Pitstop: Brooklyn Rider

My discovery of New York City based string quartet Brooklyn Rider occurred due to the awesomeness that is NPR and their Tiny Desk Concerts and actually marks the first time I'm talking about classical music on this blog. Equally comfortable playing Debussy, Haydn, and Cage; the string quartet also teams up with singer/songwriters, Turkish kamancheh players, and plays some of its own members' compositions. To call the band purely a classical group actually doesn't accurately describe the quartet or its goals. Brooklyn Rider is a unique blend of influences wishing to stretch across a wide terrain through the vehicle of the string quartet. Instead of isolating itself in any one period of classical music or any school of musical thought, the quartet uses its four talented members to weave together these musical tapestries that can best be described as genre-bending. Not in the sense that artists like David Garrett or Vanessa Mae or even the Turtle Island String Quartet bend genre but into this totally different, raw, organic thing. Their latest release Dominant Curve is inspired by Debussy and how he brought outside influences into classical music and joins together Debussy's own String Quartet in g minor with works by Brooklyn Rider violinist Colin Jacobsen, Kojiro Umezaki from Japan, Dmitri Yanov-Yanovski from Uzbekistan, and an electronic/acoustic arrangement of a John Cage work by Brooklyn based composer Justin Messina. The result is this product that is universally accessible both to classical music lovers and others.

Check out Brooklyn Rider with their NPR Tiny Desk Concert that won me over:

Lykke Li announces new album

Fresh off the release of her sultry "Get Some" single and video, Lykke Li offered up some album details. The new album entitled Wounded Rhymes will be out in early March (the end of February if you're one of those lucky devils in the UK) and promises to be much darker than her sweetly innocent 2008 debut Youth Novels. Sure, the album had the Swedish singer declaring her fiery passion and work ethic on "I'm Good, I'm Gone" and banishing a lovelorn lover in "Breaking It Up" but they were done in kind of a cutesy way and Lykke Li is over that. Her sophomore album, produced by Peter, Bjorn, and John's Bjorn Yttling and released on her own LL Recordings, will see a more grown up but still remarkably independent Lykke Li. Not surprising with lyrics like "I'm your prostitute and you gon' get some" off the single. In an interview with Pitchfork, Lykke Li expresses her desire to be de-categorized as a cute Swedish female singer and instead for people to focus on her lyrics and what she has to say, instead of her looks. Here's hoping, Lykke Li.

Check out the tracklist for Wounded Rhymes out Febuary 28th in the UK, March 1st in the US, March 2nd in Swedish, and worldwide the first week of March:

1. Youth Knows No Pain
2. I Follow Rivers
3. Love Out of Lust
4. Unrequited Love
5. Get Some
6. Rich Kid Blues
7. Sadness Is a Blessing
8. I Know Places
9. Ladies Love
10. Jerome
11. Silent My Song

She's also heading out on another worldwide tour (after playing the last of her sold out shows in December) in March. See if Lykke Li will be in a city near you here.

Left With Pictures' November In Time

Well it's the last Monday of the month so that means British chamber pop-pers Left With Pictures are serving up another brand new In Time video. I was awaiting the arrival of their November In Time since immediately after their October one since I was curious what they'd use for inspiration. Abroad there's no major holiday in November like Thanksgiving in the US, so they'd probably find inspiration in other things. Their latest In Time song/video "Stuck In Time" is a curiously little thing. Dark sounding like last month's "October Waits" but also way more colored and full of flushed out sounds, the In Time shows what amazing things can happen when a talented bunch of instrumentalists get together. The video, directed by Chad Mason and shot in a single take by Greg Harris, features Stuart Barter traveling backwards through a house while band members occasionally swoop in to add their instrumental parts in before Barter joins the band in the outside garden-area with his banjo and some choral-like group vocals. The rather dark sounding nostalgia-fueled tone of the song changes at times, towards hopefulness and a little something more before suddenly just sorta cutting off. The interesting thing about the track was the finality of it all, it very well could have been the last In Time track but it's not and makes me incredibly excited about next month's.

Watch November's In Time "Stuck In Time":



Left With Pictures is currently offering up a limited edition of their upcoming In Time album for pre-order. The special edition comes with a 2011 wall calendar, a CD and a DVD featuring the 12 videos, and a poster. So if this sounds like your cup of tea, you can order it from the band's record label Organ Grinder Records here.

