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Richard Allen – In the Front Room & James Frost – Nameless

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richardallen

I don’t really know anything about Richard Allen. I just saw the cover art of his record In The Front Room on Bandcamp’s new arrivals and it just kind of looked like one that I might like, so I decided to hit the play button. It was a rather splendid decision, because I was hooked in a few seconds when Richard Allen started playing and beautiful, quite traditional English folk music filled the air. I bought the digital download after listening to this for a few minutes. I’m not the biggest expert on English / British folk music, but this certainly takes me back to the early 70s where people like Nick Drake, Bert Jansch, Sandy Denny and Kevin Ayers ruled the world. I’m loving this wholeheartedly at the moment. You can stream(+buy) the whole magically enchanting folk album at Bandcamp. This is Will I Ever Lean? from the album.

Richard Allen at Facebook

jamesfrost

Staying on the same ballpark. James Frost is also an English folk musician whose new Nameless EP reflects the spirit of those 70s English folk maestros I mentioned above. I’ve had this on the play list for several weeks and I like it a lot. Especially this title track Nameless is just wonderful. You can again buy / stream the whole thing over at Bandcamp.

James Frost Website

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Album of the Month: Frontier Ruckus – Sitcom Afterlife

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frontierruckus

Michigan’s Frontier Ruckus is pretty much the best band in the world right now. I joined the party rather late maybe a couple of years ago and when the previous album Eternity of Dimming came out in early 2013, they completely won my heart over. I kept on listening to that wonderful thing throughout the year and it was clearly my favourite album of that year. Despite all that new music that keeps on coming through the doors and windows that album is something that I still return to on almost weekly basis and still play a couple of songs from it each time I’m on DJ duty at Flavour of the Month club.

Their fourth album Sitcom Afterlife came out yesterday and after listening to it about 8 or 9 hours today, I can already confirm that it’s another wonderful album. This time they’ve gone into more melodic direction and even namedropped most of my all-time favourites like Big Star, Teenage Fanclub and Matthew Sweet as influences. It looks like they are onto me or something. It’s still pretty far from your typical pop record though. It’s not as lyrically heavy as Eternity of Dimming, but it still has more words than I can count. So we are certainly not going into that “She loves you yeah yeah” -territory. This new more melodic side fits nicely into their unique sound galore and the end result is once again magnificent. You are going to need this album. It’s now out on Quite Scientific.. and it’s also out and available in Finland, so I’m going to pick my copy from the local 8raita record store when it arrives. Here are a couple of songs that tell you much more than my pointless ramblings. Bathroom Stall Hypnosis and Crabapples in the Century’s Storm from the new album.

Frontier Ruckus Website

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Small Houses – New single Staggers and Rise and album pre-order

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Still-Talk-Small-Houses

Small Houses announced new album a couple of days ago, set up a pre-order page and released the first single from the forthcoming album. This was by far the biggest and most exciting news of the week on the One Chord to Another scale, because Small Houses aka Jeremy Quentin is one of my favourite singer-songwriters these days. The album titled Still Talk; Second City will hit the record stores and our hearts in February, 2015, but the first single Staggers and Rise is already available and sounds absolutely wonderful. Listen to it below and check out his website for more information about the new album. You can also pre-order a vinyl or CD copy there. As long as things go as planned, Small Houses will also return to Finland next spring to play a set of shows with his Finnish friends Ochre Room.

Oh and this future classic that already surfaced last year will also be on the new album. Small Houses – Old Habits.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGAkkQy-d3c]

Small Houses Website

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Daniel Markham – Pretty Bitchin’

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markham

Daniel Markham from Denton, TX released his new album Pretty Bitchin’ yesterday 31.10.2014 and I instantly fell in love with it. Damn it feels good to be so ridiculously excited about a new album. It’s early days, but I think this is going to be an album of the year contender here at onechord.net. I have a bit of flu at the moment and playing this as loud as possible is the best medicine I can think of. I don’t really know the man, but it feels like I’ve listened to the same US 90s and early 00s indie rock and alternative rock albums when growing up. The wonderful Canadian The Weakerthans aslo comes to mind while listening to the opening track Make Believe and the record also reminds me of Finnish Penniless here and there (especially Coming Down). And that’s a high praise, because Penniless is one of the all-time greats. But enough with the pointless namedropping. This is Daniel’s show and he has created a damn impressive rock album. The whole thing was made in a couple of days, but why waste time in long and often pointless finetuning. This just let go and capture the moment thing certainly worked wonderfully for Pretty Bitchin’. Buy the album from Bandcamp and play it loud. I’m sure your neighbours will also be eager to hear such a magnificent record.

Daniel Markham at Facebook

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