Sound Cloud Sunday – March 28, 2021
Sound Cloud Sunday March 28, 2021
Welcome to the first full week of spring and music is springing out of every crevice of our world as we begin to see artists emerging out of their respective limbos and regaling us with more #laurelcanyonsound than we can take. New stuff from Amy Helm (from Olabelle), Alison Russell (from Birds of Chicago) Oliver Wood (from the Wood Brothers) step out from bands to deliver some great new stuff. Enjoy. Click on show below:
BROCK & SGRO – Peace In A World Of War
Hometown: New Jersey
Album: New single.
Review Snippet: New Jersey-based duo’s infectious sound is equally indebted to the British invasion and heartland rock.
Website: https://brockandsgro.com/
Alex Bleeker – La La La
Hometown: Ridgewood, NJ
Album: From the album “Heaven On The Faultline” released March 5 on Night Bloom.
Review Snippet:The typical Alex Bleeker song has a warm, earthy sound that is welcoming above all else, a mix between jangle pop and the mellower side of early Grateful Dead albums. That latter influence eventually became the main driver behind the Freaks, but Heaven on the Faultline, Bleeker’s new album recorded largely on his own, takes a more varied approach. It disarms you with some of the warm, jangly folk you come to expect while also introducing some of Bleeker’s strangest compositions yet.
Website: http://www.bleekerfreaks.com/
High Plains Drifter – Since You’ve Been Gone
Hometown: Wichita, Kansas
Album: From the album “Psychic Weather Patterns” available on Bandcamp
Review Snippet:
Esther Rose – How Many Times
Hometown: New Orleans, LA
Album: From the album “How Many Times” released March 28 on Father/Daughter Records.
Review Snippet:Rose fully owns the alt-country label for her sound. There’s pedal steel and strings on this record, but it also has a Detroit rock’n’roll heart. Rose may be leaning into a particular country-rock, but her writing is refreshingly free of tired tropes and stock images
Website: https://www.estherrose.net/
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=esther+rose+how+many+times
Rod Aberne
thy – Oxford Town
Hometown: North Carolina
Album: From the album “Normal Isn’t Normal Anymore” self-released.
Review Snippet: What’s instantly likable is the voice, & compositions that gel perfectly with originality turns of phrases that create clever appetizing moments. His songs simply taste good to my ears. “It’s Always Something,” has the scent of a tune the late legendary Pete Seeger would’ve covered (only in a more banjo-oriented style).
Website: https://rodabernethyguitar.com/bio
Amy Helm – Breathing
Hometown: Woodstock, NY
Album: From the album “What The Flood Leaves Behind” out June 18 on Renew Records.
Review Snippet: Veteran singer, instrumentalist and songwriter Amy Helm spent years playing and recording with the band Ollabelle, creating the kind of folk/gospel/Americana music that blurred boundaries with sincerity and artfulness. During much of this time, Helm was also playing music with her dad, a drummer named Levon who was in a pretty good band back in the day. The Band, in fact. Helm arranged and played in her dad’s famous Midnight Rambles in the Hudson River Valley where she was raised.
Website: http://www.amyhelm.com/
Charley Crockett – Over There There’s Frank
Hometown: San Angelo, TX
Album: From the album “Ten For Slim” on Son Of Davy Records released in February.
Review Snippet: Veteran singer, instrumentalist and songwriter Amy Helm spent years playing and recording with the band Ollabelle, creating the kind of folk/gospel/Americana music that blurred boundaries with sincerity and artfulness. During much of this time, Helm was also playing music with her dad, a drummer named Levon who was in a pretty good band back in the day. The Band, in fact. Helm arranged and played in her dad’s famous Midnight Rambles in the Hudson River Valley where she was raised.
Website: http://www.charleycrockett.com/
Elaine Lucia – Under The Water
Hometown: San Francisco, CA
Album: From the album “Twist Run Road” released last September
Review Snippet: You know, this is one of the most charming, heartwarming, unique, timeless, soothing but uplifting albums I ever remember hearing. It is instantly accessible and evocative of American folk from the ’60s but with a slight Bossa Nova bent. Elaine Lucia has absolutely captured my heart… and it was immediate. From enchanting waltzes to Left Bank Stephane Grapelli rhythms, I am absolutely enthralled with her breezy centeredness. It’s a little Nellie McKay, a little Jobim, a little Judy Collins, and 100% Elaine Lucia. I tell you, I’m entranced! Get this album. Highly Recommended.
Website: https://elaineluciamusic.com/
Israel Nash – Sutherland Springs
Hometown: Missouri
Album: The album “Topaz” was released March 12 on Desert Folklore.
