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Devendra Banhart : Somkey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon

Sello: Beggars XL Recordings
Estilo: Freak Folk, Folk, Singer-Songwriter, New Weird America, Naturalismo
Para Fans de: Joanna Newsom, Vetiver, Akron/Family, Beirut, Grizzly Bear, Espers

Tracklist:

1. Cristobal

2. So Long Old Bean

3. Samba Vexillographica

4. Seahorse

5. Bad Girl

6. Seaside

7. Shabop Shalom

8. Tonada Yanomaminista

9. Rosa

10. Saved

11. Lover

12. Carmencita

13. Other Woman, The

14. Freely

15. I Remember

16. My Dearest Friend

Corre el minuto 2’21’’ de esa delicada y deliciosa “Samba Vexillographica” y se escucha un sonoro “coño, la cagué”. Ese es Devendra Banhart, un artista tan peculiar, impredecible y ácrata como inteligente y profundo conocedor de la herencia musical que atesora.

Un bagaje el suyo que bebe de un buen número de fuentes: bandas que ejemplificaron los años hippies con base en San Francisco como Moby Grape, Jefferson Airplane o Grateful Dead; el folk de la otra costa (de Joan Baez a Paul Simon, pasando por el sacrosanto Dylan); bandas británicas como Moody Blues, The Beatles o T-Rex, pero también de toda la tradición latinoamericana de Joâo Gilberto, Caetano Veloso o Atahualpa Yupanqui. Y el genio de Devendra Banhart consiste precisamente en saber combinar toda esa tradición con tanta habilidad y pericia como por ejemplo Ry Cooder, imprimiéndole además ese sello tan particular que le otorga una voz tan dulce como hipnotizante a la que hay que añadir ese clásico finger picking de su acústica y los grandes músicos que le acompañan.

Si ya su anterior “Cripple Crow” era todo un alarde de collage estilístico, su nuevo trabajo no hace más que ahondar en ese camino, ampliando aún más la paleta de estilos, pero sin descuidar en ningún momento esas melodías que parecen salir del inconsciente colectivo de ese universo místico que como buen hippie le rodea. Por eso puedes encontrar esa preciosa balada soul con coros gospel que es “Saved”, el ritmo dub del espiritual “The Other Woman”, el funky festivo de “Lover”, la psicodelia folk-rock a lo Traffic de ese anti-single de más de ocho minutos que es “Seahorse”, la bossa más delicada de “Rosa” y, en definitiva, canciones enormes de una delicadeza y belleza tal que sitúan a su autor entre lo más sólido, interesante y capaz de los cantautores de la escena actual.

Sandro Perri - Tiny Mirrors

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Sello: Constellation
Estilo: Singer-songwritter, Experimental, Folk
Para fans de: Polmo Polpo, Molasses, Glissandro 70, Black Ox Orkestra, Eric Chenaux...

Tracklist
1. Family Tree
2. City Of Museums
3. Double Suicide
4. The Drums
5. Everybody's Talkin'
6. The Mime
7. You're The One
8. White Flag Blues
9. Love Is Real
10. Mirror Tree

This is the first full-length recording by Sandro Perri under his own name, following an E.P. on Constellation last year (on which Perri re-interpreted songs from his critically-acclaimed Polmo Polpo instrumental/electronic project). Working with some of Toronto's finest avant and improv players, Sandro has fully re-invented himself as a singer, lyricist and guitar player, and Tiny Mirrors is the culmination of this transformation - a highly personal collection of songs, shaped by an utterly original approach to composition, performance, and melodic and vocal phrasing.

Tiny Mirrors incorporates elements and sensibilities - albeit in subtle hues - as diverse as Vanguard-era Skip James (and his weary falsetto), post-tropicalia Caetano Veloso (the compositional twists), and the 60s-era axis of hybrid songwriters like Tim Buckley, Tim Hardin, Harry Nilsson and Fred Neil (whose "Everybody's Talkin'" is covered here, re-cast as a rumination on the 'epidemic' of second-hand experience). Perri's simultaneous guitar and kick drum playing is complemented by the cracked wah guitar of labelmate Eric Chenaux on several tracks, with brass, reeds, woodwinds, keys and percussion filling out the arrangements, courtesy of regular bandmates Ryan Driver, Marcus Quin and John Jowett. A handful of other Toronto players contribute on drums, trombone and cello.

