Kyp Harness – Stoplight Moon
Canadian folk singer-songwriter Kyp Harness is widely respected among his peers, but way too unknown at least on this corner of the world where yours truly resides. Unfortunately his song vault isn’t my expertise either, because I’ve only been aware of him for a few years and I’m only familiar with the albums The Wrong Way and Can a Poor Man Get A Fair Trial? The latter one has a song that I really love called The Old Crone In The Forest. It’s a wonderful song that reminds me of the late great Townes Van Zandt with whom Kyp has also shared a stage.
Kyp Harness just released his new album Stoplight Moon and I’ve been listening to it a lot lately. It ranges from unashamedly romantic slices of melodic pop heaven all the way to a country song of the hurtin’ kind. My own favourite is this album opener All I Need that is a great pop song. It also reminds me a bit of The Go-Betweens, which is never a bad thing.
Steven James Adams – Ideas (video)
Back after a small Easter break. Watching hockey playoffs will take a lot of the spare time during the coming weeks, but I do have plans to write a lot of blog posts during this final year. Incredible amount of great releases have just been released or will be released during April. I need a 2nd job to buy everything I want and an extra month write about them all. So I can’t feature everything, but I try to write about the ones I love the most.
Let’s kickstart this with a fairly new Steven James Adams video Ideas that I just watched several times. His new album Old Magick has been out for almost a month on the great Fortuna POP! label, but I still haven’t heard it. So this is also a reminder to myself. This is something that I need to listen. Steven is a a great British songwriter and someone that I’ve listened to for over 10 years I think. The Broken Family Band was a big fave during the mid- and late 00s. After that it was Singing Adams and now Steven James Adams. Different names, same brilliance. I hope I manage to write more about this when I’ve heard the whole thing. At least Ideas and the earlier single Togetherness are both wonderful. This is Ideas.
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=XUzrnP-0Ruw]
Richmond Fontaine – New album and Finnish tour reminder
Richmond Fontaine’s new and final album You Can’t Go Back, If There’s Nothing To Go Back To is now out and available on Decor Records and Fluff and Gravy. I’ve only listened to it a few times, but it’s already safe to say that they are going out with a bang. The High Country was good, but perhaps a little too challenging for my limited taste. This new one on the other hand. Oh my. This sounds absolutely brilliant and I can’t get wait to get fully drawn into these songs and stories during the coming days/weeks. Richmond Fontaine is one of the very best bands of the last twenty years and will be greatly missed. However, when it’s time to step aside, this is a magnificent way to do it. Release a 5 hearts out of 5 record and go on a tour to support it.
Thankfully Richmond Fontaine’s final tour will reach Finnish shores as well. They will be here in a few weeks time. These are duo concerts, but I’m still sure that these are going to be something very special. The Finland dates are these:
Richmond Fontaine (duo) + Fernando Finland tour.
5.4 – Helsinki, FI – Korjaamo
6.4 – Tampere, FI – Telakka
7.4 – Turku, FI – Gong
This is Whitey and Me from the new Richmond Fontaine album You Can’t Go Back, If There Nothing To Go Back To.
Caleb McCoach – Vanity
Aimlessly browsing Bandcamp has been very rewarding lately. I’ve fallen in love with two albums during the past week. First that Nick Procyshyn album that I already wrote about and find absolutely thrilling and now this new Caleb McCoach album Vanity that I found yesterday and been listening to for hours and hours today.
Caleb McCoach is a folk singer-songwriter from Indianapolis and his new album just came out on In Store Recordings. There’s a serene and at times even hymnal beauty on this that fills my heart with warmness. Sure there’s a lot of sadness and fragility too, but somehow it gets overshadowed by the peace that runs through me while I’m listening to this. I can’t say I’m a very religous person, but a song like Love Yr Neighbor has a certain spiritual harmony that will find even the parts of my body that can’t be found from a human anatomy encyclopedia. The album sounds quite bare and lo-fi, but that’s actually a good thing and only adds to the intimacy and honesty of this little work of art. You can hear/buy the whole thing on his Bandcamp, but here are a couple of amazing songs from the album.
Small update a few days later:
This album is still so brilliant and I’ve spent a huge amount of time listening to it. Heavy issues so beautifully told. Painfully devastating human weaknesses and amazingly beautiful delivery go hand in hand. Vanity is a truly stunning album. I’m not sure does it really make sense, but it kind of does two things simultaneously, rips me open and makes me whole. It’s a real work of art.