Country, Americana, Folk, Power Pop, Indie Pop
Montreal-based singer-songwriter Leif Vollebekk has a new album coming out on Outside Music in february. The lead-off single Off The Main Drag surfaced a few weeks back and it sounds really good to me. North Americana might turn out to be a special album. Release date is set for february 19th, so I’ll have to settle for this great single for the time being.
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It’s quite criminal that it took me so long to post this new Samae Koskinen single/video Spoon River. Both the song and the music video are wonderful. New full-lenght album to follow soon (in march I think).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAHn13kcN4I]
It’s almost february and I still haven’t selected the album of the month for january. Although in my heart I selected the moment I heard the advance mp3 promo of this wonderful album back in december. The album in question is Daniel Romano’s third album Come Cry With Me and it came out on the fairly new Normaltown Records (New West imprint) on january 22nd. Today I finally bought a physical copy from the local record store, 8raita, because mp3-files clearly weren’t enough.
Come Cry With Me is an old-fashioned country treasure. Daniel Romano just does this vintage country balladry thing so perfectly. The voice, the songwriting and the execution. Everything works from the the cover shot to the last note. A lot of Gram Parsons vibe in there as well, which is never a bad thing. Of course you could namedrop all kind of great country gents from George Jones to Waylon Jennings, but let’s not take that railroad (ok, I just did). The main thing is that this is fantastic real country music and Canadian Daniel Romano is one of the very best country singer-songwriters at the moment. He won my heart over with his second album Sleep Beneath the Willow (that ended up as #14 on my albums of the year 2011 list) and Come Cry With Me is at least equally brilliant. Here is the first single Middle Child.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6a2clM_A9Q]
Time to start writing the blog again, because a lot of great albums have already been released this year. Thomas Hine’s new album Forgive My Future definitely seem to be one of the great ones. I don’t know much about this Colorado-based songwriter. In fact, a week ago I didn’t even know who he was. But then I heard the song Bright Shining Mountains and instantly loved it. It reminded me of Iain Matthews early 70s solo albums (+ Matthews Southern Comfort stuff) and I’m totally into that kind of easy-flowing beautiful folk/folk rock. Further investigation has proved that the album Forgive My Future is full of magnificent folk songs. You’ll find two excellent sample songs (Bright Shining Mountains and Owen) below. I might need to start hunting for a physical copy.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiSPLjKBcus]
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