Hans Chew plays the keys, and can only imagine that the board in which these keys rest is not the burnished wood of a baby grand.  Oh no, I picture cracked ivory and plywood, strings tuned so many times they moan with their collected age.  Hans Chew, a contemporary of the late, great Jack Rose, plays a sort of hobo music, a broken top-hat and pair of longjohns tied to a stick.  The long roar of a train snaking its way in to the distance.  A cigarette clenched between yellowed teeth.  A coal-stained face peeking out of a barn’s maroon door.

It makes your feet move, your smile grow. Makes you want to grab a shot and a partner and head for the dance floor, the intoxicating reek of smoke and shoe-leather burning in your nostrils.

Hans Chew - New Cyprus Grove Boogie

Source: Raven Sings The Blues

It’s no wonder that Girls Names is a duo out of Ireland, as their music almost pulses with the countries vibe.  Though I’ve never been, and I’m sure to come off sounding daft, but from the opening booms of the tom-drum, I can almost feel the lush greens of the Irish countryside.  Toss in those almost tribal sounding guitars lines and I’m breathing in the country air, staring out over the rolling, moss covered hills.

One might wonder why this sort of woodsy bit of propulsion was deemed “Graveyard”, but there’s a certain creaking haunt to lead-singers Cathay Cully’s voice that reminds one of a peat-covered tombstone, a fresh pile of dirt looming above it, a crowd of mourners drifting towards their cars.  It’s creepy, but in that poppy way.

Girls Names - Graveyard

Source: Pitchfork

It’s as if I’m in the waking stages of a coma this week.  The music I’m picking seems to be the introductory strains to my reemergence in to a physical reality.  There’s no theme to the music, but it’s a gentle sort of lull, a mixtape for newly-experience reality.

Free Kisses fits in to the end of this cycle.  The darkness of the coma is fading to the sides and perhaps you hear a woman’s voice.  Your hearing is off, anvils and stirrups rusted with disuse, and the voice echoes, wavers, slowly flits about the newly reactivated space between your ears.  You want to reach out, and grasp this ethereal strain, but by the time you can muster the strength, it’s already faded back to blackness.

Free Kisses - No Map Book

Source: Weekly Tape Deck

Robert A.A. Lowe has a healthy bit of credibility behind his name: keyboardist for TV on the Radio; guru-like figure in OM; drone maestro as Lichens.  Yet, it’s in this collaboration with Rose Lazar that I find the most enjoyment.  As if drawn from a New Age video game, one where your pixelated avatar might strive for self-enlightenment and not air-bobbing coins, Lowe and Lazar’s music is an exercise in restraint.  Each note, each tiny synth artfully tweaked and tangled with the soft pregnant silence that hangs at the edges.  I find myself, when the music hovers in the air around me, to be calmer, the anxiety of the day less present, immersed in a sort of electro-synth aromatherapy.

Eclipses is out now on Thrill Jockey.  Purchase it HERE.

Robert A.A. Lowe & Rose Lazar - Suno vidis

Source: Raven Sings The Blues

Got to give the good folk over at Aquarium Drunkard full credit for turning me on to this treasure chest of gems.  Mississippi Records is venue/record label in the mean streets of North Portland, Oregon, and unbeknown to me purveyors of absolutely brilliant mix-tapes stuffed to the scaly gills with unknown finds from across the great, starry expanse of musical history.   Even better, the newly-discovered, absolutely-brilliant website Rootstrata (a fabulous blog in its own right) is converting each and every one of these mini-goldmines (37 at last count) in to download-easy .zip files for your, and especially my, enjoyment.

I’ve downloaded two so far, the inaugural edition and an AD-recommended comp, and both have been playing almost non-stop on my tinny speakers for the last two days.  I can only believe, have faith even, that each uploaded tape will be a similarly delicious experience.

Mississippi Records Tape Series Vol. 1 - House of Broken Hearts

Some years back, I had a bit of a brain meltdown, when, for the first time, I heard a little band out of Minnesota called The Wars of 1812.  Working at a record label at the time, I shoveled the bands music on to the desk of my boss, threw it any and all who would listen, and generally existed in a blissed-out coma of Wars of 1812 good.

