New album from Beacon Street Radiants

beacon

Beacon Street Radiants was a really good Turku-based americana / folk rock group that released fine little releases some years ago. Before quitting in 2010 or thereabouts, the band recorded a full-length album that never saw the light of the day back then. Thankfully a brand new local label One Clean Sound thought that the album is just too good to remain criminally unreleased and released Beacon Street Radiants self-titled album on 1st of march 2013. After listening to the album a few times, I can fully agree with them. This (almost lost) album is pretty damn good and definitely worthy of an official release.

You can order the album directly from the label. Visit their facebook for more information. Also the local 8raita record store has the album in stock. This is the excellent Your Heart from the album.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqJQ0eEvHd4]

Beacon Street Radiants at Facebook
One Clean Sound at Facebook

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Album of the Month: Small Houses – Exactly Where You Wanted To Be

The new Small Houses album Exactly Where You Wanted To Be is due out 26th of february on Yer Bird Records. I’m a bit early then, but this needs to be album of the month and it feels like march is too far away. I’ve been a huge fan of Jeremy Quentin’s folk project Small Houses since the previous album North came out in 2011. That was my first encounter with Small Houses and Jeremy instantly won my heart over. In the end, North ended up #6 on my albums of the year list and Late July was my favourite song of the year.

The new album Exactly Where You Wanted To Be is just as impressive as North was. Objectively speaking it’s even more impressive, because Jeremy has since become even stronger and more confident songwriter without losing the fragile and gentle honesty of his music (subjectively the album that made you found a new artist to love, always has that certain magic surrounding it). Exactly Where You Wanted To Be contains only eight songs, but it still holds more depth, value and subtle grace inside than most double albums do. It’s definitely my favourite record of the year so far (ok, I’m just starting with the new Frontier Ruckus, so Small Houses might soon have a contender). There are a lot of good folk singer-songwriter albums out there, but these songs are just so well crafted and beautifully phrased that the album stands out, grabs your arm and takes you out for a date that might turn into a lifelong relationship.

This is Oh, Hiding Out from the new album. There’s also a video for Our Sweet coming out soon and I will post that later on as a video of the day. There’s also a brand new Folkadelphia session at bandcamp. And there might be more great Small Houses news later in the year, if things work out. Oh and you can obviously already pre-order the album from Yer Bird.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eC78dgDvFQ]

Small Houses Website
Small Houses at Facebook

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The Glass Mountain

Some brand new Finnish music. The Glass Mountain is a one-man electronic indie band. The pop wizard behind The Glass Mountain is Mika Mäkilaakso and he just released the first three Glass Mountain songs. Style-wise this might not be the closest thing to my heart, but I need to write a few words, because the songs are pretty damn good. I especially like the first one The Grey. Such a great song.. and as a bonus there are a few moments in there that takes me back to the days when Ben Gibbard meant the world to me. You can listen all three songs on his bandcamp/soundcloud. This is The Grey.

The Glass Mountain at Facebook
The Glass Mountain at Soundcloud
The Glass Mountain at Bandcamp

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Jacco Gardner – Cabinet of Curiosities

Oh my. I’m just listening to the new Jacco Gardner album on soundcloud for the first time and I’m pretty stunned. Jacco Gardner from the Netherlands is making wonderful baroque pop, psych pop and the Cabinet of Curiosities is out on Trouble In Mind and Excelsior Recordings on february 11th. The debut single was a video of the day a year ago, so I knew Jacco was great and going places, but still I didn’t expect his debut to be so mindblowingly awesome as Cabinet Of Curiosities seems to be. Ok, it’s still early days, I haven’t even listened the whole thing yet, but I just love everything I hear so much that I already had to start spreading the word. This one below is Summer’s Game. You can stream the whole beautiful album at soundcloud and Spotify.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us9DyoKnR18]

Jacco Gardner Website
Jacco Gardner at Facebook

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