Brighton based singer-songwriter Simon D James has a global vision, and his debut single Dearest Lovely World was written whilst he was volunteering in the Calais refugee camps. This experience led him to recognise that “regardless of colour or creed we are all bound together by the common threads of love, loss and the need to find community in an ever more fractured world”.
Category: Tracks
Track Premier: Jesse Terry “Mr Blue Sky”
Jesse Terry has a brand new album coming out, hot on the heels of last September’s ‘Stargazer’. It’s an album of duets with female artists including: Dar Williams / Sarah Darling / Erin Rae/ Kim Richey & more. This track premier is taken from that album – a cover of Jeff Lynne’s Mr Blue Sky. Explaining why he chose this track Jesse has said “Mr Blue Sky is one of those rare songs that can instantly turn my day around, and change the way I view the world. To me, the song feels like emerging from sadness and embracing the light in a spirited rejoice: “Mister Blue Sky, please tell us why, you had to hide away for so long, where did we go wrong?”…when you change the tempo and instrumentation, everything feels different – and that gorgeous melody and lyric takes on a new life and meaning. I think that’s the mark of a truly great song”. Jesse Terry is on tour in the UK in April.
Ryan Adams releases Valentine’s Day single online – Listen
Ryan Adams has a shot of V-Day love for the world this year with the release of a special Valentine’s Day single today. ‘Baby I Love You’ is exactly what it sounds like: a song to someone’s baby (colloquial as opposed to small child, although it might work either way) who they love—a unique twist on Ryan Adams’ classic recipe, with key ingredient “sad” replaced by “happy.” Head over to the Pax Am website for more info.
Bob Cheevers “Help Me With My Heart” – Listen
Admittedly this is not a new song – but quite appropriate for Valentines Day. Really we wanted Is It Ever Gonna Rain, but that wasn’t available. Help Me with My Heart seemed a better second choice than If I Fell Back in Love With Your Sister. And a much better choice than Underpants. Or I like Sheep. Those songs exist. Bob Cheevers – the man with no discernible edit function. He’s at the Green Note tomorrow by the way.
Shakey Graves “Kids These Days” – Listen
One line of wisdom of course is that they don’t. Listen that is. Trash. The kids are all right. Alejandro Rose-Garcia, aka Shakey Graves, won the award for Best Emerging Artist at the 2015 Americana Music Awards – his new album Can’t Wake Up shows an evolution into different sounds. He says of it “this record is the most I’ve ever intentionally worked on a project, musically speaking, in terms of the scope of it and how much thought went into it. It’s a dense album; there’s a lot of information going on.”. There are upcoming – and already sold out – dates in London, Glasgow and Manchester.
James Perryman “Why Do You Only Love Me When I’m Stoned?” – Listen
West-London based singer-songwriter James Perryman raises a pertinent question on his newly released single. There’s an EP to follow in April. Multi-layered vocals add an appropriate fuzzed-up feel to the smooth vocals. If you like what you’re hearing then it’s worth noting that James Perryman will be playing The Coppermill on Friday 16th.
Arkansas Dave “On My Way” – Listen
Arkansas Dave has all the right credentials – born and raised in the piney swamps of Camden, Arkansas, started his musical journey with drums at five years old and by 12 was playing guitar every Sunday in church. Then it was bands in dive bars and the best honky tonks in Arkansas and Texas. The events of On My Way are drawn from life – and were recorded in Muscle Shoals. It’s the southern rock first single from his upcoming eponymous album release due in April.
Jodee Lewis “Buzzard’s Bluff” – Listen
Jodee Lewis may have travelled North from Missouri to settle in Chicago, but she didn’t bring the blues with her: she’s traditional country, spinning tales to guitar, fiddle and banjo accompaniment. Buzzard’s Bluff is the title track of her album due on the 6th of April and captures natural lush landscapes of her Ozarks home – but just like the numerous birds of prey, a dark secret is always circling.
Track premiere: Rainbrother “Black Chemicals”
Rainbrother were formed while frontman Bjarke Bendtsen was touring with The Migrant in Europe – he performed with a group of fellow Danish musicians and after moving back to his home turf, decided the sound was too good a thing for a one off. There’s a new album out in the Autumn and they’re doing some Danish dates this month but in the meantime, they’ve shared this warm fuzzed up track with us from their next album. Bendtsen told AUK: “The song is about all the beautiful and scary stuff that breaks loose inside of you when you love and want to be loved, about the big black animal that walks its own ways, defies all reason.” I think it’s called a dog.
Select Captain “Miles Apart” – Listen
On which Kristian Gaarskjaer (a.k.a. Select Captain) blends his subtle guitar and folk leaning vocals with Soluna Samay’s to produce a duet which meditates on relationships that are intimate…but not emotionally close…that feel good…but feel like they aren’t going anywhere. Painful stuff. Hurtful stuff. Rather beautiful.