Here at the Hive, we heart mail. Mailbag is a recurring feature in which we hip you to artists seeking play via our email inbox.
The email I received from Communionyesterday wasn’t meant solely for me and it did not detail the tracks I’m about to put forth for the enjoyment of your heart and eustachians. But it brought my attention to them, calling out to me with an interesting album title, song names like those of Andrew Bird if only he smoked more weed and was thus, longer winded, and a voice that moves me, for what exact reason I cannot pinpoint other than it’s perfect.
Paul Thomas Saunders will release Descartes Highlands on 16 April, a follow up to 2011′s Lilac and Wisteria, and it’s a stunner.
Take the car,
Drive it down to the ocean,
Cut your cards,
Burn the letters you were given,
In every word they swore true love was hidden.
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Paul Thomas Saunders :: The Trail Remains Unseen [stream]
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Communion is offering ‘Silhouettes of an English Rose’, a track from Lilac and Wisteria as a free download. Snag that beauty below…
6am Repeatis a recurring feature here at Folk Hive in which we stream the latest track that plays incessantly in the earbuds when we awake at that hour and imbibe massive amounts of coffee and cigarettes in preparation for the advancing day. Consider it your jam of the day — a sweet, sweet gift from me to you. I love you, dude.
Released yesterday, Big Snow Big Thaw‘s S/T debut had previously sat on my list of anticipated releases since…oh, this time last year. No big deal, I’ll wait a year over here, guys. DON’T WORRY ABOUT MY NEED FOR JAMS. I’ll just sit quietly over here.
Americana, folk, newgrass: These are a few of my favorite things and they’re all found here. As Jessica of New Music Co. noted yesterday, it’s quite nice to have yet another version of a song I listened to over and over and over again when I first stumbled upon it and this version of ‘Damn Allegheny’ is bookended by one of the biggest drum sounds I’ve heard coming from a folk outfit in a long while. It’s hard to improve on a song that was already pert near perfection but Big Snow, Big Thaw have gone and done just that.
Aside from that, ‘Hymnal’, with its boot-stomps and claps layered organically over a vocal that is amazingly delicate and strong at once, is damn near the crown.
I like this strategy that The Zeroes have adopted, tracks for perusal in this manner. Also, this shit kills. Prepare your feet, for they will stomp. Prepare your hands, for they will clap.
Love is our shelter, love is our cause.
Love goes on forever, love will lead us all.
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Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes :: That’s What’s Up [stream]
My hometown is not L.A. and it’s not anything even remotely like it. But the reason’s I am in daily love with it are the same as the reasons honeyhoney love their new hometown.
This morning, upon the discovery of sad fact that there was no coffee grounds to be found in this abode, I slipped on shoes and traveled just across the street with an empty cup to be used as a receptacle. It was dark outside — not black but blue up in the sky, the dark blue that signifies that nature’s alarm clock has sounded and the sun would soon be making its first morning appearance shortly. There were birds and there were tree frogs. There were crickets. Their morning sounds were the only things that filled the air and in the middle of the street, in my pajamas, I stopped and listened. Sometimes it’s so beautiful here it actually hurts my feelings…
6am Repeat is a recurring feature here at Folk Hive in which we stream the latest track that plays incessantly in the earbuds when we awake at that hour and imbibe massive amounts of coffee and cigarettes in preparation for the advancing day. Consider it your jam of the day — a sweet, sweet gift from me to you. I love you, dude.
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Two things:
1. I hate to keep harping on Shaking Through bidness. Threw it up yesterday in re: to Snowmine and to through it up again today seems redundant but this fucking rocks so hard and you’re welcome. I don’t know how this got past me when it was first a thing, probably I was doing other cool shit like emailing YOUR MOM, but it did and so now, late, it’s here.
2. I said it yesterday and I’ll say it again today, Timothy Showalter is 2012′s Jeff Lynne, which is a compliment of the highest order because seriously, Jeff Lynne is a total awesome badass — in the secrecy of his home I imagine that he has laser beam eyes and regularly fights and beats the shit out of that Dos Equis dude. THAT AWESOME.
This song, this process, those massive drums courtesy of Pattern Is Movement’s Chris Ward, all of it: perfect.
Snowmine is not necessarily a band I’ve had given the time of day to had it not been for the accompanying visuals from Shaking Through. This is one of those times when the almighty Powers That Be remind you of what an idiot you can be.
The process, something typically totally foreign to a music writer, unless they’ve ventured out into production or the vast field of (attempting) to record label the shit out of some jams, and so to see it has it happens and to see it with a band that is inventive and clearly talented and just plain fucking good creates a soft spot in my heart before I’ve even heard the music. After that, those first fluffs of 3 paper lanterns, there is a swell and a burst of love that can only come when a band voluntarily lets you in in this manner.