Crucial to the album's sound is the fact that Perri gave up much control to the group dynamics, allowing some of the arrangements to develop out of the players' natural tendencies towards improvisation. "Love Is Real", for example, set to a fluid and amorphous backdrop of heavily phased 'neo-soul', was altered substantially by Chenaux's rhythmic re-configurations, while "Double Suicide" (of which the original version has not yet seen proper release) is presented here in an alternate form. Anchored entirely by drummer Blake Howard's in-studio restlessness, the original gets transformed from a brooding slow-burner into a strangely fractured bossa nova; a tricky polyrhythmic delight. Ending the record is a re-working of the lead-off track "Family Tree", here renamed "Mirror Tree" and consisting of only the core band, sans Perri altogether - a testament to the group's interpretive power.

Overall, Perri strikes the perfect balance of sophisticated writing (melodically and as a lyricist) and, with the help of his band, deceptively effortless, relaxed, unconstrained performance. These songs abound in subtle texture and flourish, and the burbling swirl of instrumental work is a through-line to his earlier recordings as Polmo Polpo, where a similarly simmering brew of interweaving melodies yielded such an original and seductive take on 'electronic' music. Perri brings the same originality, warmth, energy and intelligence to his eponymous singer-songwriter work; Tiny Mirrors pulses and froths and lounges and glides with inimitable ingenuity, genuineness, substance and style.

The album was beautifully recorded by Jeff McMurrich (Hidden Cameras, Constantines, Bruce Cockburn) at Hallamusic in Toronto. Two songs, and various overdubs, were recorded at Sandro's home studio, The Honey Pot.

The CD format of this recording comes in a felt-finish cardstock package with bronze foil-stamp printing. 180gLP comes in same paper, with a silkscreen print.

Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala

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Sello: Secretly Canadian
Estilo: Singer-Songwritter, Indie Pop
Para fans de: The Magnetic Fields, El Perro del Mar, Belle & Sebastian, Architecture In Helsinki, Suburban Kids With Biblical Names

Tracklist:
01 And I Remember Every Kiss
02 Sipping On the Sweet Nectar
03 The Opposite of Hallelujah
04 A Postcard to Nina
05 Into Eternity
06 I'm Leaving You Because I Don't Love You
07 If I Could Cry (It Would Feel Like This)
08 Your Arms Around Me
09 Shirin
10 It Was a Strange Time in My Life
11 Kanske Ar Jag Kar I Dig
12 Friday Night at the Drive-In Bingo

Jens Lekman opens Night Falls Over Kortedala with the sure step of an artist in complete command of his creative self. Imbued with epic grandeur, "And I Remember Every Kiss" fades in with a melancholy timpani roll, a stirring string section and Jens crooning with every wistful bone in his body. After the first verse, the strings passionately swell into a wall of sound and - with one gravity-defying pass-through - Jens delivers his death blow to cynicism by declaring, "And I would never kiss anyone / Who doesn't burn me like the sun / And I remember every kiss like my first kiss;" illustrating just why many consider him one of the most important of the hopeful broken hearts coming of age in contemporary music. Like a modern day Chet Baker, Jens absolutely loves to sing about heartache.

On "Sipping On The Sweet Nectar", Jens introduces a dance beat to his string, horn & croon combo. And it only gets bigger from there with the tableside backbeat of "Opposite of Hallelujah" to the live favorite "A Postcard To Nina", and the slender hooks of "I'm Leaving You Because I Don't Love You" to the Frankie Valli purity of "Shirin" - an epic ode to Jens' barber which is reminiscent of a Mexican folk ballad.

Jens arduously labored over the songs on Night Falls Over Kortedala over the last three years between relentless tours (which ranged from full blown 8-piece ensembles to just Jens alone with a ukelele at the mic). Kortedala refers to a neighborhood in Jens' hometown of Gothenburg, Sweden, where his studio Koredala Beauty Center is located. It also refers to a vague musical pop sound with hints of tropicalia that has been coming out of Gothenburg's clubs over the last few years. Having more in common with Paul Simon's Graceland, Jens' latest is a response to more than an engagement in today's Kortedala music of his Swedish peers. An exercise in insularity, Night Falls Over Kortedala has achieved its specific sound not from going out but from Jens staying in and coming to grips with the sounds he had in his head, or as he said, "from the sound of my own voice reverberating off my home's old '50s brick walls, from the ghosts of everyone who's lived here before me clapping along with their little ecto-plasm hands. My record basically never leaves the 30 square meters that I live on until the very last song when i takeÝa shortÝbus ride to the countryside in 'Friday Night at the Drive-in Bingo'."

