Our latest Short Cuts, a monthly feature where AUK casts a brief eye and ear on several albums we’ve received recently which just didn’t make the cut for a full review. Like most major music websites we can’t mention every album we get sent but we reckon the picks below deserve a nod. Click on the links to hear a song.
Elana Brody grew up on the West Allegheny mountains, in the least populated county east of the Mississippi, so it says in the press blurb. On her album “The Garden” she certainly evokes a sense of sparseness along with a connection to nature on a set of songs which are quite delightful. There’s an almost childish wonder in the folk baroque setting of ‘The Insect’ while the title song is a quite gorgeous, somewhat frail, bucolic beauty of a song. The instruments whisper and flutter around Brody’s crystal voice as she hymns the delights of nature, glorying in it be it sunny or raining. As she sings in the title song, “Out in the garden there is peace”.
Hadnot Creek hail from Charlottesville, Virginia and purvey a sound which reminds one of the time that alt-country kind of tipped over into Americana. On their latest album, “Birds”, the songs are languorous, the guitars lazily thrash away and the singer, Robert Sawrey sounds somewhat world-wearied. Weirdly enough, the best example of this is a cover of Lou Reed’s ‘A Gift’ but the opening title song is as good an indication as what to expect from the rest of the album. The pick of these is the organ swelled ‘Little Darling‘ which winks at Dire Straits with a slight hint of New Jersey soul.
We always dig albums that delve into American history and so “Songs Inspired By Witness”, the latest album from Arkansas folk duo, March To August is right up our street. It’s a set of songs inspired by their reading of a novel, “Witness”, by Karen Hesse. The book is a story of a small town in Vermont during prohibition that is infiltrated by the Ku Klux Klan, and our pair, Derrick and Jodi Mears, deliver it in a striking fashion playing banjo, bass and stompbox giving the songs an alluring old-time patina. They breathe life into the characters who populate the novel – the moonshiner, a hell-bound preacher, the mom & pop store owners, a 12-year-old black girl and a journalist who bravely tried to tell the truth behind the preacher’s lies with the latter the tie which binds of all of them. He’s the Greek chorus of the album and afforded three songs. It’s an album you really need to listen to in its entirety but there’s a good indication of what to expect on the devastating and chilling closing song, ‘Only The River’ while ‘Hellbound’ pretty much sums the album up. No spoilers here but this is American gothic in the extreme.
There’s more than a hint of the best of mid-70s soft rock and country, on Jeffery Straker’s “Great Big Sky”. Straker’s a Canadian who is inspired by wide open spaces and his classically trained piano is the main driver on a set of songs which are also replete with generous dollops of yearning pedal steel guitar. The playing and the arrangements recall early Warren Zevon and Jackson Browne albums while the pop sensibility of Paul Williams is never far away. ‘Take Me To The Touchwoods’ is a quite gorgeous wood-warmed hymn to rural delights, its creamy pedal steel and shining fiddle just excellent. ‘Carry On With Grace’ is a song which could easily sit on an album by Poco back in the days and ‘Brand New Light’ is just about the best hoedown we’ve heard this year. “Great Big Sky” is an album we’d thoroughly recommend and one listen to ‘Sing Your Song‘ should probably bring you around to our way of thinking.
Suthering are a folk duo comprised of Heg Brignall and Julu Irvine and on “Leave A Light On” they remind one of The Unthanks as they offer up a fine set of songs crafted in the folk tradition. As with The Unthanks, their voices melt into each other over a gorgeous bedding of perfectly played instruments including guitars, piano, whistles, flute, violin and double bass. While at times they are just a little bit too twee (as on ‘Silhouette’), when they delve into the nook and crannies of folklore such as the Hebridean lament, ‘Seagull Of Land-Under-Waves’ they can astound. The opening song ‘Maggie‘, written by Irvine, is quite chilling in its delivery while it is firmly topical, addressing as it does the right to body autonomy in the wake of America’s recent onslaught on abortion rights. Produced by Sean Lakeman, the album is a fine listen. By rights this album should have been mentioned in our monthly folk round up but then, hey nonny no, no worries.
From Holland, Grapes Of Grain hold firm to the heyday of college rock when bands such as REM and Camper Van Beethoven were strutting their stuff. While their album ‘Painted Windows’ is not in the same league as these pioneers, there’s a fine frisson to be had in listening to songs such as ‘Martin Luther’ with its surging guitars and the introspective ‘Back Inside’ which tiptoes quite excellently reminding one of the late Elliot Smith. ‘Hey Jonathan’ is an ode to Jonathan Richman and there’s a fine whiff of Paisley Underground psychedelia on ‘Darker Days‘ with murky guitar solos blazing away, a trick repeated on ‘Fatal Flower’ and on the trippy meanderings of ‘Photograph Girl’. Overall the album is a minor gem and well worth exploring.
