Category: Folk

TRACK | Grayson Hamm – Wasted Days

5/5 golden merles

Some nights I dream too loud.

“Wasted Days” is a particularly dreamy track concerning how one goes about parsing and processing time which is considered carelessly or poorly spent.

The production summons a form of much delicate weaving and luster. Concurrent piano and guitar drawl in subdued elaboration, insulating the reverie. Intricately overlaid, wending the way forward, each instrument aligns sequentially and percussively without tangling.

The central thesis of the song concerns the totality of experience: taking the good with the bad and recognizing them as two pieces of a greater, inextricable whole. That all happenings accumulate, the exact origins of influence are not known, and our choice of actions after the cumulative events can always contort fate to good.

It’s a lovely track full of treble and tremble, bearing much quiet resolve and confirmation of agency.

TRACK | battle ave. – i saw the egg

5/5 golden merles

It’s with some conviction I say that battle ave.’s “I SAW THE EGG” is a great relief. It is a rarity within the indie/lo-fi rock genre to produce works of properly grandiose anthemic builds. And to achieve this within a 2 minute framework is even more impressive.

The underlying characteristics feel rightly justified in their ascent: beyond the layered textures there exists a vibrant language. The scenic phrasing introduces a compelling, strange, and a fine utilization of symbols, conveying some ancient accusations, seemingly derived in part from reconnoitering and part the recollection of a vision.

Each well introduced element –Vocalization, then organ, then a hook laden synth-scale, then digi drum and backing vocals– emerges in a sequence that consecutively raises the stakes without being overcome by doubt and retreating before the next tier. The song commits to this scaling, never finding an agreeable plateau and settling in, rather always pushing just a bit further into the approaching empyrean.

Full of precarity and becoming, it is a good and small wonder. The additional 4 tracks available in preview are very much worth a look and promising as well. A valuable document, the album releases April 1st.

TRACK | Pile – No Hands

5/5 golden merles

Pile makes a kind of post-punk rock that feels to me like pure commiseration. The work fruitfully balances the lyrically introspective with a to-life-scale ominous and sweeping dread, often riding a wave of mounting instrumentation. And, importantly, there always remains an untouchable, defiant core.

The chorus of “No Hands” is a melody applied to a somewhat recontextualized quote from Voltaire and a tremendous line in its own right:

Anything too stupid to be said is sung.

The line is critical and humorous in both its origin and repurposing. The song is picking up a dialogue that has been largely dormant or at best quietly admired for three hundred years. And it is done in a type of refined media that feels worthy of contributing to the earlier discussion, expounding on it, and, even in agreement, allowing “the musician” (even one immensely aware of the limitations of their medium) to reply in some format.

It places a sort of self-loathing in a broader historical context, contrasting it with nevertheless undeterred artistic ambition, and revels in these contradictions of self-expression. And in this work you get a piece that celebrates all the doubt and glory of ever doing anything. All that adds up to feeling quite a lot bigger than most songs of any given genre.

In my ignorance, I didn’t know how well beloved these folks were, as this track was my first exposure. But seeing the support on Bandcamp is comforting and reassuring. It’s an incredible closer.

TRACK | The Paperhead – Africa Avenue

5/5 golden merles

The highly concentrated “Africa Avenue” from The Paperhead is a rich and lovingly detailed pop psych-folk tune. When this track comes up on the increasingly infinite mix cycle it is always welcome.

Each segment has a transition that is as thoughtfully crafted as the larger structures of the various verse/chorus/bridge. It has a manner of unfolding that is teeming with small flourishes of experimentation and acts as an excellent opener to the wider album set.

The primary mover of the thing is the forthright vocal performance, gilded in melted down gold records that had gone into disuse.

TRACK | Samuel Campoli – One Eye

5/5 golden merles

Samuel Campoli’s “One Eye” is a delicate and multidimensional track, something who’s size is difficult to assess. It is a kind of glittering aura phasing through a rift seen from great distance.

Parts psych-folk and freak-folk, there is within it an array of quasi-familiar attributes positioned on a foundation of vibration. The concerted warble feels equal parts ornate and obliterated.

