New Music / Bonnie Prince Billy’s Lie Down in the Light

November 27, 2008 | New Music | by Francis Andrews |

One of the most gifted singer-songwriters this side of early Bob Dylan rarely makes a public appearance: his fans are getting desperate, hence the timeliness of this live album, Lie Down in the Light. The most immediately notable aspect of this, however, is the lack of difference between his concert recordings and his studio releases. This has nothing to do with squeaky clean production on the former, however: the focus should be on the genius production on past studio albums. There is perhaps no other artist around today that reaches so far out of the speakers and into your private space. More than most live recordings can offer, Oldham sounds so immediate and so clear that he may as well be sitting on the end of your bed. 1999′s I See A Darkness was completely disarming in this respect. Producer Steve Albini summed it up well: ‘He chooses the people he’s going to play with shortly before the session, so everyone is playing by the seat of their pants, and the music is at constant risk, subject to the weaknesses of whoever’s in the room’. The live album is certainly no disappointment, despite the distance between him and listener growing slightly. This time he’ll be sitting outside your window, the pane of glass giving a haunting, lo-fi quality to the sound, but still the man is right there carrying the same, heavy presence.

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New Music / Abi Tucker’s One December Moon

November 25, 2008 | New Music | by Zolton |

Australian actor and singer-songwriter, Abi Tucker, has a new album out — One December Moon — which is a startlingly good follow-up from her 2003 release, Dreamworld. We asked her about the process behind One December Moon’s recording: ‘I wanted to write another album after my first album, Dreamworld. To see it as an entire piece seemed more inspiring than to see each song individually, though I’d write each track as individuals. I would get one idea and I’d want to hear it completed with whatever instruments would suit the track. I wouldn’t just write entirely on guitar, nor on keyboard. I’d often tune the guitar to make the chord. I’d dabble in string ideas. I would try and think about the instruments that I thought might suit the original idea’. Read more

New Music / Tom Waits live in concert

August 16, 2008 | New Music | by Francis Andrews |

There are probably only a handful of artists in the world now that are a genre unto themselves; so idiosyncratic that they get their own special unit in the CD rack. Such is the case with Tom Waits, who lies somewhere across the normally clear boundary between rusty, stripped down blues and a musical product of the nuthouse. What makes him so interesting is that the root of the music isn’t so obviously the influence of a batch of seminal artists but instead the crazed inner workings of his own mind, which he has managed to adapt and project onto a market now so polluted with squeaky clean, ordinary music. Read more

Cool Websites / Juneberry 78s

April 25, 2008 | Cool Websites | by Francis Andrews |

I was nudged in the direction of this little gem of a website, especially for those partial to a bit of a knees-up, pipe on the porch every now and then. Read more