Keaton Henson – You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are from Keaton Henson on Vimeo.
Gloom-folk is pretty much my favorite genre, though I can’t say the same for the Lars Von Trier-y visuals that accompany Keaton Henson’s “You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are.” Hear a handful of equally haunting tracks at his site.
ARMS – “Three Mile Island” (live at Glasslands) from Big Ugly Yellow Couch on Vimeo.
ARMS’ spectacular Summer Skills is out this week at last. Here’s the band playing one of its many jams at last week’s album release party. Big Ugly Yellow Couch has more videos and a few live MP3s, too.
This is the second week of the Mercury Music Digital Music Club, my subscription service for people looking to have the week’s best albums and the classics that made them possible hand-delivered (O.K., clicked) directly to your inbox. Things subscribers have said: “I am so excited about this!” “I’m so excited.” “I’m pretty excited about this.” (Really!) Get excited over at the Mercury website and we’ll send you the latest albums right now.
Before Matt Berninger’s baritone blasted through Indie Nation like that bulging blue planet in Melancholia, there was Bry Webb. Over the course of four Constantines albums, the singer demonstrated both Springsteen appreciation and pipes as ripped and worn as your grandfather’s work boots.
His solo debut, The Provider, arrives with little fanfare today, but the songs don’t beg for attention: on “Rivers of Gold,” Webb’s unstoppable howl is reduced to a soft croon. It’s disarming to hear him sing so delicately, especially when he utters, “I was playing in a band / we had an understanding / only we could understand.” He’s accompanied by an acoustic guitar and pedal steel, a sound that places him in Nebraska or Harvest territory — looking forward to seeing where he heads next.
IF004: Bry Webb “Provider” by Idée Fixe Records
(Provider is out now on Idée Fixe Records)
All photos by David Greenwald
Enjoy the photos. All I have to say about Big Troubles and Real Estate’s sets is that they were really great; James Ferraro’s, which was half pointless synth-ambient and half pointless cavewoman skronk, was either performance art or the worst set of 2011. Please note the Wedding Singer-era Adam Sandler look-a-like on the hot sax.
Previously: Review: Real Estate – Days
I’m not sure what Sondre Lerche’s latest video is about (The Virgin Suicides? The running sequence from Forest Gump? Witch house?), but we can blame/credit the singer’s wife, Mona, who directed the new clip. The song still sounds as sharp as it did when he played it at our SXSW party.
The Lake Poets make no bones about being sad young Romantics — they’re called the Lake Poets — but if acoustic guitars, foreign male singers and lyrics about burgeoning relationships are your thing, you’ve come to the right place.
“How Do You Love Me?” is a sweet, tuneful ballad, the sort of song that squeezes its way onto mix tapes and between your ears before you can say, “Because you have that cute British accent!”
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Are we finally hitting the too-many-live-sessions precipice? I hope not. One of the most exciting things about these videos is hearing songs in fresh contexts, whether it’s stripped-down instrumentation or from the vantage point of an exotic locale. This take on Craft Spells’ “Your Tomb” does both, offering a very Sarah Records version of the formerly electrified song as the band wanders through Copenhagen. Lovely.
