Hands down, Lex Land is one of the more gorgeous voices we’ve featured on these pages of late. Although Lex Land is somewhat of an antithesis to my usual selections. My favorite songs are the ones I can sing along to, songs with hooky choruses and witty verses. I’m drawn to songs that make me want to sing. The “quality” of the music or the “ability” of the musicians in question are secondary. I listen to music with my gut, not my brain. Lex Land reminds me that I can’t sing, because man, she sure can. However, Lex Land does leave room for the untrained among us in her songs. My favorite songs of hers, and my favorite parts of this song, are the small, intimate, almost reluctant moments when she almost falters, moments that leave me holding my breath, hoping she pulls it off. Those moments are plentiful, as are the ones where Lex Land soars far beyond anything I might muster.
Ben Pilgrim
“God should have made you ugly, ’cause that’s what you act like.” No doubt Ben Pilgrim wasn’t talking about how the rest of the country is treating Detroit these days, but like Bob Marley said, if the cap fits… I’ve never felt more clearly like I wasn’t a part of the United States, like I was living in some backwater colony that had outlived its mercantile usefulness. Hey remember, people live here; it’s like being in the South before the Civil War. Maybe we should start talking nullification. Anyway, Ben Pilgrim is a Rhode Island crooner, sloppy and heartfelt and primitive. And he’s welcome to visit the D whenever he wants (assuming the whole state of Michigan isn’t purchased by Ontario for a year’s supply of Timbits).
Blind Pilot
The coolest thing about Blind Pilot (besides the music…I’ll get to that in a second) is that they just finished a tour of the West Coast on their BIKES! Gear and all, they pedaled their way down from Bellingham, Washington to San Diego, California. It took them just under two months. As a fellow bike commuter I’m extremely impressed by this feat. Taking the length of my commute into consideration (1.1 miles), this admiration shouldn’t come as a surprise. Likewise, after one listen to these Blind Pilot songs you’ll understand my admiration for their music. Simple, stripped down, yet completely majestic. “Go On, Say It” benefits from swelling strings and doubled vocals, but even those basic flourishes are just that. Flourishes, not crutches. “Paint or Pollen” proves Blind Pilot is capable of capturing and perfectly harnessing that elusive little thing we call pop music with nothing but the bare essentials.
Sam Bennett
Sam Bennett’s music is for the post-sarcastic, post-ironic believer in &mdash what did Obama call it? oh yeah — the audacity of hope within all (some? a few?) of us. As Detroit lurches towards extinction right down the expressway from my house, I’m thinking the honest, upbeat, youthful dreaminess of this British singer-songwriter will temper the total depression that’s surely going to soak southeast Michigan. (Either that, or a huge meteorite will blast us into oblivion; right now, I’ll take Bennett’s positivity instead.) Listen to “I Love” first to get a sense of what to expect, then check out “I Am A Lighthouse” if you’re still into it. And for those of you who are all snarky, who live in a state where the unemployment rate is lower than a typical mortgage rate, for those of you who are still listening to that which celebrates our impending darkness, don’t even bother. Personally, I think we need more lighthouses among us.
Horse Feathers
It was a colder-than-normal Sunday when the new Horse Feathers CD went into the car stereo. We had the boy and his cousin with us and were searching for the perfect pumpkin patch to take their photo — y’know, to get that genuine “we’re a happy family†feel. The patch we found turned out to be muddy and, as a result, a messy wonderland for the boys. The music was a wonderland for us grown-ups: soft vocals with shades of Iron & Wine and St. Vincent, acoustic rhythm and sweet stringed melodies. It even got the little turds in the back seat to pause for a second of reflection before going back to demanding cookies and juice.
Frank Hoier
There’s nothing like a good protest song. There are plenty such songs—heck, whole bands, that just aren’t any fun. They take themselves so seriously and make music for people with no sense of humor or joie de vivre. That ain’t me, ‘coz I get the joie, baby! So does Frank Hoier. I bet if he watched the U.S. Vice Presidential debate last night, he started strumming “Jesus Don’t Give Tax Breaks to the Rich†about halfway through. And I bet if his bandmates the Weber Brothers were there with him, they started strumming and picking right along. And I bet that if anyone else was there, they all clapped and stomped their feet and sang along. And I bet instead of getting angry at the people who might rule the free world in a couple of months, they all smiled, laughed, and felt the joie!
