Reviews

The Duke & The King: Nothing Gold Can Stay

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The Duke & The King: Nothing Gold Can Stay (Loose Records, 2009)

One more american record… or maybe the american record of the year. Okay, some treasures like The Avett Brothers album haven’t been released yet, so let’s not start making those end of the year lists now. However, The Duke & The King have really created an almost perfect album and I have completely fallen in love with it.

The Duke & The King are Simone Felice & Robert “Chicken” Burke. Simone Felice was the drummer for The Felice Brothers which is one of my favourite bands and therefore I had really high hopes for The Duke & The King, but I still wouldn’t have guessed I would end up loving this even more than any The Felice Brothers album (that’s a lot of love, almost like an overdoze). Simone Felice is also an author and it’s no wonder that  Nothing Gold Can Stay is lyrically strong and contains heartbreaking storytelling wrapped into beautiful americana, folk and even country-soul songs.  The characters of the songs have met the darker corners of life, but there’s a sense of vulnerable optimism around. I kind of love the simplicity of the record. It might even sound lazy, but this bare and sensitive approach is always the best way to go.. if you can write songs, you don’t need to hire the royal philharmonic orchestra. Especially If You Ever Get Famous, The Morning I Get To Hell, Union Street, Water Spider, Summer  Morning Rain and One More American Song are utterly wonderful songs and Nothing Gold Can Stay is one of the finest albums of the year.

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The Duke & The King at myspace
 
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MFM1wrocyM]

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Finnish music, News

The Micragirls

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The Micragirls is about to release their second album Wild Girl Walk on 9th of september. I’m looking forward to this garage rock’n’roll blast. It should be a whole lot of fun. Summer’s gone/Girl Go Crazy download single is out now exclusively at Bone Voyage Shop. You can listen the a-side (can you say that about download-single) also on their myspace. It’s actually a great pop song and should appeal to pop fans as well. No wonder I think it’s absolutely gorgeous and perhaps my favourite The Micragirls song so far. I do like that garage rock stuff a lot as well, but well pop music is the thing that is closest to my heart and therefore I wouldn’t mind if there were more songs like Summer’s Gone on Wild Girl Walk. However, I promise not to be too dissapointed, if there aren’t because I’m fairly confident it will be a really good record no matter what.

The Micragirls Website
The Micragirls at myspace
Bone Voyage shop

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General, International music

Shindig!

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New Shindig! magazine arrived last friday and like I’ve said before it’s absolutely brilliant psych / garage / power pop / folk etc mag. Actually it’s the finest rock magazine there is and I’m not even the biggest 60’s freak there is. It’s just so refreshing to see cover stories about bands like The Flamin’ Groovies, The Pretty Things, Julie Driscoll instead of that seventh hundred Bob Dylan / Neil Young / Bruce piece. Plus it feels like every story and every tale is written with love, care and passion. The review section is torture for my bank account though. Where can I find the money to buy all those beautiful reissues they are introducing to me? What is that new band I’ve never heard of with all those cool influences?

This new sep-oct issue actually comes with a sampler cd full of songs by these bands I’ve never heard of. Well I do own The Beep Seals, The Campbell Stokes Sunshine Recorder albums and an older El Goodo album. And The Higher State, The Junipers and Jim Jones Revue albums have been on my shopping list for a long while, but the rest is pretty much new to me. There’s a couple of songs I don’t like at all (especially Diagonal is not my cup of tea at all), but most of it is really good. The ones I mentioned above are all great (I should buy The Higher State album asap I think, pretty perfect 60’s west coast / byrds stuff) and the first new band I’ve gotten addicted to is The Magnificent Brotherhood and their song Lifetime. It’s a german garage / psych band whose debut album was released last year. I need to go and spend some time listening to their other songs. Same probably applies to many other artist on this discs.

Shindiq! Website
The Magnificent Brotherhood at myspace
The Higher State at myspace
The Junipers at myspace
The Beep Seals at myspace
The Campbell Stokes Sunshine Recorder at myspace
El Goodo at myspace
Jim Jones Revue at myspace

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