The latest release from the local singer-songwriter is beautiful, cathartic and disconcerting. Its delicate songs are deceptive, dropping the listener from light-dappled shallows into sudden, unfathomable depths.
Tag: Sound Track
Showing 1-21 of 293 results
Sound track: “Greetings from Cascade Park” by Dandelion
The band’s debut is described as “smooth and dark, sad but upbeat” on its CD Baby page. And that’s accurate, though the sadness feels more like poignancy; the pang in the change of seasons, love recalled from a distance of time.
Sound Track: Opportunity by Long Distance Relationship
The band was born as a concept right after Hurricane Katrina, culling the talents of musician friends and the songs of former New Orleanian Dave Baker, who is now based in Asheville.
Sound Track: “A White Light that Sings” by The Moon and You
Husband-and-wife musicians Ryan Furstenberg (vocals and guitar) and Melissa Hyman (vocals and cello), blend their voices and instruments and ideas into a comprehensive work.
Sound track: Self-titled debut by Celia Verbeck
There’s something springlike about the self-titled debut album by Lake Lure-based vocalist and songwriter Celia Verbeck. Lead track “Opposite the Echo” is all fresh burble and sprightly high notes. The music by Adeodat Warfield — synthesized beats and airy melodies — are well paired with Verbeck’s sweet, elastic soprano.
Sound track: “Eleven Dialogues” by Up Jumped Three
While the conversations between the instruments are active and cerebral, moods wash through the music so that it’s felt emotionally as well as intellectually.
Sound track: Rattlesnake Lodge by The Clydes
Cohen and Justin Eisenman make up the country duo The Clydes. From the opening notes of their debut album, Rattlesnake Lodge, they establish themselves as storytellers, composers of redolent scores and skilled singers of duets.
Sound track: OTG by Marcel Anton
The spatial construction of the sound alone takes it beyond any basic blues formation, but it’s easy in its experimentation, at peace with its inner weirdness and content to strut and sway no matter who might be watching.
Sound Track: Mystic Canticle by Marta Richardson
At turns cozy and exposed, myopic and panoramic, Mystic Canticle is felt as much as it’s heard. These are compositions that go deep, living in the listener’s subconscious and resonating long past the album’s final notes.
Sound Track: “In Between Dreams” by Erica Russo
Local musician Erica Russo released her new album, In Between Dreams, over the summer. And at the end of September, she put out a video for the otherworldly track, “Dreams.” Xpress checks out the album before Russo’s Nov. 11 performance at The Mothlight.
Sound track: Wintervals live show and “Can’t Win for Losing”
Melancholy that runs like a thread throughout Wintervals’ writing, but it’s a delicious sort of sadness that never devolves into gloom. “Overnight,” with the line, “I know your secret, you know mine. You know I won’t judge you, I think you’re fine,” sways softly with a kind of unselfconscious delicacy.
Sound track: “Freedom and Surrender” by Lizz Wright
Wright’s new album and fifth offering, builds on the musician’s foundation in jazz and gospel. Although the album moves through various musical genres — the sultry lilt of “The Game,” the breathless slow dance of “Right Where You Are,” the aching, gospel-infused cover of The Bee Gee’s “To Love Somebody” — every song is ultimately about Wright’s voice.
Sound track: “A Message For the Yogi” by Hank West and the Smokin’ Hots
Reality meets science fiction on Hank West & the Smokin’ Hots’ recent release. If this album is anything to go by, it catches the group at a moment of high energy, fantastical ideas and tight musicianship — a combination that works for the heady and highly imaginative collection of songs.
Sound track: “Lovecraft” by Chris Jamison
Lovecraft’s nine tracks are more lush and stylized than typical singer-songwriter fare, more laid-back than typical indie-rock. iTunes insists they’re pop, but each song is a world unto itself with careful and joyful interplay between musicality and lyrics.
Sound Track: “Where Were You” by PJ Bond
PJ Bond’s catch phrase for his sound is “honest music about real things” — and that’s a damn good summation, but it suggests bit more earnestness than the 11 tracks of Where Were You actually reveal. Not that the songs are without integrity. In fact, with continued play, they seem to peel back layers, revealing strata of meaning, insight and imagery.
Sound track: “Xenography” by Chris Stack
Xenography, the new album by composer and musician Chris Stack is intensely observant and deeply peaceful. It’s not an album that commands you to listen, that stage dives and struts and makes a spectacle of itself. But to really pay attention to these songs is to go into a deeper, quieter, slower-paced place; a place welling with its own life forms and pulses and magic.
Sound track: stephaniesid releases “Excavator”
The new album from local pop-noir band stephaniesid officially releases on Tuesday, June 9. The 11 tracks delve into themes of hope, fear, aspiration, ambitions, failure, acceptance and what it truly means to be an artist.
Sound Track: “Kisses to the Sky” by Oulipo
Part experimental, part indie-pop, Kisses to the Sky — the new release from N.C.-based collective Oulipo is as risky as it is dreamy. The album “takes inspiration from the studio pop melodrama of Talk Talk, Phil Collins, and the two Bruces (Springsteen & Hornsby)” says the group’s Bandcamp page.
Sound Track: Self-titled EP by Magenta Sunshine
“Half a Heart,” the lead track to the self titled debut EP from local indie-soul outfit Magenta Sunshine, might have a sad-sounding name, but it plays like a tropical beach party.
Sound track: “Stars and Dust” by Songs of Water
Stars and Dust, the new album by Songs of Water (out in June), is not easy listening — which is not to say it’s un easy listening. But these 10 tracks demand attention. From the first staccato notes of “11 Miles,” the album is a journey, transportive and transformative.
Sound Track: “Colors Run” by Running on E
Local pop-punk outfit Running on E gets right to the heart of the matter. “Don’t waste away, don’t burn away the light that I refused,” sings vocalist Nick Norton in the urgent opening notes of “Vagrants and Vagabonds.”