Jens further elaborates on his home of Kortedala:
"What a depressing suburban hell this place is. Everyone goes to bed at nine, after that you can't see one single window lit up. You can walk for hours without meeting one single person. I used to like that, cause it meant I could go for endless walks and pretend the world was my own and I was the only one in it. But after a while I found out the hard way that there were others who couldn't sleep at night. On my way into town I got beat up and mugged one night three years ago. Since then it's happened so many times I've lost count. It's never been that bad, I've never ended up in the hospital or lost anything too valuable really. But it's the atmosphere and the small incidents that scare me. The guys who yell faggot at me when I pass their balcony, the nazis hanging out in a nearby open garage, the old men with their binoculars who sit in their windows looking for anything suspicious to report, the dead cats that show up on the lawn outside my kitchen, the knock on my window at 4 am this summer followed by a whispered 'when he opens you hit him in the head,' the neighbour I constantly find passed out in the staircase, the flicker of a million tv screens against the livingroom walls, the smoke from a million chainsmoking moms, the fact that the guy who lived in my apartment before me lay dead in the bathtub for three months before they found him. In Kortedala everyone's minding their own business. And I'm slowly turning into one of them so as soon as I've finished this record I will get the hell out of here."

Night Falls Over Kortedala features Jens friendlies Frida Hyvönen and El Perro Del Mar.

Vic Chesnutt - Northern Star Deserter

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Sello: Constellation
Estilo: Singer-Songwriter/Folk/Alt-Country
Para fans de: Lambchop, Bonnie Prince Billy, Howe Gelb, ASMZ y los grupos de Constellation

Tracklist

1. Warm
2. Glossolalia
3. Everything I Say
4. Wallace Stevens
5. You Are Never Alone
6. Fodder On Her Wings
7. Splendid
8. Rustic City Fathers
9. Over
10. Debriefing
11. Marathon
12. Rattle

We have been massive Vic Chesnutt fans for many years. Prior to starting Constellation together in 1997, among the first records we bonded over was Is The Actor Happy, a slab of vinyl played so often (and so often late at night) that its grooves are well chewed.

Our friend, Brooklyn-based filmmaker Jem Cohen (Benjamin Smoke, Instrument, Chain), has known Vic for many years. When Jem proposed that Vic make his next album at the Hotel2Tango studio in Montreal, with various Constellation musicians (along with a couple of American friends) as players for the session, we were thrilled. When we heard the results, we were floored. When offered the opportunity to release the record, we were honoured.

Vic Chesnutt is one of the finest songsmiths we know. His words knock us out, his voice is like no other, and the two combined can deliver lyrical phrases that echo in your brain for weeks, months, years...that you find yourself adding to your quotidian vocabulary of sardonic asides, devastating metaphors, witty rhymes. Words that are never clever for their own sake, but smart and substantive as all get out.

The songs on North Star Deserter are some of the most bracing and intense we've ever heard from him: macabre and fearless, playful and funny, at times deeply personal and at others, incongruously hopeful. Stripped-down songs like "Warm", "Rustic City Fathers", "Over" and "Marathon" are juxtaposed with explosive rockers like "Everything I Say" and "Debriefing", while "Glossolalia" and "You Are Never Alone" feature wonderful arrangements and group singing.

The broad cast of players - all seven members of Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band, along with Guy Picciotto (Fugazi), Chad Jones & Nadia Moss (Frankie Sparo), Eric Craven & Genevieve Heistek (Hangedup), Bruce Cawdron (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Esmerine) and T. Griffin (The Quavers) - offered influences and approaches to Vic's music that yielded a record unlike any other in his substantial discography.

Recorded over the winter of 2006-2007, at one of the last sessions to take place at the original Hotel2Tango location in Montreal (the studio moved in spring 2007), we believe North Star Deserter is the very best album Vic Chesnutt has yet made (while humbly acknowledging the boldness of such a statement). The sessions were orchestrated by Jem, who also oversaw production (along with Efrim and Thierry of Silver Mt. Zion, and Guy from Fugazi). The album was recorded by Howard Bilerman. The record is available on CD and double 180g LP, with artwork by Michael Ackerman and Jem Cohen.