It’s no secret that Shaking Through and the good work that Weathervane Music does are magical and necessary, in a world where an mp3 happens to be were most “fans” stop. It’s no secret that the man behind yvynyl rocks (Ed. Note: Dude brought the baby to work. +1 for parent bloggers!). It was however, a secret to me that Snowmine was so rad. Now that cat’s out of the bag…
In the future, I’m going to lament that music is making me sad and heart heavy, for it seems that doing so brings the goods. In the few days since those written words sprung forth from my keyboard, I’ve stumbled on more glorious things than in the last weeks combined. Alright universe, I get. I’M A WHINY DICK.
Whilst I could save all this up and give it to you in snippets, tiny delicious morsels of tastiness, I love you enough to lay it all out on the line at once. Prepare yourself. Grab a beer, dig in…
I became aware of You Won’t in July of last year (if the date tag on the mp3 I possess is not a dirty liar) and like an asshole, sat on that shit. Prompted by a recommendation from Fuel/Friends, I fired it up again and now the full depth of my being a moron is exposed to the light. Get on this band. Like, literally, GET ON THEM.
From a very succinct email sitting in my inbox, whose subject was “cheap beer and good tunes”, comes this track via Rob Bravery. It’s pretty. And I like it. “Sweet seratonin…” You should know, Bravery was the key’s man for Alessi’s Ark. Fun fact!
I keep pages and pages of notes, a repository of handwritten thoughts on things I like and occasionally, why I like them. Truckstop Honeymoon caught my attention because, A. I’ve got a soft spot for the good ol’ truckstop, and B. They fucking rock.
If country radio played more good shit like The James Low Western Front, well. I’d listen to more country radio. In other news, you guys, GET THIS. I was in our small town chinese restaurant last night and they had a country station blasting and there was this damn song, “Made In America” I think and it was the biggest pile of bullshit I’ve ever heard. I don’t care who sings it, I don’t even know, but seriously, it made me want to move to Canada because you bet your ass that crappy pap doesn’t get written there…
Anyway, rant and a ramble. This song has a line that goes, “Heat stroke killed my best blue ribbon steer,” which is just about the best line I’ve ever heard in a song, NO HYPERBOLE.
The James Low Western Front :: Whiskey Farmer [stream]
I waited for this session for approximately one million years. After all this time and since the months and years that have passed since I first heard Shakey Graves in December of 2010, I still dig this dude.With the release of this there are just two things left to pine for: Shakey in my backyard and his new forthcoming album. In other news, ELECTRIC SHAKEY!
DAYTROTTER SESSION :: Seriously, spend two damn $’s and get access to this download.
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From a recent and totally badass piece at Paste highlighting Missouri bands you must hear comes The Grisly Hand. Home state, REPRESENT! How nice it was to find a band that’s not just not awful but also happens to be totally fucking rad.
Nice dude Ray Foleyonce made a film about Neal Casal once. He wrote me about it but as it were, he also made a film about Mark Olson (Jayhawks, dude) once and while I have not seen that film, the trailer was stunning. You should watch that thing. Those of you city folk should look it up on watch it on one of your fancy cable channels. We don’t have those out here in the sticks.
Sent to me; loved at first listen. The email containing the words that made me aware of this band was sparse on details but I encourage you to do some legwork and seek this band out. Both albums sent along for my listening pleasure were just…stunning. They felt like home and I love them for that.
Remember yesterday when I said I had no interest in an email from the PR machine? It’s times like that, when it occurs to me to write those sentences, that I should remember that the universe is hilarious and thinks jokes on you are too. One Perrin Doniger proved that when he sent along an email about a stream, the first of it’s kind, of a concert Pete Seeger recorded at Bowdoin College in March of 1960.
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{Photo credit: Roger Ressmeyer}
8 reel-to-reel tapes. All recorded live. That sentence is bolded because sweet Jesus, it deserves to be.
On 17 April, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings will release this 2-disc set, The Complete Bowdoin College Concert 1960. Below you’ll find a link to a lovely interview with Seeger (because all interviews with Seeger are lovely) and a link to stream to show before it’s official release next month. I highly suggest you get on that…
6am Repeat is a recurring feature here at Folk Hive in which we stream the latest track that plays incessantly in the earbuds when we awake at that hour and imbibe massive amounts of coffee and cigarettes in preparation for the advancing day. Consider it your jam of the day — a sweet, sweet gift from me to you. I love you, dude.
In December of the year long ago, 2010, I wrote that I was pretty hard in love with Hotbreath Tea. I mused about what this band might be able to pull off with some studio time, instead of the “Skype mic and PC” they used for the albumLike A Dragon, The Water Cleans Itself, that I loved so much all those months ago.
You ask a question and it’s music based and you are hardly ever graced with an answer. This morning, after a nearly two year wait, my musings were answered. FUCK YES.