Review Snippet: Topaz is the seventh album from Missouri Minister’s son, Israel Nash, and it’s a passionate, soul-laden observation of the social injustices that divide Western society. Israel Nash will, of course, be familiar to many At The Barrier regulars. Often described as a “Metaphysics loving hippie,” he learned his trade in the clubs of Lower East Side, New York City, before relocating, in early 2011 to the infinitely more pastoral surroundings of Dripping Springs, Texas (population estimated at 4,667 as of 2018.) Now housed in a ranch he refers to as his “forever home,” he’s built himself a studio in a Quonset hut, where he spent much of 2020 recording the mix of soul, gospel, psychedelia and folk/rock that forms the basis of Topaz.
Website: http://www.israelnash.com/
Allison Russell – Nightflyer
Hometown: Montreal/Nashville
Album: From the album “Outside Child” out May 21 on Fantasy Records. (singer from Birds of Chicago)
Review Snippet:
Singer-songwriter Allison Russell will release her debut solo album in 2021. But before any details of that project emerge, the Birds of Chicago and Our Native Daughters member has offered fresh, moving covers of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” and Sade’s “By Your Side.”
Russell, who grew up in Montreal but now resides in Nashville, sings “Landslide” in her native language of French. “I was terrified to touch this song at first,” Russell said of her rendition of Fleetwood Mac’s 1975 ballad. “It is such an iconic classic and has been covered by so many. But then I thought: what would Stevie Nicks do? If she hadn’t written it, she’d find a way to make it her own.”
Website: https://allisonrussellmusic.com/
New Bums – Billy God Damn
Hometown: San Francisco, California
Album: From the album “Last Time I Saw Grace” out March 19 on Drag City Records.
Review Snippet: These troubadours’ moods are as hilly as their resident city of San Francisco and every tune leaves you with a smile, a sigh or any other fervent inclination. To paraphrase their final song on this record, follow them up the slope throughout their adventures.
Website: https://www.dragcity.com/artists/new-bums
Jon Stickley Trio – Future Ghost
Hometown: Asheville, NC
Album: New single on Organic Records.
Review Snippet: Mere flips are child’s play to the Jon Stickley Trio; their performances are more the equivalent of tumbling somersaults and almost physically-impossible stunt dives. Scripting the Flip shows that their intricate jigsaw-puzzle pieces are as painstakingly well-scripted as ever, though never to the point of suffocating their chemistry and in-the-moment playfulness. With new-ish drummer Hunter Deacon having had a solid couple of years to settle in with Stickley and Lyndsay Pruett, leading up to this recording, the affair shows an exceptionally well-gelled unit making acoustic fusion sound every bit as electrifying as the plugged-in kind.
Website: https://www.jonstickley.com/
Cindy Alexander – Lightning
Hometown: Los Angeles
Album: From the album “Where The Angels Sigh” will be out April 23 on Blue Elan Records.
Review Snippet: “Cindy Alexander is a lot of things – she is an award winning singer/songwriter, a mother, funny, a breast cancer survivor, and a staunch lover of guacamole.
Website: http://www.cindyalexander.com/
Hanks Company Band – Easy Time
Hometown: Wales, UK
Album: From the album “Big On Easy” out March 1 on Mother Moon Music.
Review Snippet: And thus was born this collection of largely laid back cosmic blues that gets underway by slowing down and parodying the chorus melody and lines from 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover before easing into, first, the more countrified sway of Over And Out and then the infectious bouncy busker pop Come Do Me Better.
Website: https://www.facebook.com/HanksCompanyBand/
John Grant – Boy From Michigan
Hometown: Buchanan, MI
Album: From the album “Boy From Michigan” out June 25.
Review Snippet: John Grant’s own theory is that with each record that he releases, he closes the gap further between how it sounds in his head and what he ends up with in the studio. If his 2010 solo debut ‘Queen of Denmark’ saw him truly finding his voice not just as an artist but as a gay man finally emerging out the other side of a lifelong battle with drugs and alcohol, then subsequent releases, you would reason, should provide an increasingly honest portrait of his personal life and be more and more faithful to the sounds that excite him.
Website: https://johngrantmusic.com/
Oliver Wood – Fine Line
Hometown: Nashville
Album: From the album “Always Smiling” out May 21 on Honey Jar Records.
Review Snippet: “Fine Line” (video above) is the first nugget we’re getting from Always Smilin’, and like the title of this upcoming album, “Fine Line” is a smiling song. Singing about the minute differences between “love and lust,” “truth and trust” and “dreams and dust,” Wood again waxes philosophical in his usual relatable, down-home manner. It’s a bonus to have Medeski on hand here to provide a rascally organ aside that sounds very much like him.
Website: https://www.thewoodbros.com/
