Sound Cloud Sunday – May 24, 2020
Sound Cloud Sunday May 24, 2020
Happy Memorial Weekend! The beginning of summer! The beginning of warm weather and beaches and swimming and big music festivals packed to the rafters with your favorite artists. Wait, what? Yup, we are still locked down (sort of) here at Laurel Canyon Radio and anybody worried about the second wave of this monstrosity are taking very tentative steps to come outdoors. There will be other summers, but this is about the only life you will get so if you have to sacrifice some part of your summer to insure long life, that’s what you do. You can always join us and keep up with new indie music including a debut solo single from The National’s Matt Berninger and much, much more. The actual show from Sunday can be listened to if you click below. Also, IF THE RADIO STATION IS PLAYING SIMULTANEOUSLY WHEN YOU TRY AND PLAY THE SHOW, GO TO THE RADIO PLAYER ON THE UPPER RIGHT CORNER OF THE FRONT PAGE OF THE STATION, AND TURN IT OFF. SORRY, IT IS A SMALL GLITCH IN THE WAY THE RADIO SHOW COMES ON AT PAGE ENGAGEMENT. We are working round the clock to fix this problem!
Jake Blount – Move Daniel
Hometown: Providence, RI
Album: From the album “Spider Tales” out May 29 on Free Dirt Records.
Review Snippet: With a history of hardship and resistance coded into the music, Spider Tales brings out centuries of visceral feeling refracted again through the lens of Blount’s own experience as an LGBTQ activist and key figure in an emerging wave of queer roots musicians. The album’s sound is appropriately haunted—spinning through “crooked” instrumental tunes, modal keys, stark songs, and confounding melodic structures—and its lyrics range from despairing to violent to downright apocalyptic. Blount is joined by his musical peers Tatiana Hargreaves, Nic Gareiss, Rachel Eddy, and Haselden Ciaccio on the album, which was produced by Jeff Claus and Judy Hyman (The Horse Flies). Altogether, Spider Tales is a beautiful, masterfully performed, and thematically intense first statement into the transforming canon of American roots music.
Website: https://jakeblount.com/
Water Tower – Town
Hometown: LA via Portland
Album: From the album “Fly Around” released April 24 on Dutch Records.
Review Snippet: The unexpected guest list of left-fielders like Germs drummer Don Bolles, indie weirdo Ariel Pink and Black Flag singer Ron Reyes should be enough to draw you into this album from West Coast bluegrassers Water Tower. But to their credit, what keeps you there isn’t the VIPs — they don’t really leave much of a stamp on the final product, if I’m being honest. Instead, the real star of the show is the band’s own adventurous, freewheeling fusion of rustic roots and gently psychedelic textures. Strange but true
Website: https://www.watertowerband.com/about
Lullanas – Grey Mini Van
Hometown: Philadelphia
Album: From the EP “Before Everything Got Real” released April 24 on Nettwerk.
Review Snippet:
Website: https://www.facebook.com/lullanasmusic/
The Buckleys – Breathe
Hometown: Byron Bay, Australia
Album: From the album “The Buckleys” their debut out May 25 on Petrol Records.
Review Snippet:The Buckleys’ new single is their first worldwide release and embodies the band’s brand of “Hippie Country” – a genre representing the infectious personality and spirited conscience that the band maintains. The track was written by Sarah Buckley, who wrote with multi-platinum songwriters Phil Barton (Lee Brice/A Woman Like You) and Dave Thomson (Lady Antebellum/747) during her time in Nashville.
Website: https://www.thebuckleys.net/
Zach Aaron – Animal of Burden
Hometown: Austin, TX
Album: From the self-released third album “Fill Dirt Wanted”.
Review Snippet: Aaron, with the help of producer Giovanni Carnuccio and engineer Steve Boaz, swings a two-ton barbell. “Fill Dirt Wanted” pops the top of his swelling, inescapable melancholy, his voice often aching and heavy. “Running from the preacher / Running from my sins / Running from my family / I’m running from my fears / Running from anything that gets too near,” he confides through sun-baked acoustics.
Website: https://zachaaronmusic.com/
Matt Berninger – Serpentine Prison
Hometown: Cincinnati, OH
Album: Single from an album yet to be released by the National front man out on October 2. The album is produced by Booker T. Jones.
Review Snippet: Berninger has now released ‘Serpentine Prison’, which has been produced by Booker T. Jones and Sean O’Brien. Explaining that the track was written in December 2018 (“about a week after recording The National’s ‘I Am Easy to Find’”), Berninger said in a statement: “For a long time, I had been writing songs for movies and musicals and other projects where I needed to get inside someone else’s head and convey another person’s feelings.
Website:
Teddy Thompson – It’s Not That Easy
Hometown: London
Album: From the album “Heartbreaker Please” out May 29 on Chalky Sound.
Review Snippet: Even though Thompson dismisses vocal comparisons to Roy Orbison (“I couldn’t even shine his shoes” he once said), there is a clear line drawn to the rock and roll hall of famer’s drama laden approach. And if not Roy, than perhaps Chris Isaak or Raul Malo would be apt links, especially on the bittersweet waltz time “Take Me Away” with its dream-like backing strings and melodramatic atmosphere. Thompson gets off to a peppy Motown inspired start with the opening “Why Wait” (the words “for you to break my heart” follow) featuring crispy horns, thumping drums and a hook that screams hit single.
Website: https://www.teddythompson.net/
Wrong Way At The Roundabout – Honesty
Hometown: Seattle
Album: Self-titled album self-released in March.
Review Snippet: Wrong Way At The Roundabout will stop in for a mini-social distancing show at Laurel Canyon Radio in June. Don’t miss it.
