Glass half empty, 2020 kind of sucked. Glass half full, a lot of new music was released during and as a result of it. But amidst the brilliant art inspired…
Don’t have a significant other or tales of abounding academic success to bring home for winter break this year? Fret not—what you may lack in a love interest, all As,…
The worlds of folk and Americana music are, at best, in constant struggle between the future and the past. While some folk bands cling to what is familiar, the finest artists see the past as a springboard into fresh new sounds. This was the case with Bob Dylan’s iconic Newport Folk Festival controversy, as it was the case with Fleet Foxes’s breathtaking 2017 album, Crack-Up. Goes West by William Tyler joins this pantheon by continuing not only to push the envelope, but also to open it and slide a letter of his own inside.
Lord Huron recently announced the release of his new album Vide Noir in January. To increase anticipation, the band came out with three new singles to hint at the forthcoming changes in sound. They include “Ancient Names (Part I),” “Ancient Names (Part II)” and “Wait by the River.”
This past Saturday, Andrew Bird gave Nashville a taste of Dutch culture by performing a concert at the Downtown Presbyterian Church in the spirit of gezelligheid. For those who have studied abroad in Copenhagen, you are probably familiar with the Danish sentiment of “hygge.” While the term has no truly accurate English translation, it is defined by feelings of warmth and coziness. Hygge is different for everyone, but it can be experienced through appreciating life’s simple pleasures, joining in community, and finding contentment. The Dutch term “gezelligheid” is similar and can be used to describe a bright, cozy atmosphere or more specific experiences such as spending time with loved ones (you can read more here). Even during the frigid dark months of winter, the Danish and Dutch continue to meet with friends and find well-being in the name of hygge and gezelligheid respectively.
Moses Sumney’s debut full-length Aromanticism, released Sept 22nd on Jagjagwar, is a shimmery showcase of Sumney’s smooth-as-butter voice that marks an artistic departure from his 2016 EP Lamentations. While the EP revolves around layers of Sumney’s vocals and guitar, his latest release incorporates a much wider color palate, replete with beautiful orchestration and swirling synths. There’s a higher production value, which in turn sacrifices some of the intimacy of his earlier releases which made his music so powerful.
Sufjan Stevens has never been afraid to bear his heart to an audience. Even at his most thematic and theatrical–2005’s masterpiece Illinois–he wasn’t shy about including a line like “I cried myself to sleep last night” as the centerpiece of a song before asking the listener to question “are you writing from the heart?” But while Illinois buried its confessional nature amidst richly arranged baroque pop playgrounds, Carrie & Lowell is a thoroughly intimate affair; all you’ll find here are fluttering guitars, double-tracked vocals delivered with a whisper, and haunting synthesizer elegies bookending the album’s brisk tracks. It is an album that is simple and anguished to its very core.
Sufjan’s seventh album is inspired by his mother and step-father
If you were to travel back in time to the year 1968 and cryogenically freeze the guys of The Band, only to wake them up in the year 2015, you’d probably find them hanging out with the members of Houndmouth. Both groups are harmony heavy, folk-funk powerhouses. While The Band spent a whole bunch of years touring with legends like Bob Dylan, and recording a massive repertoire of legendary jams, Houndmouth is just now coming up out of Indiana with their second album, Little Neon Limelight, dropping on Rough Trade earlier this week.
Father John Misty. Probably a fitting moniker for a man who claims to have “discovered” himself while sitting naked, atop an oak tree. Josh Tillman is the real name of the shroomed-out, van-driving, gentleman we came to love in 2012 when he released his hilarious, honky-tonkish debut, Fear Fun.
Father John Misty’s second album, “I Love You, Honeybear,” released February 10th.
With his first album as Father John Misty, Tillman came out unadulterated and charmingly honest, a man free of any obligation to take himself seriously. Before that, he was only known as the unenthusiastic drummer of Fleet Foxes, who opened his own shows as folk singer, J. Tillman playing morbidly depressing songs that, frankly, weren’t very good. But Fear Fun marked a transformation for the man. He cast himself as a comedian doing standup at a rock n’ roll concert, and somehow he fit the role. It seemed as if he had finally found what would make his music brilliant: his sense of humor. Something he could surely stick to.
On Friday January 24, DJ Ben Fensterheim hosted bluegrass group Yonder Mountain String Band in the WRVU studio. Check out the full interview and in-studio performance at our Bandcamp and embedded below. The…
On the Friday before spring break, I had the pleasure of seeing the Vanderbilt Core Choir perform their home concert that began their week long tour to Florida. The front end of the program was a typical classical repertoire, featuring works from Bach, Mendelssohn, and Brahms. Via short sets focusing on international pieces and original compositions by choir members and friends, there was a gradual transition into what I found to be an absolutely stunning performance of Americana songs at the tail end of the program. There was a complete change in atmosphere of the concert, and it was in no way related to the quality of the music going up for some strange reason. The performance level was stunning throughout; in the roots set, it was just like the music stopped being a performance and began to be a warm and welcoming conversation. It focused strongly on spirituals, arrangements of songs by The Wailin’ Jennys to highlight some of the ensemble’s remarkable sopranos and altos, and a selection for the male vocalists to shine on that happens to be one of my current favorite songs. This was an adapted arrangement of Marcus Mumford and Oscar Isaac’s recording of “Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song)” for the 2013 Coen Brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis (you can listen to a recording of the choir’s men performing the selection above). The film follows a week in the life of Llewyn Davis, a fictional folk artist in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s struggling to make it by, providing a dreary reminder to the audience that for every Bob Dylan or Joan Baez success that came from this vibrant folk movement there were countless careers that failed to start. Again and again in this dismal setting, the film’s music shines through, punctuated by performances from Oscar Isaac in his titular role. The man that put that soundtrack together was T-Bone Burnett.
