KLOF Mag Regular
Monday Morning Brew Playlist, David Murphy, James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg, Cinder Well, Ac Sapphire, Myriam Gendron, Mary Lattimore and Walt McClements, SAICOBAB, Martin Simpson...
We always kick off the week on KLOF Mag with our Monday Morning Brew Playlist.
The latest features Joshua Burnside & Laura Quirke, Mark Orton, Sam Grassie, Daisy Rickman, James Elkington & Nathan Salsburg, Josh Geffin, Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, Lemoncello, Allysen Callery, P.G. Six, Myriam Gendron, Great Aunt Ida, Tim Schmidt, This Is How We Fly, Mary Lattimore & Walt Clements, Heirlooms of August, Jake Soffer, The Hackles, Ben McElroy, Piblokto, Ruth Garbus.
This is a rolling playlist, so you can save it (on Spotify or Apple Music - links below) to receive a fresh weekly brew.
Listen on Spotify | Apple Music
Highlights of the week
David Murphy – Cuimhne Ghlinn (Album Review)
David Murphy’s ‘Cuimhne Ghlinn: Explorations in Irish Music for Pedal Steel Guitar’ is an incredibly confident debut album. Balanced against its elegance and the dreamlike sound of his pedal steel is a quietly adventurous spirit that is beautifully judged and unpretentious—an extraordinarily great album.
James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg (New Album)
James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg have announced their third album together; their second album, Ambsace, was released nine years ago so this does feel like a planet-aligning moment. All Gist will be released on April 12th via Paradise of Bachelors. The announcement is accompanied by their first single, a transmutation of Neneh Cherry’s monumental ‘Buffalo Stance‘, an uncrowded and contemplative offering on which the musical restraint and melodic playfulness of these two singular guitarists shine through with a warm sense of empathetic connection.
“While playing a few rounds of Neneh Cherry’s transcendent ‘Buffalo Stance’ for my toddler, I was struck for the first time (at least since c. 1988) by how fantastic some of its riffs are,” Salsburg recounts. “I suggested to Jim that we work up an arrangement for two guitars. Jim was initially doubtful — it’s a lot of rapping — but within an hour he sent back a one-guitar demo of most of the constituent melodic elements. It sent me into paroxysms of joy, only exceeded by the eventual thrill of sitting down together and hammering out our collaborative version.”
Cinder Well NPR Concert
Amelia Baker, aka Cinder Well, recently headed to NPR’s offices to perform a Tiny Desk Concert, which you can watch below. Joined by Marit Schmidt (on vocals, viola) and Phillip Rogers (on vocals, drums), she performed three tracks from her latest album Cadence, released in 2023 and the title track of her 2020 release, No Summer.
An album about the journeys we make through life, Cadence is itself something of a journey. Meandering, non-linear, but full of care and wisdom, it is an astonishingly powerful piece of work that seems to have been conceived in uncertainty but realised with the supreme assurance of one of the most consummate songwriters around.
– Thomas Blake, KLOF Mag
Ac Sapphire - 32nd. Dec
Some artists just creep on you and leave an indelible impression. I say without a hint of hyperbole that Ac Sapphire is one such act; a new name to me but one that my ears and head are telling me instantly there is something seriously good going on here. Several listens later, I am thoroughly convinced. I cannot tell you this Portland musician is merely a folk singer, indie rocker or purveyor of cosmic Americana, even though there are elements of all and many spaces between in her sound. For example, Highway Hum is a tune with such crunching electric guitar as the backbone that words like grunge and primal are perfectly appropriate. By contrast, Oblivion has a purist’s back porch folksy hue further advanced by vocals that soar with a harmoniousness not heard this side of First Aid Kit. The one thing that can be stated definitively is that here is an artist ready and able to express herself through music in a wholly free and unbounded way. Read the full review.
Myriam Gendron announces new album
For her new album, Mayday (due out May 10th via Thrill Jockey & Feeding Tube), Myriam Gendron continues the work she began with Ma délire, informed as much by folk traditions as it is pop forms. Her music is subtly lifted on the lead single ‘Long Way Home’, what she describes as her first pop song, by fellow guitarist Marisa Anderson and drummer Jim White (Dirty Three), who also recently announced a new duo album, and Montreal bassist Cédric Dind-Lavoie (a fellow fan of trad/avant dynamism who recently announced his duo album Au Chemin 4 with Alexis Chartrand). Also featured on Mayday are Bill Nace (Body/Head) and saxophonist Zoh Amba (whose horn actually gets the final “word”).
