Country, Americana, Folk, Power Pop, Indie Pop
Koria Kitten Riot’s new album Songs of Hope and Science is finally coming out next Friday, January 27th, 2017 on VILD Music. Before setting a camp outside the record store, remember to listen to the lead single The Earth Will Spin Around that surfaced yesterday. I’ll get back to Koria Kitten Riot when the most likely awesome new album is out and available. Meanwhile here’s two versions of the new single.
A huge favourite during the past month has been Ryan Oxford’s forthcoming album Fa Fa Fa Fired that is due out on the 27th of January on Mama Bird Recording Co. Ryan Oxford is a songwriter from Portland, Oregon who has previously composed film scores and soundtracks, but this is his debut album. It was a long time in the making, but it was worth all the love and time he put into it.
I mostly feature the folk and country stuff these days and the pop site subtitle isn’t completely accurate anymore, but I don’t feel like changing it after 15 years of doing this. This one though is definitely for the pop kids as well. It’s got a lot of 60s pop and The Beach Boys influences and some Harry Nilsson and even AM pop too. It’s playful and enchanting and filled with beautiful melodies and lovely and lush sound. I’m not entirely sure how something so melancholic can be this much fun, but somehow this keeps me smiling most of the time. I think it works best as a whole complete piece of pop magic, but sure these individual tracks rule my world as well. Here’s the awesome title track Fa Fa Fa Fired.
I planned to take the whole January off from blog duties, but it’s proving to be rather difficult because lovely people keep on releasing wonderful songs and albums. So what else can one do than at least shortly praise them here.
I’m still completely addicted to that Litku Klemetti solo I mentioned earlier in the week (especially the b-side of that record is fantastic). I’ve also begun listening to the new self-titled Hulda Huima & Hitaat Sekunnit album and it definitely looks like I will develop a similar addiction to this one. Hulda Huima is a Helsinki-based songwriter and together with the band Hitaat Sekunnit she has created a very impressive and captivating album. This beautiful thing came out on 13th of January on the always trustworthy Helmi Levyt.
I’ve praised this amazing album by Courtney Marie Andrews several times on this blog and now I have an excellent reason to do it one more time, because the album Honest Life finally comes out in UK/Europe tomorrow 20th of January on Loose Music. I really love her songwriting. Leuven Letters was the EP of the year in 2015 and this album Honest Life took the spot #2 on my albums of the year 2016 list. A monstrously highly recommend album. I also need to reserve a vinyl copy to the local store, because I only have the digital so far and I badly need the vinyl. The songs already filled a hole in my heart, but there’s definitely a hole in my record shelf ready to be filled by this beautiful record. This is Put The Fire Out from Honest Life.