The big and most pleasant suprise of the week was the release of a new Ryan Tanner album Promised Land. Together Is Where We Belong was such a beautiful album a few years back and songs like Days To Think Of You have been a part of my DNA ever since. Oh how I still love the peaceful hurt of that song.
New album Promised Land sounds equally amazing and it’s available at Bandcamp (name your price). Kiki Jane Sieger deliver beautiful backing vocals to some of the songs. Their voices fit together so beautifully and lift these already great songs to a new level (I hope we get something new from The Souvenirs as well, because I wouldn’t mind hearing more of Kiki’s voice). Ryan Tanner has again created a special album and I know I will be resting my tired body in the peaceful comfort of this album.
And here’s that Days to Think Of You from the earlier album. This could well be a song on that 15 anniversary thing I started today. So brilliant.
In a couple of weeks (September 17 to be more precise) this little amateur-ish blog turns 15. The summer flew by fast and I was too lazy to set up anything to celebrate this minor event. Minor in the grand scheme of things, but quite a big deal for me personally. Despite all its flaws, I’m still far prouder of this little hobby than anything I’ve achieved in the real work life. I don’t really know anything about music theory and couldn’t learn to play an instrument to safe my life, but One Chord to Another has never been about music critique or writing analytic pieces about music. The whole purpose has been just to love music passionately and wholeheartedly and share those crushes and lifelong addictions with the world or the few regular readers.
I’m not really sure what the future holds from now on. Even though I love doing this, this is also a giant drain on me, because I’m continuously stressed about not having the time and energy to write about everything that matters to me. The goal was to get to 15 and soon I will be there. I’ll finish this year as usual and figure out in January what’s the next move. I guess the options are a) just quit b) carry on as before c) find some new less draining method to continue this. C might be the preferred option at the moment, because I might not have the heart to stop completely, because onechord.net has been such a big part of my life for such a long time. As long as I could figure out the way to do it without the guilt of neglecting that and that awesome release. We shall see how it goes.
While I don’t have anything super special planned for this anniversary, I thought I’ll at least do what onechord.net is all about. So leading up to the September 17 blog birthday, I will be sharing the songs that I’ve fallen madly in love with during these 15 years of onechord.net. Mostly focusing to the last five I think, because I covered some important ones when I reached 10 years. It’s very obvious that I have to start this thing with my biggest song crush of recent years. Fuck The Government, I Love You by The Burning Hell. I’ve probably listened to this a few hundred times, but I just can’t get tired of it. You’ll find the song from the latest The Burning Hell album Public Library that came out in the spring on the great BB Island label.
Chris Staples has been on heavy rotation here lately. A month ago I fell in love with the first outtake Relatively Permanent from his new album Golden Age. That little tune is still one of my favourite songs of the year and I also bought the download of the earlier album, which turned out to be brilliant. The new album came out yesterday 19th of August on Barsuk Records . I haven’t listened to the whole thing yet, but I will buy a vinyl as soon as possible. However, there’s a new video for the title track Golden Age that I haven’t posted yet. The song is almost as good Relatively Permanent and somehow this video with renaissance costumes made me think of Gilmore Girls. So what’s not to love. I admit that I might be waiting too hard for the forthcoming Gilmore Girls comeback, because even such a far-fetched thing reminds me about that show.
And here’s that gorgeous Relatively Permanent as well.
I’m still way behind with these blog writings. Here’s an album that I’ve been enjoying all summer long. It’s the new and excellent Big Shoals album Hard Lessons. Big Shoals are from Gainesville, Florida and have created a pretty convincing americana album. Some of it is highly entertaining and some of it is very moving. Here’s an example from both categories. Union Son and You Ain’t Nothing Like The Girls Back Home. You can guess which one falls into which category. Obviously most songs fall into both categories. Union Son features mr. Todd Beene from the Glossary fame on pedal steel. Hard Lessons came out July 15th and can be bought from their website.
