See previous monthly Best-Of lists here.
One of the best albums of 2017 was Mount Eerie’s A Crow Looked at Me. It was also one of the toughest to actually listen to, being a songwriter frankly grappling with his wife’s sudden death. When you want that same quiet, hushed vibe, but don’t have the emotional bandwidth to sink into that weighty subject matter, Addy Sechler’s new album will suit just fine. Continue reading »
Many prominent artists are recording “political” albums these days. But almost inevitably, the lyrics tend to paint a blurry picture. Musicians have over-learned the lessons of 1960s protest singers, who wrote songs so timely that they became dated within days. Is anyone’s favorite Dylan song really “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues”? Today’s overcorrection leads to broad generalities about “the fight” and “resistance,” without speaking to the times in any direct way.
Emma Back’s fantastic new album Little World is a political album too, but Back has something specific to say. No, she’s not chronicling the Iran deal’s dissolution. There’s no “Talkin’ Bob Mueller Blues,” and the word “Trump” does not come up once. Little World succeeds where others have failed because, rather than attempting a sweeping statement about “our times,” Back drills into one specific subject: war in the Middle East. Continue reading »
The Vermont trio Bison’s first release Get Out was my favorite EP of last year. Now they’re back with their second. That’s the good news. The bad: It’s also their last. Two of the three band members are moving away, and Bison will soon be no more. Judging from the first single “Arkansas,” at least they’re going out on top. Continue reading »
See previous monthly Best-Of lists here.
I’ve raved about Bison and J Bengoy, two of Vermont’s best rock bands, a lot on here (in fact, scroll down for a little more J Bengoy raving). And as if playing in both those bands wasn’t keeping him busy enough, singer Charlie Hill debuted a new solo project called Chazzy Lake. Debut EP Goodbye V.D. Baby kicks off with him playfully arguing with his backing singers on “A Stranger Time” (“Hey Charlie, you’ve got to get yourself a job!”) and builds to “The Next Day,” the album’s catchiest track, a beach song as filtered through college rock radio. Continue reading »
Certain connotations arrive with the phrase “bedroom recording.” Such albums are typical lo-fi affairs, sparse and simple and stripped-down, a voice and a laptop plus one instrument (if that) and maybe some reverb.
The Giant Peach’s debut album Pulling Teeth is technically a bedroom recording – frontman Harrison Wood Hsiang recorded every song but one in his college dorm room. But it is anything but stripped-down. What other bedroom recording features trumpet, sax, violin, and slide guitar? There are three credited drummers here, and eight vocalists. It’s a long way from Bruce Springsteen hollering Nebraska into a four-track or Justin Vernon holed up alone in a remote cabin crooning “Skinny Love.” Continue reading »
“Keep calm,” read the letters tattooed on Vermont singer-songwriter Kelly Ravin’s knuckles. In a sense, that’s the advice delivered on his new song “Pretend.” It’s advice aimed at a specific audience: soldiers overseas. And it’s not always easy to follow. Continue reading »
See previous monthly Best-Of lists here.
In 1980, Queen delivered one of the great superhero themes of all time with “Flash.” If the Invisible Boy were a real superhero, Aviation gave him an equally bombastic theme song, a six-minute epic complete with piano crescendoes, scorching guitar solos, and canned applause. He’s not real, though. In fact, as you discover over the course of the song, he’s not exactly a superhero after all, just a lonely kid who sits by himself at lunch. Well, now he’s a lonely kid with an epic piano-prog theme song. Continue reading »
It has been a decade now since Said Bulle and George Mnyonge moved to Vermont as refugees from Somalia and Tanzania, respectively, but they are working to keep their traditions – and language – alive. Under the names Jilib and MG Man, the pair perform in the Burlington-based group A2VT. And on their new single “Faas Waa,” they blend English lyrics with verses both Swahili and in Jilib’s native Maay Maay, a variation on Somali.
“We Bantus are trying to keep our language alive, since it has only been a spoken language up until recently,” Jilib says in a press release. The language has only 1.75 million native speakers as of 2015 according to Ethnologue, a fraction even of Somalia’s 14 million people. Continue reading »
Many of Paddy Reagan’s musical influences are about what you’d expect for a thirty-something indie-rock songwriter: Pavement, Smog, Sharon Van Etten, and, most recently, Deerhunter. One that’s less obvious? The Grateful Dead.
On “First Blush,” Reagan’s new single with band Paper Castles, one line in particular channels his Deadhead past: “Is this just a dream you had to dream / To understand” (it echoes the “Box of Rain” lyric “This is all a dream we dreamed / one afternoon long ago”). And maybe we shouldn’t be surprised at that connection. After all, the Grateful Dead are finally cool, subject to the likes of Pitchfork appreciations and National-curated tribute albums featuring dozens of today’s coolest indie bands (including, incidentally, three of the four artists Reagan cited up top). Continue reading »
Dave Richardson’s new album Carry Me Along includes songs about love and loss and life and death. And they’re all wonderful.
But we gotta start with the squid.
The album opens with an acoustic guitar strumming what sounds like your standard plaintive Americana ballad. Then Richardson begins crooning:
Squid, giant squid
Hanging like a hanged man
In this building right downtown
An impressive specimen
It goes on like that, talking about sperm whales and Iceland and 5,000 gallon tanks of water. Not exactly your typical folk-song subject matter. Is this the first squid song ever? I had to learn more. Continue reading »