(Free) MP3s of the week

Songs don't come much more beautiful than Horse Feather's Curs In The Weeds. The rest of the album, House With No Home, is wonderful too.

These United States' album, Crimes, is also finally released. Download Get Yourself Home here... Also, the band have just done their second Daytrotter session. Four free downloads from that (excellent session) here.

Chris Bathgate's Salt Year

I have fallen deeply in love with a song. Chris Bathgate's Salt Year, on Wait, Skeleton, is so deeply beautiful - a tale of love that should have been taken, and a tune that takes your heart from deep in your stomach. It is sparse, simple and simply gorgeous.

seventeen years before 
I should have hauled off and kissed her
now I lace my wine with ginger 
just let my evenings pass
they pass

she's whistling in a candy store
and I'm just screaming in the dark here
I'm just choking down a salt year
and sugar's all I've longed for
I try again

seventeen and there she stood
a photograph in my doorway
and I felt all my light leave me
my thoughts all tumbling under

after that my days resign to static and gray hair and soft cry
like a cracked crystal second hand wine chime
just clanging for a lover
I can love
try again

I can't offer a free mp3 of the song - it's available for download from most places, but there is a YouTube clip of Chris performing the song live:

Land of Talk

Delighted that this band are banging out another album - a fantastic combination of female lead vocals and aggressive rock, Land of Talk haven't forgotten melody or songs... The new album Some Are Lakes, if the two pre-release download tracks (Some Are Lakes, and Corner Phone) are anything to go by, will be excellent.

MP3 of the week

Heard of this band on the KEXP Song of the Day podcast... The Quiet Ones are a Seattle-based band, and I love their lead single Girls and Uniforms. Download it from their website... The album is a pretty rich treat. I'm sure I'll be posting more soon...

The Walkmen UK tour dates

The Rat may be one of the best singles of all time (in my head), and hearing The Walkmen nail it live remains a highlight of the past few years...

Here's a video of the lead single In The New Year, recorded for Pitchfork TV...

They're back in the UK next month - you should see them:

October

28th London ULU

29th Manchester Academy 3

31st Leeds Cockpit

 

November

1st Glasgow Stereo

2nd Dublin Button Factory

Cotton Mather/ Future Clouds and Radar

I must admit to knowing an awful lot less about this band than I should...

Cotton Mather are a band I became aware of in the 90s - their Beatle-esque stuff is just fantastic (although they're not so fond of that reference). But they seem to exist in some kind of alternate universe - I hear little to nothing about them, apart from just how much I like them every time I hear them. 

I was re-alerted when I listened to Little Steven's Underground Garage compilation, and prompted to dig around. There is a MySpace page, but really very little else... At least there are some downloads there...

Then, a little more digging that has me inordinately excited - there's a new band - Future Clouds and Radar (listen to some new tracks here), which has a new album coming out soon. Seems lead man Robert Harrison has been ill, and this is a new direction... Watch for more soon.

Free Music... August

Best new album of the month for me (after The Walkmen...): The Uglysuit's self-titled debut. Download Chicago (not the best track, but the free-est) here .

After that, you'd be missing out if you didn't also take advantage of Richard Swift's generosity in releasing his latest EP for free here. 

The Walkmen - new album

Listening right now to the new Walkmen album, which seems to be a great return to Bows + Arrows form...

It is also both remarkably good value, and good for the soul. Here's the band's note:

You & Me is now available for $5 at www.amiestreet.com/thewalkmen .

For every record purchased, $5 will be donated to the  Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

I don't know how a $5 album makes $5 for a (great) cancer centre, but this is a wonderful idea. Buy a few copies!

The Morning Benders - free music

The Morning Benders have made a big dent in my listening in the last few weeks - I love the loose limbed, fun, feel of their debut, Talking Through Tin Cans (see previous post). Now they've gone a step further and released, for free, an EP/ album of covers recorded in their apartment. (They call it Bedroom Covers, but don't get the impression that this is just a mirror and a hairbrush - the covers are excellent choices, their versions have depth and soul...)

Vandaveer, AdultAlternative session

Mark Charles Heidinger, AKA Vandaveer, was someone I'd missed out on. On the recent UK tour with These United States, Mark (playing bass in the photo) combines a great voice and simply great songs. He is also a genuinely warm and nice guy...

We were lucky enough to get him to sing songs from his fantastic album, Grace and Speed. As always, click on the song titles to go to YouTube to see these in higher quality video and audio.

Vandaveer | Woolgathering

Vandaveer | Grace and Speed

Vandaveer | Marianne, You've Done It Now

Vandaveer | The Streets Is Full Of Creeps

These United States session

Rapidly becoming one of my favourite bands, These United States stopped by The Old Chapel at the end of a successful UK tour that included three performances at Glastonbury.

With an immense songcraft, and a remarkable ability to reinvent their own songs (just listen to So High So Low, from the first album reworked here), the new material previewed in the session has a nailed on Basement Tapes/ Highway 61 Revisited feel. (In a good way. It would be easy to throw that out as a comparison, based on sound alone, but the songs stand the comparison easily.)

Here's what I wrote about their first album, A Picture of The Three Of Us At the Gate To The Garden Of Eden:

With the new intelligence raging through American popular folk/ Americana/ rock, the congestion among bands that build rock into their psych-folky harmonies is hard to penetrate. However, These United States may just be strong enough to break through it all - lead man Jesse Elliott shows a Paul Simon knack for a melody and a sense of song dynamics that can leave you breathless. Songs like First Sight, or The Business, come across like early 70s classics from the bleeding edge of 2008. Elliott's voice recalls M Ward's - well, it's actually a dead ringer - but the music is a lot more varied; there's some Andrew Bird in there, surely. Led by Elliott and his friend David Strackany, These United States drafted in more than 30 Washington, DC and Midwest-based musicians, and deployed them sparely and wonderfully across the record. In places a fragile thing, in others as solid as metal, the imagination behind A Picture can seem fevered - you get to the end of it like you get to the end of a good modern art gallery - still slightly puzzled, but in no doubt that you now see things differently.

Enjoy these videos of this incarnation of These United States: main man Jesse Elliott (left), Mark Charles (of Vandaveer; middle) and J. Tom Hnatow (right). If you click on the titles, you'll go to YouTube, where you've the option to watch in higher quality (sound and video). Look for some songs from Vandaveer soon. 

These United States | Get Yourself Home

These United States | We Go Down To That Corner

These United States | What Do You Want With My Heart?

These United States | So High So Low So Wide So Long

Black Cab Sessions

One of the coolest sites about sees a fantastic collection of artists playing a song in the back of a black cab in London.

Have a look at this video of Stephen Fretwell, and then head to here for the full collection.