Country, Americana, Folk, Power pop, Indie Pop
Chris Porter and his bandmate Mitchell Vandenburg passed away in a horrible car accident on Wednesday. My deepest condolences to their families, friends and loved ones. I didn’t know Porter aside from small online interactions, but I love the songs he wrote. This is devastating, heartbreaking and I’m finding it almost impossible to accept the fact that we lost such a gifted songwriter and kindhearted human being way ahead of his time.
These days I probably mostly feature country songwriters from East Nashville, but there’s still great things happening in Finland as well. This debut full-length The Iron Door from Is This Really Me easily falls into that category. According to the press release the key to opening The Iron Door is a psycho-analytical reading of Dostoyevsky’s novel The Brothers Kamazarov. My personal Dostoyevsky education is limited to The Idiot and Crime and Punishment, so I’m not entirely sure did I find the door key, but at least the music found a window to my heart and I’m loving this album. This Helsinki-based band takes influence from folk music of the late sixties and early seventies. I think you can hear a fair share of pop melodies just as well. There’s definitely traces of indie pop in there and maybe someone like 80s -era The Go-Betweens is lurking somewhere close by. Well no matter, if I want to call it folk or pop or folk-tinged indie pop. The thing that matter is that the album is great and extremely highly recommended.
The Iron Door just came out on the Marsu on Paras label and it’s a beautiful LP+CD combo. You can buy a copy directly from them (info is on their facebook page) or from Levykauppa Äx. Here’s a couple of examples from the album.
Life has been busy and hard and my whole body aches, but thankfully there are things that have the ability to stop time and take care of me. Usually these things are songs and albums. L.A. based Kayla Cohen aka Itasca has written an absolute stunning album Open To Chance that came out 30th of September on the always magnificent Paradise Of Bachelors label. I bought a download when it came out and have lived the past week wrapped into the mesmerizing serene beauty of this album. It takes me back to that period in time in the early 00s when I bought everything I could find from artists like Sibylle Baier, Vashti Bunyan, Bridget St.John, Judee Sill, Linda Perhacs and I’m pretty confident that this amazing album can stand the test of time just as well as those classics have. This deserves a whole lot of love and longer, better actual review, but all I’m able to do right now is put the headphones on and let this captivating timeless music guide me into sleep. Here are a couple of standouts from the album, but you really need to hear the whole album.