Time to return to my Memphis roots with Andy Grooms, and his album Greatful to Burn under the Andy Grooms Living Room moniker on Memphis’s Makeshift Music. “Mary Or Mephisto” is a genre blending song, jumping from trippy blues-tinged psych guitar to jazz piano leaning toward 70’s pop.
The Coach and Four
It’s my last post from Memphis, so I’d better make it a Memphis band, eh? I especially like the changing moods of “In Transit” by The Coach and Four. First delicate and almost plaintive, then building until becoming strong, fierce, and frantic, it reflects the hidden stories of the band’s namesake, a local run-down hotel.
The Glass
The Glass take all that’s good from the last decade of indie music and work into their soundscapes the qualities of Memphis, Tennessee: slow, easygoing, polite (to your face), good food, good friends. Like a still day in the summer heat, where Ol’ Man River, the Mighty Mississippi, is as smooth as glass.
Snowglobe
Remember those “Dirty Boys” mentioned in Wednesday’s Of Montreal post? Oh, how we loved to tease them by calling them hippies. Well, a few of them make up the band Snowglobe. No surprise then that Snowglobe is heavily influenced by the sounds of Elephant 6. Warm, poppy, psychedelic-y, and even a little bit hippy. They also blend in shades of jazz and hard rock, with touches of horns, strings, bells, whistles, and whatever else was lying around the house to create a masterpiece of music that’s all their own. Damn hippies…