Turning on Jagjaguwar’s new signee Peter Wolf Crier, there was a tinge of familiarity, a hint of softly hidden memory.  I thought, “It sounds like Woods, but with a little more cheer.”  But it wasn’t thought, it was the vocals, the winding, sunshine-y vocals that brought me back.  Back to Peter Pisano, a member of The Wars of 1812.

Now, with cohort Brian Moen, he’s branched out to form Peter Wolf Crier.  It’s a bit like a campfire song, a lilting tune to share around the fire, drunk on whiskey and smoke.  You can hear it bouncing off the trees, the stars clear in the sky above it.

Peter Wolf Crier - Crutch & Crane

I don’t do a lot of drugs anymore.  The occasional puff, a stray thought about things harder.  I imagine though, if high as a seagull on some purified strain of narcotic, and in a haze of concentric color circles, voices melting in to babble, I floated in to a room where Spectre Folk was leaking from the speaker boxes, well, I’d be content.

I’d melt in to the floor as this droning, softly-spoken bit of psych-rock spun in to the atoms that bobbed and weaved, quite visibly, in front of my eyes.  Feel the softly shaking drums and the wavering vocals of Magik Marker’s drummer Pete Nolan crawl in to the wide open pores of my skin.

In the morning there’d be a puddle of flesh and bone and organs, my clothes piled neatly on top.

Spectre Folk’s new album Compass, Blanket, Lantern, Mojo is out now on Arbitrary Signs.

Spectre Folk - Sat Around For Peace (This Time)

I’ve been digging through the detritus of a dead person’s life (no one of any relation or, strangely enough, even friendship) over the course of the last two weeks.  It has been a dusty perusal of era after era after era long gone.  We’ve found teeth, World’s Fair 1939 memorabilia, and a pair of ladies underwear I could’ve worn as a vest.  Each day, covered in grime, I step in to the light of the modern day and everything seems a little too new, a little too fresh.

Amongst the many, many new ventures by Sub Pop, this little band Happy Birthday (Kyle Thomas of King Tuff’s new schtick) stands out as particularly apt to my meander through the decades.  It’s new and fresh and grating, but when the song hits thirty or so seconds, all of sudden I’m standing in Mary Pini’s closet amongst Spyderknit sweaters, gold coins and the urge to spin my date in one skirt-swooping spiral.

Or maybe I’ve just been inhaling asbestos and rat fecal dust for a little too long.

Happy Birthday - Girls FM

I find myself so often times stuck in a rut(?) of drone-y fuzz, and sharply punctuated garage rock, and thus when I a simpler bit of music catches my ear, I’m almost required to post it.  Pitchfork turned me on to this Perfume Genius project by Mike Hadreas (a man I know nothing about) and the puddle underneath my feet is slowly growing bigger and bigger as a melt down in to it.  It’s reminiscent of The Mountain Goats and Daniel Johnston in it’s unchecked waver and . It’s an epically told story of just about nothing.  But Hell, when your nothing consists of Joy Division, weed, and a lovely man named Mr. Peterson, you’re contracted by the state of piano ballads to write a somber jingle.

Perfume Genius - Mr. Peterson

The first time my ears were turned towards Crystal Antlers initial EP, I was landmined.  Thrown in the air, legs-a-flailing, the thought of what might come next racing through my mind.  It was rock-and-roll, pushed to eleven, clouded in a haze of weed and booze, and then fine tuned for maximum aural carnage.  I, was, rocked.  When Tentacles, their longer follow-up dropped, I was less so.  In long-player form, I found their West Coast assault a little much, and I found myself cherry-picking the good tracks and then returning to the EP I loved so much.

Thus, this, this softer, subtler bit of almost pop, throws me a bit, but in to the strike-zone.  It still features Jonny Bells strangled holler, but the raging guitar licks and propulsive drummer have stepped to the side.  “Little Sister” is a slow-jam, in regards to the Crystal Antler collection, and I can’t say it drags me down the street like before, but it certainly has me curious.

There releasing “Little Sister” on a 7″ with the b-side “Dead Horses” right HERE.

Crystal Antlers - Little Sister