Gendron explains on “Long Way Home”:
“This was one of the first songs I wrote for the album. I wanted to write a song with verses and a chorus, which was a bit of a challenge for me, as I’m more used to ballads without a chorus. I also wanted to continue the work I’d started on Ma délire, where I’d begun to experiment with songwriting inspired by tradition. But the aim of such a process is to go beyond a mere exercise in quotations. The result has to be internally coherent and reflect emotion in a way that’s fair and true. And it has to be a pleasant song to listen to, even for those who don’t know my sources of inspiration. I feel I’ve met that challenge with “Long Way Home”, which is, in a way my first pop song, thanks to the contributions of Cédric Dind-Lavoie, Jim White and Marisa Anderson. We made jokes while recording it in the studio. Jim isn’t used to playing in this style, and it made him smile a lot. He said he felt like Mick Fleetwood! This song opens the album with the idea of a symbolic shipwreck (“when my great ship went down”, a reference to the popular song “It Was Sad When That Great Ship Went Down” about the sinking of the Titanic) and the retreat that follows. The words of the refrain “Mother make my bed” are also very old, and are a recurring motif in traditional songs about returning home (sometimes to die).”
Duo Debut Album: Mary Lattimore and Walt McClements
Thrill Jockey has just signed the innovative Mary Lattimore and Walt McClements as a new duo. The Los Angeles-based composers will release their debut collaboration, Rain on the Road, on May 10th. Some of you may recall that McClements, alongside Meg Baird, featured on Lattimore’s And Then He Wrapped His Wings Around Me.
They recently shared their new single, “Nest of Earrings”.
SAICOBAB – NRTYA (Album Review)
The premise of SAICOBAB’s music is both simple and novel: take the distinctive drones of Indian raga, add the antic rhythms of Japanese experimental rock, sprinkle some impassioned yelps over the top and play it all just too fast to be comfortable. There might be a very good reason that nobody does anything quite like this: it has the potential to sound like a complete mess. But happily, the reverse is true here.
SAICOBAB’s contorted ragas are, in reality, unerringly tight and played with real passion and melodic aplomb. Of course, it helps when your band is a four-headed beast birthed from the fertile soup of Japan’s underground music scene. SAICOBAB’s vocalist is YoshimiO, best known for her work in avant-rock icons OOIOO and Boredoms. She is joined by sitar master and instrument maker Yoshida Daikiti, who has previously worked with Keiji Haino and Jim O’Rourke. Percussion is provided by Japanese experimental multi-instrumentalist Motoyuki “Hama” Hamamoto and Boredoms drummer Yojiro “YO2RO” Tatekawa.
NRTYA is their second LP. SAB SE PURANI BAB came out in 2017, with a slightly different lineup, but the basic ideas underpinning the sound remain. Opening track Nrtyaman hits the ground running, Yoshimi’s scattergun vocals mirroring the liquid melodic flights of Daikiti’s instruments. It’s like a Catherine wheel in the form of a song, a bright centre spitting out flares in all directions, a lesson in controlled exuberance. When we think of a raga, we often think of long-form drones, meditative pieces that evolve slowly, but SAICOBAB see the form in different terms. A raga, after all, is essentially a framework for improvisation, and they make use of this open-endedness, not least by playing around with the framework itself.
Lemoncello announce their eponymous debut album
Newly signed to Claddagh Records, Lemoncello has announced the release of their eponymous debut album, to be released on Friday, May 3rd, 2024. The album announcement comes as Laura Quirke and Claire Kinsella share their new single, ‘Old Friend,’ and an accompanying music video directed by Quirke and inspired by the colours in the album artwork.
Most of us know the saying, ‘You always hurt the one you love’. With ‘Old Friend’, rather than accepting this as a given, Lemoncello challenges this behaviour we often exhibit that stems from familiarity and hurts those closest to us.
‘My mother helped me up / And I barely even noticed … But a stranger helps me up / And I send her flowers.’
Tarren premiere video for their new single, Claudia’s
Ahead of their UK Spring tour (details below), Bristol-based trio Tarren (Featuring Sid Goldsmith (Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith, Awake Arise), Alex Garden (The Drystones, Harriet Riley & Alex Garden: Sonder), and Danny Pedler – (Pedler // Russell) have released their uplifting new single, Claudia’s, taken from their new album Outside Time, which will be released in September 2024.
Like the music from their debut, Claudia’s is a joyful tune written by Danny for a friend when she was overcoming adversity. Tarren present an arrangement in their trademark style featuring modular phrases that weave in and out of each other to give the tune an infectious pulse.
Martin Simpson shares new single ‘New Harmony’
Last month, Martin Simpson announced his new album Skydancers (Topic Records) and shared a stunning video for the title track, made in collaboration with Ballet Folk and Studio Bokego.
Last week, he followed up with his second single, ‘New Harmony,’ written by the “old-time” American fiddler/banjo-player/guitarist and singer-songwriter, Craig Johnson. It’s a gentle and serene offering, with Martin’s guitar and relaxed vocals accentuated by Liz Hank’s cello and some beautiful pedal steel from Greg Leisz.