J.Tillman: Horrible artwork, lovely music

Fleet Foxer J. Tillman, whose new album Year in the Kingdom, was released on Monday will be playing four cities around the UK next month.

Tickets are available now and you may need to be quick off the mark to grab one. So jump to it.

October
07 LONDON – Garage
08 MANCHESTER – Night and Day
09 GLASGOW – Nice and Sleazy’s
11 LEICESTER – The Musician

Two Sunsets: C86 Meets Japanese Minimalism

There are twenty two years and a million miles between the Pastels’ debut album Up For A Bit, a Daniel Johnston /Jonathan Richman obsessed affair, and this collaboration with Japanese minimalists Tenniscoats. Gone are the quirky lyrics and twanging guitars, replaced with soft melodies and a light jazzy feel added by Bill Wells.

Also on the record is Teenage Fanclub’s Gerard Love who surfaces most clearly on Vivid Youth which sounds like Astrud Gilberto joined the Fanclub.

Vocal duties are shared by Tenniscoats and the Pastels, with Katrina Mitchell’s breathy voice counterpoised by Stephen Pastel, a man whose singing voice continues to offer hope to those of us who dare only sing in an empty house.

Not speaking Japanese, it’s impossible to know what some of the songs are about, but on the basis of the lyrics sung in English and the almost tentative feel of the songs, they are unlikely to be about sacrificing virgins.

One word of warning though: Halfway through the brief instrumental Modesty Piece, there are some pan pies. What they are doing there is anybody’s guess; surely Stephen Pastel knows that the proper use of a pan pipe is for bored looking South American Indians to use to perform covers of Phil Collins songs in shopping centres around the British Isles.

A snowblink is a white luminosity on the underside of clouds, caused by the reflection of light from a snow covered surface. An apt choice of name then for Daniela Gesundheit’s band as her music is a kind of reflected and dreamy folk music which has the feel of being there yet somehow not there.

Long Live, the third Snowblink album (It follows two limited edition and now out of print home recorded albums), meanders gently through the landscape of its fifteen tracks in an unforced manner which is possibly a reflection of the fact that it was recorded in as wide a range of locations as it is possible to imagine – a studio in Sacramento, a log-cabin in Mammoth Lakes and an apartment in Toronto are among the places the album was put together.

Since the inception of the band Gesundheit has surrounded herself with a cabal of musicians and vocalists, which at one time included MGMT, to fill out her delicate arrangements and layer them with strings, glock, and a host of less conventional instruments. Despite the musical patchwork which makes up the album, it never sounds less than intimate with Gesundheit’s crystalline voice shimmering throughout. If you are looking for straightforward folk music look elsewhere though, there isn’t a moment of ordinariness in Long Live, everything is slightly off kilter and so much the better for it.

Sssshhhhh. Quiet. Listen – it’s beautiful.

Visit the  Snowblink website here.

The Willkommen Collective, the musical answer to swinging, have been at it again. This time the car keys picked out of the pot include Nick Hemming and Christian Hardy from The Leisure Society and various members of Sons Of Noel & Adrian, The Miserable Rich and Shoreline.

The band, fronted by Tim West, an old school mate of Christian Hardy, will release their debut album The Good Ship once they finish their five year recording odyssey. Experts believe that should be early next year.

Those of you eager to find out what’s in store can listen to album track Uncommon simply by clicking here.

For more info about the band check out their Myspace.

Joel Gibb: Cheer Up Sunshine.

At their best, The Hidden Cameras make joyous, infectious pop which rises and falls and in places that happens here. But, and it’s a fairly significant but, it doesn’t happen often enough on this album. Joel Gibb has gone serious.

The signs are there from the very beginning. No-one is ever going to convince me that starting an album with over two minutes of drone is the way forward. What remains of the opening track ‘Ratify the New’ does little to lift the mood – it’s sludgy and plodding and only Gibb’s voice, one of the best in pop, saves it.

Elsewhere the sombre feel continues on ‘Walk On’, a bombastic march which sees Gibb doing a passable Ian Curtis impression and title track ‘Origin: Orphan’, another early-eighties sounding dirge.

Thankfully, there is enough vintage Hidden Cameras tucked away in the album to make it a worthwhile affair. ‘In The NA’, shorn of the two minute intro that was tagged on to it when released as a single, is an immediate and infectious piece of pure pop while ‘He Falls to Me’, ‘Colour of a Man’, and the trumpet driven ‘The Little Bit’ retain the wittiness and exuberance of earlier albums.

A band shouldn’t stand still, but the Hidden Cameras music has always been fairly euphoric and playful and the moments on this album which match that show that Gibb still had plenty of room for manoeuvre in that area without getting all serious on us.