Stricken City eases album wait with new video...sort of

So while British pop rock outfit Stricken City keeps fans guessing as to the actual release date of their debut album, they have given the occasional reprieve like the summer's free Animal Festival EP. With the new redesign of their website they've offered up a new one in the form of another album track "Losing Colour" which has a music video in the works, and now thanks to a friend of theirs they have a new video. Only it's not quite what you'd expect. It's a fan video of My So Called Life using their track "Corridors" which is inspired by the series. The track seems to follow the band's recent transformation from jangly dance-y pop into something more ethereal and precise. Whereas Rebekah Raa's lyrics were pretty gloomy before, the music they're set to actually shows that. Anyone whose listened to the band's mini album Songs About People I Know wouldn't be surprised by this artful departure from their "norm" but it still shows that the band is growing. Which is pretty awesome considering most bands grow after their debut albums. Enjoy the fan video featuring "Corridors":

The Voluntary Butler Scheme - At Breakfast, Dinner, Tea.

Sure bands are often influenced by music from times gone by, some even do decent replications, but so few times does someone channel that inspiration and influence in something dynamically unique. That's where The Voluntary Butler Scheme aka Rob Jones comes in. On his debut album At Breakfast, Dinner, Tea., Jones calls forth his '50s and '60s influences to create innocently sweet, subtle, bright sunny indie-pop that will melt even the iciest of hearts. His melodies are infectiously well-crafted, memorable, singable, catchy, and his lyrics are smart in this remarkably off-kilter way where they both do and don't matter at the same time.
Probably the most surprising thing about Jones' album is that he plays the majority of the instruments you hear on it. This might be surprising to some who notice that ensemble sound that he manages to get from himself and is the reason Jones goes down as one of my favorite one-man-bands. He's assisted by a couple friends on several tracks to play additional instruments (mostly horns), but you'd be surprised how little times he actually is. He's assisted on only 4 out of the 14 tracks by only four people. That's impressive.

One of the things I love about At Breakfast, Dinner, Tea is that even though he splits the album into three sections, the songs all work together. Several of the songs he had written before work on the album actually serve to anchor the album in this remarkably gratifying way. Usually when someone predominantly plays drums like Rob Jones (who used to be the drummer for retro indie pop group The School), melody comes almost second to rhythm but not here. His melodies are fully flushed out and just really fun to listen to. So fans of talented multi-instrumentalists specializing in unique melodic indie-pop rejoice: The Voluntary Butler Scheme is after your heart and sure to win it with his charmingly quirky debut album.

The Tallest Man on Earth - Sometimes The Blues Is Just A Passing Bird EP

The Tallest Man on Earth aka Swedish folk singer/songwriter Kristian Matsson released his sophomore album The Wild Hunt earlier this year in April, an album that reached songwriting heights I didn't think were previously possible. Turns out, the charming Swede has songwriting skills positively pouring out of him as within a small break from touring in support of the album in the summer, he had time to write four brand spanking new songs which he has released with a fan-favorite concert closer "Like the Wheel" in the form of his new Sometimes The Blues Is Just A Passing Bird EP. Sure nature imagery, exceptional fingerstyle acoustic guitar, smokey vocals are trademarks of Matsson's but he also shows his versatility with electric guitar on "The Dreamer". The album plays as intimately as if Matsson himself were in your living room, crooning his melancholic, nostalgia-inducing folk ballads and makes you marvel how he could write so many good songs in so short a time. If this EP is any indicator of the quality of an upcoming album, fans should be prepared to have their wildest expectations met and exceed them by leaps and bounds. Seriously.

Pitstop: Justin Branam

My discovery of Justin Branam was a happy little accident and says a lot about the awesomeness of social networking sites. You see, Andrew Belle retweeted one of Branam's tweets that I found humorous as well as true. The tweet went as follows: "Someone needs to publish a concert goers etiquette pamphlet". I retweeted it, and Branam thanked me for the retweet. I then decided to check out the Nashville based singer/songwriter and was quite pleased with the result. Turns out I had heard of Justin Branam before.
Justin Branam recorded a couple songs via his iPhone and release them to raise money for the recording of his next album. A pretty sweet method of both recording and of raising money. Once again, I heard about this from Andrew Belle, via tweet. Intrigued by the concept, I headed over to Justin Branam's MySpace to give his music a listen. Braham's vocals are the perfect blend of not-too-husky robustness and tender soul-stirring ethereality and his guitar playing works to perfectly compliment them.

Get a taste of Branam's delightfully good folk-influenced guitar pop with "Dial Tone" from his iPhone Sessions.


As a result of Branam raising money via his iPhone Sessions, you can expect a new album from him soon. Til then, you can listen to his music including his now out of print debut album Words Worth Mentioning and Branam's rousing collaboration with a string quartet, his Introducing Justin Branam EP via his MySpace here.