Jenny Lewis
So, I think it’s great and all that Jenny Lewis is now on Warner Bros. The thing is, the WB has this super-duper security thing going on with their advance copy CDs, and I can’t play the promo they sent me of Jenny’s new album, Acid Tongue. I tried it on my computer, I tried it in the car, and the players just kept spitting it out. Yes, it’s important to protect one’s recordings from piracy, but it seems you certainly can reach a point where there’s too much security and not enough liberty. In this case, I’d love to hear more of Lewis’ arresting voice, especially in collaboration with Elvis Costello, Benji Hughes and everybody else the publicists say is on the album. If the one free and legal download is suggestive of anything, it’s that I totally want to hear more. I trust that you all can fill me in on how the rest of Acid Tongue sounds.
Frontier Ruckus
The scrawled and scratched-out lyrics on the band’s website, the quavering vocals, the images of dust and absence and longing — Frontier Ruckus is tapping into all the elements of that particular folk style wherein the songs (and singers) appear much older than their actual age. In the demos for their album The Orion Songbook — that’s not Orion like the constellation, but Orion (oree-un) like the suburban Detroit city & lake — this Michigan outfit seems to be dreaming back to the time when it took two weeks to travel from Detroit to Saginaw. Appropriately, tracks like “Orion Town 2” and “Mohawk, New York” are filled with an old-time, bare-bones aesthetic. Dig through the band’s website to find more downloadable demos.
Cameron Latimer
The backstory to this post is that there’s an Eagles album in my old Sony 5 disc changer, and while I’ve been loving it I’ve also wanted to hit up some country rock that’s a little more recent. Jesse over at Killbeat Music in Vancouver, BC, didn’t know this, but he sent Cameron Latimer’s upcoming album Fallen Apart anyway. Perfect. Latimer is a Canadian music veteran, with background in a mess of genres. That said, he sticks to the roots on his solo debut, and offers up a strong set of steel guitar-soaked bar tunes, full of heartbreak and prairie light. While the available download, “Empty Saddle,” is heavy on the C&W, there’s a lot of shuffle and slide on the other tracks on Fallen Apart, making Cameron Latimer’s work a nice indie accompaniment to Henley, Frey and the other guys.
Shelleyan Orphan
As some of you know, I spent the first half of the ’90s living in Provo, Utah. I worked at two CD stores during that time and it’s quite possible that I sold more CDs by The Sundays than any other band. Perhaps there was a common misinterpretation of the Fourth Commandment but Provo couldn’t get enough of The Sundays. Which leads to my story…
There was this guy who came in to the CD store one night and he said, “I love The Sundays. Do they have any other albums out?”
“No,” I said, “but if you like them you might enjoy Shelleyan Orphan. Similar female vocals and even more interesting instrumentation and song structures.”
“Hmm,” he said. “I don’t know. Do they sound just like The Sundays?”
“They’re even better,” I said, handing him a copy of Century Flower (the most Sundays-ish of their three albums). “If you don’t think so, you can return the CD.” Keep in mind, according to store policy I could not return opened merchandise, so this would have meant me buying back as used and paying him the difference. My co-workers warned me, this guy wasn’t going to go for something as adventurous as Shelleyan Orphan. But I was sure he’d not only appreciate my recommendation but tell all his friends about his new find.
Same time the next day, he walks in. “I didn’t like it. It doesn’t sound anything like The Sundays.”
That’s when I realized, to go back to the Bible, I was casting pearls before swine. I wasn’t going to be able to talk him into liking Shelleyan Orphan. So I paid the man from my own pocket and told him he wasn’t getting any more advice from me. “Let me know when the new Sundays album comes out,” he said, as he walked out the door.
Shelleyan Orphan disbanded shortly thereafter, no doubt disheartened that some dork in Utah didn’t think they sounded enough like The Sundays. After 15 years of soul-searching and playing in other bands, Caroline Crawley and Jemaur Tayle have recorded a new Shelleyan Orphan record, We Have Everything We Need, available in October 2008. Please enjoy the bluegrass-inspired single, which I will admit sounds nothing like The Sundays.