Well, they claim to be named after the street on which they grew up in Santa Monica but I don’t buy it. Princeton’s debut album, ‘Cocoon of Love’ has a very British feel to it. In fact, I can be more specific: It has a very Postcard Records feel to it. Everything about the band shouts ‘the sound of young Scotland’ from their jangling guitars to their literary references (they have already released The Bloomsbury E.P.)

What sets it apart from your average indie-pop album is the subtle application of strings, mariachi horns, southern soul styling and lyrical diversity. Featuring songs about herbal tea, a glow-in-the-dark monument, paperback writers, video arcades, graffiti, and cycling, the album is a baroque gem, from the knock about call and response of the opening ‘Sadie and Andy’ to the mournful closing waltz of ‘The Wild’. Alan Horne would surely approve.

‘Cocoon of Love’ is released on September 29th through Kanine Records.

CRAYON ANGEL: A TRIBUTE TO THE MUSIC OF JUDEE SILL will be released on September 22nd by American Dust.

Judee Sill released two albums before disappearing into obscurity and  dying of drug abuse in 1979. Her eponymous debut album gained critical acclaim in 1971 and a second album followed called ‘Heart Food’.  She  recorded demos for a third album in 1974, which only saw the light of day when released as part of a rarities album, ‘Dreams Come True, in 2005.

Crayon Angel includes contributions from Final Fantasy, Beth Orton and Grizzly Bear’s Daniel Rossen.

The full track listing is:

01 Ron Sexsmith: “Crayon Angel”

02 Beth Orton: “Reach for the Sky”

03 Daniel Rossen: “Waterfall”

04 Frida Hyvönen: “Jesus Was a Cross Maker”

05 Shalants: “Lopin Along Thru the Cosmos”

06 Final Fantasy: “The Donor”

07 Nicolai Dunger: “Soldier of the Heart”

08 Trembling Blue Stars: “Lady-O”

09 Colossal Yes: “The Phoenix”

10 Marissa Nadler & Black Hole Infinity: “The Kiss”

11 Princeton: “Down Where the Valleys Are Low”

12 The Bye Bye Blackbirds: “There’s a Rugged Road”

13 Meg Baird: “When the Bridegroom Comes”

14 Bill Callahan: “For a Rainbow”

15 P.G. Six: “Til Dreams Come True”

You can hear Daniel Rossen’s excellent version of ‘Waterfall’ HERE.

Beth Orton’s ‘Reach For The Sky’, brought to life  from sheet music as no recorded version by Sill exists, can be heard HERE.

Occupying territory somewhere between Deerhunter and Grizzly Bear, ‘You Can Have What You Want’ by San Francisco’s Papercuts is a big dreamy record. This is how early 1990s shoegaze bands would have sounded like if they had sussed that a semblance of melody was more important than a sludgy wall of sound.

Highlights include ‘Once We Walked In Sunshine’ which has more than a hint of Air in its opening riff, ‘Dictator’s Lament’ with a chorus echoing  Neil Young’s ‘Like  A Hurricane’ but done by the house band at the Blackpool Tower ballroom with its enormous whirling organ sound and ‘Jetplane’ a gorgeous slice of washed out west coast pop.

The whole album has a the feel of a sixties Merseybeat single played at thirty three and one third, which you have to say is a lot more appealing than a Merseybeat single played at 45 rpm.

Check out the Papercuts Myspace site HERE.

Dan Goldman goes by the name Luxury Pond. He has a new self-titled album out and he appears to have a My Little Pony tattoo. He has also taken time out to answer the Suitcase Orchestra Q & A.

If I were to play just one of your songs to someone who hasn’t heard your music, which would it be and why?

Boulders

You are being sent to the moon. You’re allowed to take 1 album. What is it?

Houses of the Holy by Led Zeppelin

What was the last album you bought?

Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle by Bill Callaghan
Tell us an interesting fact.

According to the book Tree by David Suzuki, it’s still not known exactly how a tree pumps water from its roots to its leaves. Some say surface tension, some say osmosis, but “the currently favored hypotheses is that evaporation from the leaves creates a vacuum behind it, and the vacuum draws water up through the xylem.”

Tell us about a band or singer we might not have heard of who should be featured on Suitcase Orchestra.

Snowblink

What film would you be a character in?

Crossroads and/or the Karate Kid

Recommend a book.

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCuller

What’s the worst record in your collection?

Well, they’re all pretty great, but I think there may be a Plastic Ono primal therapy one in the bunch.

What question should I always ask in a Q & A? And answer it please.

I’ll offer a question you should never ask instead:

What comes first, the lyrics or the music?

FInd out more about Luxury Pond HERE.