I know I’m bit overdoing the blog at the moment, but I can’t help it. I’m finally on vacation from the day job, so I have time for this dear hobby. So I put together another one of these silly Four Arms to Hold You entries for tonight. I’m not sure is it a strength or a weakness that the last post contained countrified rock’n’roll and this time I’m approaching pop music from a few different angles. Too very different, but equally awesome things.
This pop goes the world tour starts from Toronto, Canada with the glorious new Ian Daniel Kehoe album Secret Republic. It was co-released by You’ve Changed Records and Tin Angel Records on the 22nd of March. He has released several awesome records under the moniker Marine Dreams, but this time he went with his given name. The music world also knows or should know him as a masterly drummer who has played with The Weather Station, Andy Shauf and Julia Jacklin. Anyway, back to the new album Secret Republic, which is an awesome pop triumph. Synth pop, a whole lot of 80s, danceable rhythms. If I look that in written form, it looks like it couldn’t be much further from music taste. But if I hit play and listen, it sounds like it couldn’t be any closer to my taste. Inconceivable!
He is currently touring with Daniel Romano in Sweden and Norway, so catch his show if you possibly can. A shame he isn’t on the bill on STHLM Americana (understandable, because one would have to stretch the genre limit pretty far to include this..), because I would love to see him play live and grap a vinyl copy of the album too.
Heading to Glasgow, Scotland for a date with the new The Pearlfishers album Love & Other Hopeless Things that came out on Marina Records on the 26th of April. Their music has been by my side throughout my whole adult life and I will carry David Scott’s songs in my heart for as long as I breathe. The new album is again full of beautiful melodies and timeless pop arrangements. Here’s a lyric video for album outtake Could Be a Street Could Be a Saint.
Back across the pond to Oakland, CA for the new Natural Bridges album Residual Daydreams that just came out last Friday on Royal Oakie. I’m new to Natural Bridges and just a month or so ago I was hooked into their Good Medicine album. I actually thought it was brand new until I saw more Natural Bridges songs coming out and found out that it was their old record from 2013 that Royal Oakie reissued before this new one. Anyway, I already love this band and this is so completely my kind of music. They are blending together all kinds of things that I love. Timeless pop melodies, mellow soul moods, gentle 70s west coast folk rock plus namedropping a list of my all-time faves like Brian Wilson, Big Star, Todd Rundgren, Badfinger and so forth on the press release. I will keep on shouting their name from the rooftops. Here’s a great song from each of these great records showing two different sides of Natural Bridges.
If you are fan of Finnish pop music and/or have followed this page during its early years you might remember a lovely band called Le Futur Pompiste. If you loved them like I did, I have good news for you. LFP’s Einar Ekström lives in Stockholm these days and he has started a new group with Siri Af Burén. They are called Astral Brain and they released their debut single From Above / Field Trip in April. I hope this is just the beginning, because both songs are utterly wonderful. These charming pop sounds makes me want to dig up my collection of 60s/70s soft pop-psych and that’s never a bad thing. Just ah.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLvMDMF4ZIo
Four Arms to Hold You is an ongoing feature with a weird name. It might not contain a whole lot of words, but it does contain a whole lot of love towards the featured songs. Basicly this is just four albums / songs / artists that have done their part in holding me together and therefore I want to tell the world or the seven readers of this blog how much I love them. Not entirely sure do these kind of posts serve any kind of purpose and I do hope I manage to write longer posts too. Right now it just feels like the playlists and these kind of short posts are the only way to keep this dear hobby alive. Plus it’s really the music that matters, not my random ramblings and these posts will always contain magical music.