twin sister siblings who died at birth and his mother's subsequent depression. Just looking at the list makes me want to press my forehead against my prefab laminate desktop and close my eyes against it.

Picker got away, away, attending the Berklee College of Music in Boston where he was trained in classical composition. His love of sweeping orchestration, combined with rustic folk roots and the right people, has brought him to his current band, Lost in the Trees. He writes the music and hands it out to those who truly want to play his old ghosts out to the room. He is not afraid to tell the tale of what has been; that he had been All Alone In An Empty Room - expected to release Aug. 10.

The titular song samples the creak of old floorboards as we enter this abandoned effigy. It starts easily enough with Picker's acoustic guitar picks, but it's not long before provocative lyrical samples from actual arguments of his parents, I built you this gorgeous house/To put up with your bitch tongue, let's you know you can never be warm here. The instrumentalists come in one by one, swarming and surrounding yet his tremulous vocals remain alone.

You're thinking, "jesus h, woman. Way to shave my buzz for the week," but it's worth the listen. You'll hear the influence of Bernard Hermann's Hitchcock soundtracks in his interludes "Mvt. 1 and 2." Instrumentation is downright impressive, and as we hope for him since the opening note - there is light on the other side. Picker has said in recent interviews that the rawness of his lyrics cracked the doors that separated his family from each other. "You really felt that?" "Why didn't you ever say it?"

Well. He is.

Lost in the Trees // All Alone in an Empty Room

Matthew And the Atlas

I am a sucker for few things in this world. Could count them all on one hand. And I'm not talking about the hand that has that extra pinkie growing from the second knuckle; the regular ol' boring hand is the one to which I do refer.

Those things include a gentleman buying me a drink (knowing awkward conversation is inevitable), kittens (knowing I have to clean up their poop), Brit accents (knowing they're oft behind less than exceptional teeth) and Ray Lamontagne (knowing that, well, there's no mutual interest).
Disclaimer: There's one more, but I'm not telling you every goddamn thing. Sucker-ing may change on a daily basis. Restrictions apply.

Should any of those be present in combination, exceptional suckerage ensues. Matthew Hegarty, pillar of Matthew and the Atlas, could very well get me there. With a voice soaked in rye whiskey and singed with clove cigarettes. Gritty blues delivery and salt on the heartbreak wound lyrics. A purported shy stage presence till he opens his mouth to bring the crowd to a hush. Hegarty could be Ray TheMountain's Brit brother from another mother.

His April EP, To The North, follows a tour supporting Mumford & Sons and taken part of the Communion Compilation. Now it's more pubs and lochs and grey seas the rest of 2010.

I am certainly sucked in.

Matthew And the Atlas // Within the Rose

Mountain Man

I'll preface this with two things - 1. no beards here 2. I'm clearly on a vintage folk kick, or whatever this new genre is trying to salvage nearly-forgotten bluegrass, gospel and country. Just gonna fully embrace it this mon.wed.fri. I swear I'll post some really misogynistic, Cristal-tittie-soaking hardcore rap next week to keep things fresh.

Till then, I'll encourage you to put up your pin curls to these harmonies. Mountain Man is Molly Erin Sarle, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Amelia Randall Meath - hailing from the hills of Vermont. Made the Harbor is all tarnished silver, barnacle-crusted dock pilings and Granny's peach preserves from last summer's harvest. The sirens, recently signed to bellaunion (edited 6.08.10, holler) are on tour to select cities, good luck withstanding temptation to fall into the sea and follow their calls.

Mountain Man - River from Vincent Galgano on Vimeo.

Mountain Man // Soft Skin

Laura Marling

She could be 20 or 200. A real girl or hazy ghost. Bra-burning feminist or romantic Victorian. Mooning over Edward Cullen or Mr. Darcy. Betwixt between, one thing or another - Laura Marling's latest release I Speak Because I Can is both old soul and present-day pixie.

The singer/songwriter has been a frequent in the UK indie-folk scene since her days of backup vocals for Noah & the Whale. Marling's first release at 17 was already way beyond her years - lost loves, failed poets and tear-stained blouses. At that age I was journaling about the thrills of going to a field party or hanging out in someone's garage until it was past curfew. So much for my self-believed romanticsim.

Speak tells tales of responsibility, particularly belonging to women, that bolster her seemingly fragile facade. Backed by beloved Mumford & Sons, it's like having the vastly talented rugby team putting their best girl up on their shoulders. The largely acoustic instrumentation and alto supporting vocals are as lush and rich as the peat moss on the heath (on which she likely stands, singing into the wind, right hand on her guitar strings, left hand resting on a unicorn and scoring an A+ in calculus. whatta betch)

Laura Marling // Alpha Shallows

Patrick Watson

Patrick Watson // Fireweed

Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band

The Rev is a force to be reckoned with. Massive beard, massive frame, massive voice, massively awesome guitar pickin' & slidin'. Add a guy who knows how to utilize his kick drum (the Rev's brother) and a voluptuous lady who sets fire to her washboard AND KEEPS PLAYING IT (the Rev's wife), you've got a big damn band indeed.

Yeah it's only three people but they are a solid lot.

They glory in their "home's a pig farm!" aesthetic with singles like "Your Cousin's on Cops," a true story about seeing Miss Rev's cousin get busted on national television, and "Walmart Killed the Country Store." The retail chain, unsurprisingly, does not sell their albums - Sam Walton no likey. "Boom Chank" is from a live set, Pickathon 2007, to try and give a better feel for the Rev's let-loose vocals.

If you want ferocious swampy bluegrass folk played like your pants are on fire, as well as your washboard, then come on to church. The Rev's waitin' fer yeh.

Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band// Boom Chank