Still, the sway has a good sense of purpose to it and in this weaving course we are united. When the drums pick up the ponderous becomes quietly devastating. The feeling reminds me of a quote from Tarkovsky’s “Stalker”:

For softness is great and strength is worthless. When a man is born, he is soft and pliable. When he dies, he is strong and hard. When a tree grows, it is soft and pliable. But when it’s dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death’s companions. Flexibility and softness are the embodiment of life. That which has become hard shall not triumph.

Glacial and gracious, it can be purchased here.

TRACK | Point No Point – Are you OK?

5/5 golden merles

In these dark times, alongside the great mass of voices demanding to be heard, pleading, there can sometime be a week or more in which I don’t hear anything I like. In these times I think maybe I should back away for a bit, that I’m not in an ideal mental space for processing new material. And that maybe I wouldn’t even know anything good if I heard it.

Then, sometimes, with great reassurance, comes, guided and meditative, a calm voice of distinction and craft. Point No Point’s “Are you OK?” is a tuning fork clanged against the side of the universe, spirited and uncommonly well calibrated.

It is that which is becoming, tangential and tactile, built before your very ears. It contains all the joys and horrors of being known. A tame trajectory, familiar, left unimpeded, that nevertheless hits the intended target. It sounds like the end while discussing the new beginning, which are coincidentally, mercifully, the same thing.

If there’s any future worth having our degraded/spoiled era will be bound up and bundled with the dark ages. But maybe some documents like this will make it out and convey we had a bit of sense and the capacity to craft things of value.

TRACK | Dr. Dog – Where’d All The Time Go?

5/5 golden merles

Every now and then you have the realization that these are more or less the good old days. That this will be the idealized era, later, despite how it all may seems day-to-day.

Stagnation from a position of decline will have relative superiority. The stress and unease will be forgotten, whether we survive or not/in either case. And the rest will be survivors bias, and how it all seemed inevitable in retrospect.

If you can have a song that is earnest in its recollecting without the rose-tinted glasses or losing the shape of the thing in the glare of some golden era, maybe this is it.

and when the fog rises / somebody sighs
who is not in disguise anymore

Alongside the well detailed and comprehensive inclusion of the faults, there is included even a kind of nostalgia for the collapse. There is a fidelity and as fair an account as is possible by one who remains to do it.

TRACK | Alex G – Southern Sky

5/5 golden merles

One gentleman that doesn’t necessarily need any further press is Alex G. But if I’m posting daily and I want to keep the quality high every now and again there’ll be a more celebrated/known entity served up. Giannascoli is a great songwriter on their 9th album.

But for those unfamiliar with the sweep and swell of these tracks, or merely revisiting from 2019, what a delicate but elaborate concert of textures and intention it is.

The density is what I find most admirable. There is such a fine synthesis of simple components that successfully conspire into this ornate folk rock tune.

It remains instantly recognizable/catchy while introducing several small experimentations alongside the blunt trauma of tradition. And it builds naturally into this commendable, gilded thing.

TRACK | Andy Shauf – The Magician

5/5 golden merles

I first heard about The Party as a Katie Von Schleicher recommendation. And may really prefer this live version from a tiny desk concert. So maybe check that version out as well if you feel the studio lacks a little bit of warmth.

But in either incarnation, the melody is a supreme and graceful thing. Full of delicate and elaborate instrumentation, it is a devastating and compelling opener to a great album.

TRACK | Aoife Nessa Frances – Here in the Dark

5/5 golden merles

As a rule I don’t trust any song over 3 minutes. There are exceptions, many of them, but generally songwriters just don’t have that much to say on any given subject. Or at least not nearly as much as they think that they do… If I wanted to hear the chorus four times I’d loop the track.

But in this case, with Aoife Nessa France’s “Here in the Dark” running to 5:14, every second feels earned.

It works in concert with the void it fills, not so much against it. Minimal instrumentation is set to the task of accompanying the singer-songwriter substratum. Glacial and understated, spirals of synth and strings fittingly accent the core elements of voice and guitar.

The song/record has a different scope and pacing to most material in the genre, but without sacrificing some underlying mechanics or the appropriate measure of attention to detail. I don’t just mean BPM, there’s a kind of assurance to it. It doesn’t take the audience for granted but also does without pandering or indulging. There’s a recurring and really well realized construction.