Is it the Scottish climate that produces so many driving, melodic examples of anthemic rock, perhaps as spiritual offset? As examples, consider Snow Patrol (though they have been rendered bland by success) and Idlewild. Now we have Frightened Rabbit, whose third album, The Winter of Mixed Drinks, is another emotional, feet-rousing example of chugging guitars, [...]
June promises a cornucopia of listening: How long have we waited for High Violet by The National? I’d never heard the distinctive sound of The Besnard Lakes until recently, now I’ll try The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night The new Jackie Leven, Gothic Road I once owned an album by frenetic Ted Leo and [...]
Not much nostalgia for the month – most of these are new to me: Fresh from his role in the the Monsters of Folk triumph, M. Ward switches to the duo of She & Him; if Volume Two is as good as their debut, it will be a pleasure to hear James Mercer, the glowing [...]
My friend Jim, hi-fi connoisseur extraordinaire and lover of fine rock music, played to a group of us a couple of weeks ago a CD I simply love. Erland & The Carnival’s triumphant debut of askew folk-rock (see my review) contains, in the song ‘Trouble in Mind,’ a chorus that doesn’t rhyme, reads like an extract [...]
Folk music in very different clothes: This year’s Port Fairy Folk Festival was embracing and inspirational (should I learn guitar?) but only one artist matched my sensibilities enough to prompt a CD purchase. On Songs for Sooner, singer-songwriter Rory Faithfield reveals himself as an earnest folk-rock artist in the vein of Luka Bloom, possessing a gift [...]
The new and the not so new: Pounding drums, muscular guitars and sweeping keys, rousing melodies, and a lad accent . . . The Courteneers come from a long line of Britpop forbears. Falcon, their sophomore album, contains enough sparkling tunes, with grounded lyrics, to justify their sudden prominence in England. Writer and singer Liam Fray’s [...]
I listened to an advance track from the upcoming CD High Violet from The National. How exciting these lyrics from the song ‘Blood Buzz Ohio’: I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees / I’ll never marry but Ohio don’t remember me
The review by NYT’s Ben Sisario of Bill Flanagan’s Evening’s Empire is not totally glowing but the novel’s subject matter – 40 years in the life of a rock band named the Ravons – is just what I’m a sucker for. Onto the list it goes.
Also posted in Literary Fiction |
Last week’s reading: My first Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs, is a refreshing revelation. Moore’s highly individualistic writing style, all quirky similes and metaphors, laced with lyricism, is nothing like what I tend to read. As with other stylistic writers like Cormac McCarthy, I found the going slow because I needed to roll [...]
Last week’s reading: Parrot and Olivier in America is Peter Carey at his most exuberant, wild almost. Recounting the fictional tale of the trip to the new, troubling democratic nation of the United States of America by French nobleman Olivier-Jean-Baptist de Clarel de Barfleur and an artistic servant thrust upon him, John ‘Parrot’ Larrit. Carey succeeds marvellously in [...]