Website: https://wrongwayattheroundabout.com/
Ray Remington – Texas Rose
Hometown: Austin via Nashville or the reverse
Album: From the EP “Texas Rose” released on January 24.
Review Snippet: In an era when so many Americana musicians seem hellbent on blurring genres and styles come what may, you can’t help wondering sometimes how much (or little) headway an up-and-coming Americana artist would make these days before succumbing to the general mindset and producing the world’s umpteenth ‘fusion roots’ album. Or maybe it’s not that tough and some folks have just got lazy: because if California-born Ray Remington’s quest to produce an old-school, uncompromising electrified country sound on his debut EP ‘Texas Rose’ is anything to go by, some artists can forge their own path right across a good-sized vintage musical prairie or three – and still be going strong.
Website: https://www.instagram.com/rayremingtonmusic/?hl=en
Cosmos Sunshine – 2020 Vision
Hometown: Boston
Album: New album just released?
Review Snippet: Born Cosmos Sunshine Heidtmann on a commune-like hippie settlement on the Connecticut River, there’s an outpouring of influence behind the music that draws from years of reflection and observation. The settlement was a homestead farm with no electricity, no phones and an outhouse. Water had to be hand pumped from a well that his father dug and heated on the propane stove in order to bathe. The characteristics of this living situation had Cosmos spending most of his childhood getting lost in the woods and being surrounded by a multitude of colorful characters that matched this colorful lifestyle. Cosmos was introduced to the music that influenced his own craft when his parents took him to the Summer Jam Festival at Watkins Glen , featuring The Allman Brothers Band, The Grateful Dead and The Band. He still recalls the music constantly playing in the background on his parent’s turntable as he looked out onto the river- remembrances of what he calls “vibey, acoustic, singer/songwriter music” that was very indicative of the seventies.
Website: http://www.cosmossunshinemusic.com/
Mark Mandeville & Raianne Richards – There Will Come A Day
Hometown: Chicago
Album: From the album “Rode May Rise” released April 15 on Nobody’s Favorite Records.
Review Snippet: “In recent decades country music has become more and more fragmented, which has produced many interesting new singers/bands, and a few we would rather forget. Mark Mandeville and Raianne Richards are two we should remember.”
Website: http://markandraianne.com/
Good Harvest – Never Could You Ever 
Hometown: Sweden
Album: From the album “Dream of June” released in February on Playground Music
Review Snippet: “Good Harvest’s singing really knocked me off my feet. Their harmonies are unbelievably tight and masterful but at the same time food for the heart.”
Website: https://www.goodharvestmusic.com/
Adam Topol – So Far Away From Me
Hometown: Lake Tahoe, CA
Album: New single released May 8 on Everloving.
Review Snippet: Pairing up with musician/producer Matt Costa on Cuando allowed Topol the breathing room to explore these broad musical influences that were beyond the scope of some of his other peers. The two connected over a mutual taste for artists like The Cure, The Dirty Three, PJ Harvey, Spacemen 3 and The Velvet Underground, and within that shared musical language they were able to explore the occasional lyrical and thematic darkness of Topol’s work while still keeping the songs on the record fully rooted in their natural sweetness and emotional depth.
Website: https://www.adamtopol.com/
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B Knox – Stars And Burnt Bridges
Hometown: Barrie, Ontario
Album: From the album “Heartbreaks and Landscapes” released April 24 on Three Mast Records.
Review Snippet: A former schoolteacher from Newfoundland, now based in Ontario, B.Knox only made the switch from marking to music last year (introduced on Folk Radio here), this being his debut album, the title an apt description of the thematic content of the songs within. Longing and forbidden love (that will “stay with us a lifetime/But it won’t last the night”) are the subjects of the album opener, the slow walk paced, vocally keening Americana of Deep Dark Love featuring producer Aaron Goldstein on pedal steel.
Website: https://www.facebook.com/bknoxmusic/
Emily Keener – I Don’t Know Anything
Hometown: Cleveland, OH
Album: “I Do Not Have To Be Good” was self-released on May 22.
Review Snippet: Keener finds her voice on I Do Not Have To Be Good, one that is authentic and true. On East of the Sun and Breakfast, Keener’s voice was cloaked behind the musical mentors and production team who influenced the rootsy folk sheen. “I was learning from people I really admired, and those early experiences left me with a deeper understanding of how to use the studio as an instrument and breathe life into recordings. It paved the way for me to call the shots and make creative decisions with confidence.” On the upcoming album due out in May 2020, she subtly sheds her Americana roots and embraces atmospheric moody indie folk, equally tender and powerful as it unfolds. Taking almost complete creative control throughout the recording process, the only fingerprint is Keener’s own. This is her; raw, exposed, very honest in her emotional depth.
When Keener began working on the new album with Dalton Brand at WaveBurner Recording, she consciously broke away from the belief in perfection and purity as being necessary, or even possible. She says, “Despite a loving family, my personal experience with a Christian upbringing led me to develop deep self-censoring, self-doubt, and the belief that I must always present as kind and good regardless of how I feel.” The album is a call to free censored desires and doubted truths.
Website: https://www.emilykeener.com/
Pharis & Jason Romero – Roll On Old Friend
Hometown: Horsefly, Canada
Album: From the album “Bet On Love” released May 15 on Lula Records.
Review Snippet: ”There’s something ancient and aching about the Romeros, a sound that feels like a reverberation from the past, even as the songs are a perfect antidote to this sped-up, modern world. Sweet Old Religion is particularly good medicine” – NO DEPRESSION
Website: http://www.pharisandjason.com/
