In its latest full-length, Providence, Rhode Island’s Brown Bird — David Lamb (guitar, banjo, percussion, vocals) and Morgan Eve Swain (vocals, fiddle, cello, upright bass) —masters the art of etching rich soundscapes with bare-bones vocals and minimal instrumentation. Lamb’s guttural crooning, impeccably nuanced with anguish, transforms what could have been one-dimensional ditties into kaleidoscopic testaments… [Read more…]
November 3, 2010
Hailing from Austin, TX by way of Sacramento, Agent Ribbons is a sassy all-girl band notorious for their minimalist approach to garage pop. As a two-piece, Natalie Gordon (vocals/guitar) and Lauren Hess (drums/accordion) had mastered arranging gooey-sweet yet tongue-in-cheek lyrics against raw guitar on 2006’s Upon Time Travel and Romance. While they have retained their… [Read more…]
October 8, 2010
Warped reverberations (“Original Sin”) open the wormhole to another dimension where synthpop, baroque rock, and pop-folk beautifully collide. With cosmic melodies, Geographer abandons the calculus of genres in Animal Shapes released on Tricycle Records. In “Kites,” the twinkling of a simple melody introduces the ethereal, folk-y vocals of front man Mike Deni. With a high-pitched… [Read more…]
October 1, 2010
Out of left field, Asthmatic Kitty Records announced the release of All Delighted People, a 60+ minute EP by the ever-so-prolific Sufjan Stevens, in a seemingly innocuous e-mail listserv newsletter. To the dismay of some, All Delighted People is not a follow-up to Illinois (2005), his second installment in his epic song cycle series about each… [Read more…]
September 10, 2010
No one can hide her political agendas in a pop song quite like Jenny Lewis can. In her collaborative effort with Scottish boyfriend Jonathan Rice, she does it again in I’m Having Fun Now. From psych meds in “Big Wave” (“And my blues they won’t go away /So there are these little pills I’ve been… [Read more…]
October 19, 2011
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