Reviews by kuvien

Amazing how they can make a guitar sound simultaneously dark and bright! And the raining fiddles on the mountainside. And that avant saxophone breakdown near the end of the album is just so unexpected and beautiful. What I really want to know, though, is where the Tibetan singing bowls are. Can’t pick them out.:)

I love the smattering of found sounds they work into a couple of the songs. Not something normally done with folk. This is an album of manly vocal harmonies, beautiful, inspirational strings, and lonely, pensive piano. It often sounds like the band is playing from a hilltop as they try to fill the skyways and the empty spaces of the land with their music.

Shore was released on the autumnal equinox, this show livestreamed from a Brooklyn church on the winter solstice. Basically this is Pecknold with his acoustic guitar playing stripped-down versions of the band's songs, a Bee Gees cover, and a Child Ballad. Good stuff if you're already a Fleet Foxes fan. Very soothing.

As Titus Pullo defiantly cries out in the blood-spattered arena, "Thirteen!!" This is Flat Earth Society's thirteenth album, released in 2013, and containing 13 tracks. And you know what? It sounds like a celebration. To help celebrate, they didn't just make unexpected left-turn postmodern experimental big band tracks splashed with vocal jazz spoken words bits that are cool as fuck, they also went on a 13-stop tour for this release. Madlads. The only problem I have with this (and it's just my anal retentiveness) is that there are 15 band members playing, not 13. I feel like this music is Mystery Science Theater 3000 for jazz, the best b-film jazzy meanderings anyone could offer. Very cinematic in overall feel. "Raincheck" is the 11-minute intermission of the album, a recording that is happy being discordant or harmonious, calm or zany. Lucifer as a grizzled, whiskey-soaked accordion player, makes a cameo.

"What would you do if I sang out of tune?" is supposed to be a fucking hypothetical question, Wayne.

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What a beautiful little storybook lullaby album this is, and sonically it reminds me of The Soft Bulletin in many places! Gentle, pleasant narration reminding me of something I might hear on a Canterbury scene record, and charm as only Coyne can bring when he's being honest and vulnerable. Don't you understand what a wonderful thing a mouth is, for it is the instrument by which we express our love, both in word and song? Don't you know how marvelous our ears are, for through them we hear how much we are loved by others? How can a head hold so much wonder, so much marvelous love?

I don't know if this is the intention of the album, but I feel like this whole hugtheworlduntilicry trip is a semi-satirical take on modern drug use with all its fake consciousness-expansion pursuit. In another way, this album reminds me of the first 20 minutes of A Requiem for a Dream. When you're high, everything is beautiful, and, paradoxically, the only thing on your mind is death. Sonically, these tracks feel like cutting floor snippets of Bulletin and Yoshimi. Not a bad thing. Just very similar and yet not reaching the unassailable excellence of those two albums. This feels a companion piece to those, like an album with kid gloves on. I guess several parts of this album are auto-biographical. So Coyne came of age on psychedelic drugs? Color me shocked. Shocked, I say. Tempus fugit, memento mori, Wayne.

Why did she turn herself into some weird alien?

I'm not into Standards, but damn it's Ella.

I finally got around to listening to this one. I've had Long Season in my collection since forever, and I've seen this album mentioned so many times in music circles, but I just never found the time to get around to listen to it. I figured the best thing to do when listening to this album for the first time was to walk around downtown Tokyo. Perhaps that would be a good listening aid, but, alas, it didn't really change anything. I guess I'm just too used to Tokyo now. This is a strange album for me, because although it has more variety than Long Season, the repetitiveness of that album just works better. Still, this is an excellent album not to be missed. Chilling atmospheric, just the kind of thing to calm you down as you're dodging busy crowds in the big city.

Despite using pretty much the same musical theme throughout, this album doesn’t drag. It might be because of the breakdown of that structure in Parts 2 and 3, keeping the main motif fresh.

It's hard to believe Fisher is backed on this album by such big names as Martin Carthy, because Ray, as lead, fills every corner of this music with her expressive vocals. I'm not much of a drone fan, but I like the hints at folk droning on this album. Of course, we're talking Child Ballads here, so the subject matter is full of love and death.

This is an unusual album. If you stopped listening after the first track, you’d just think this is a vocal jazz-rock album, but if you keep listening, you get the impression that this album is made for two types of listeners, and if they happen to overlap like a Venn diagram, then they’d like what’s going on here. The album starts with straightforward psychedelic soul but quickly dives into experimental territory—and not just experimental but electronic experimentation, sounding nothing like how the album starts. The album then swings back into more soulful vocals before at last descending into some weird stuff. “Chains” is the high point of this album.

I think it's easy to shy away from library (i.e., stock production) music because it might come across as generic, but I enjoy these little gems. They really strike me as music that has grown up out of its time and place, reflecting the basic sounds of the circumstances that gave birth to it. So what do we have here? Well, as the genre tags show, some psychedelia and some soul, which is just about right for the first half of the 70s. This is the place where pastoral flutes meet funky guitars. Overall this music is a soothing and optimistic listening experience.

The vocals on the first track are retarded, in the best sense of the word. I adore crazy, off-putting vocals, and "Miss Donnithorne's Maggot" has all the ridiculous histrionics I could ever hope for, including hiccoughs. The jilted, recluse mezzo-soprano rants among the destroyed remains of her wedding cake with nothing more than an alto flute to keep her company. This is totally insane modern opera, and I love it.

What drew me to this release, however, was the second track, because Julius Eastman is the featured baritone. I know Eastman's work from his celebrated, posthumously-released Unjust Malaise. I've never heard a baritone sing so high! The range of this piece covers five octaves. Based on the words of mad King George III, this composition pulls no punches in demonstrating and expressing groaning, screeching, wailing, stuttering insanity. The piccolo flits around the vocalist's head, tormenting him, like mocking birds. When the percussion (complete with railway whistle, wood blocks, tambourine, wind chimes, and glockenspiel) swells, you feel like the king is taking his madness on progress with him.

For some reason, I just don't like the female vocals. They can sing, sure, but I just think the vocals--and the way they're delivered--are misplaced on this album.

Yep. It's as bad as it looks.

Not only is the violin playing masterful, he does so while singing some pretty surreal songs. I also enjoy the unusual, progressive structure of the tracks. This isn't related to the music, per se, but I'm wondering what kind of relationship Owen Pallett had with Sufjan Stevens.

At moments, she sounds like a darkwave Nico.