Reviews by kuvien

This is Canadian chanson pop strongly and directly influenced by the Californian psychedelia of the late 60s. I mean, at that time, who could escape the influence or even wanted to? The strength of a musician lies in his ability to keep his ears open and not be afraid to expand his palette. Good stuff here!

If awful albums are slaves of poop world, this album is their Underground Railroad.

Beautiful, elegant, rustic... just what I've come to expect from Chalot. The Breton folk flourishes are, of course, charming. This music is born of an ancient, enchanted realm that is forever young and closer to us than one might think...

It’s festival time, and this album is your charm against inclement weather.

Scottish smallpipe music, some traditional stuff, some original, some of it mixed together with a lot of natural energy, and folk music not only from Scotland but from countries farther afield. This trio has infectious chemistry.

Let me just sit on a steep, green hillside and look out over the breaking waves of the North Sea while listening to this on headphones. Take a deep breath and let the smallpipes fill me. This is all just so pure and fresh, unsullied by really anything else. There’s a time to mix things up. This is not one of those times. When the album is finished, you can still hear the pipes, like the sea caught in a shell.

Calm down, young lady. Please have a little perspective on your privileged life. Things can't be that bad. You're from Boston. Stop hating yourself so much. This venting cannot be good for you in the long run.

A strange little musicbox full of music, except that after fumbling about with all the strange clasps and locks on the device, you find that it opens on all sides at once, obliging you, in your surprise, to drop it, as if you'd just been bitten.

I guess what I love just about this album is that whenever the post-rock structure sweeps the music away towards what might be the typical crescendos of the genre, the clowns burst in and put a stop to that predictable shit with some RIO era style babbling and silliness, breaking the music down and never letting it reach its emotional "point". The subversion is the point. Foolish music for fools who want to fool about and waste the foolish listeners' time. That is, until they lull you in with their grooves.

High-barrier LSD freak folk made for people who are into this kind of shit. Turn on and get beamed up. As this album is about as meaningless as exploring someone else's unconscious, I expect anyone to ragequit while listening.

My favorite genre of music is when a band stops yelling and crawls out of the rock-centrist trap to actually do something interesting not only with instrumentation but also with song structure, going beyond mere "song" and into "composition" territory. Defying expectations is also a sweet move. Is this album weird? I've read a lot of people saying it's weird. I guess it is, but it's hard for me to tell anymore. I like the kind of music that throws curve balls and keeps me guessing. There's obviously more than a little psych and kraut influence at work here.

Anybody wanna guess what I do while listening to this?

This music heals the way the pastoral hills of Tuscany do. A rare prog rock album with very little in the way of drums. Mellotron, flute, violin, and saxophone soothe.

This low-key sucks.

I’ve been listening to so much punk lately, and then to have this come up in rotation? Late 70s prog? Yeah, this is exactly the kind of stuff punk was a backlash against. I will always love prog, but I’m starting to better understand where the punks were coming from. What a strange thing to write here!

Prog/avant-garde metal giant Devin Townsend and unknown Canadian pop singer Ché Aimee Dorval team up, change their names, and make a "country" album. And a damn fine one, too. Dreamy with strange textures of ambient pop woven through all those strong, persistent honky tonk beats. Not at all what I expected, and on paper, this is exactly the kind of thing I'd reject. But hearing it executed so beautifully, I am left with a different opinion. Incredible how they can make me imagine what country music would sound like in space, like if it was the preferred music of an astronaut.

Someone called this "Caribbean primitivism", and that just about nails it. I'd add that the marvelously evoked tones, simultaneously bright and subdued, bring a very different flavor to the fingerstyle. This recording could never not soothe me even in my highest fit of pique. So yeah, just insult me and then play this album.

A train rolling through poor backcountry, its whistle as lonesome as the condemned on the chain gang, as it crosses rivers traveling just as swiftly. Roads, rails, and rivers, coming and going, bringing and taking, reuniting and separating. The story of America summed up in one album. A people on the move. A people not moving but watching enviously as others move. Throw in a bit of lip service to religion and you got the whole American experience.

Playful on the piano. Interesting use of sonic space. The band's not afraid to let the music breathe in its moments of nakedness. This has got some silly Zappa-esque moments. It's all like a rock band broke into a piano concerto, and they all decided to just go with it. Quietude ringed with nervous energy.

One of the English folk revival architects, Carthy sings convincingly of the magical, mildly surprising, often witty themes found in traditional folk ballads. The album starts with themes of war, death, and separation.