New The Props album Mt. Karma will be released next wednesday 5.5.2010. It’s full of good stuff.. and you can check out some of this new good stuff on their myspace.
Review: The .357 String Band – Lightning From The North
The .357 String Band: Lightning From The North (2010)
String bands with a little punk and rock’n’roll background seem to be the thing for me at the moment. My latest finding is The .357 String Band from Milwaukee and I’ve been listening to them an awfully lot lately. Lightning From The North is their third album if I’m not mistaken and while I don’t think it’s absolutely perfect as a whole, it certainly has a lot of drop dead gorgeous moments. Especially Oh, Adilene, Days To Engrave and Rags to Rags are totally brilliant and you just can’t get tired of them. Believe me, I’ve tried and listened to each of these 3 tracks about 50 times during the last couple of weeks based on last.fm.
Lightning From The North contains a lot of highly energic, hard driving and banjo-driven bluegrass ready to bite into your bones, but in the end, the moments when they take the foot of the gas are the ones that leave the most lasting mark on my body. This doesn’t mean that the songs that fall into that first category aren’t any good. All of this biteful bluegrass that they call streetgrass is extremely enjoyable and the songs are either really good or just awesome like Darkness In My Soul and the already mentioned Rags To Rags. It’s just that when they slow down just a little bit, they are able to deliver something heavenly brilliant like Oh Adilene and Days To Engrave. Even though about 2/3 of the album is only really good and nothing totally exceptional, it’s still totally impossible not to fall in love with Lightning from the North, because the remaining third sounds like the best thing ever and contains some of the finest songs of the year.
Listen to Oh, Adilene:
[audio:http://www.onechord.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/06-oh-adilene.mp3]
The .357 String Band Website
The .357 String Band at myspace
Review: Hi-Lo & In Between – The Lonely Bird
Hi-Lo & In Between: The Lonely Bird (Lumpeela julkaisut, 2010)
Recently I reviewed The Fox Hunt album and mentioned that more bands should have violin, mandolin and upright bass in their instrument arsenal. Therefore it’s about time to write about this wonderful finnish folk & country band called Hi-Lo & In Between who have all those instruments and are pretty marvellous in every other perspective as well.
The Lonely Bird is the second Hi-Lo & In Between album. I liked their debut album White Whale, but for some reason I never completely fell in love with it. I should pick it up from the shelf and check out have my opinions changed. It might have been just a case of me being an ignorant fool. If this was the case, I plea on temporary insanity. Anyway, I’m cured now, I’m in love with The Lonely Bird and I’m thrilled that there are bands like Hi-Lo & In Between in this country. This is just beautiful and magical folk music that is so carefully and thoughtfully arranged. Take a combination of traditional british and american folk & country music, flavour it with a spoonful of finnish melancholia and you might get somewhere close. Even though the closest compatriots come from abroad, old Office Building fans should also take note, because I think this gets suprisingly close to debut-era Office Building on a couple of occasions and if you know me that is definitely not a bad thing (especially title track The Lonely Bird could be a brilliant lost outtake from To See Only Shadows, both style and qualitywise).
The Lonely Bird is a wonderful album and the band Hi-Lo & In Between deserves a lot of credit for creating this warm and gentle folk treasure. It really doesn’t get much better than this and hopefully more and more folks will introduce their hearts to Hi-Lo & In Between. The Lonely Bird is my favourite finnish album of the year so far.