Mdou Moctar – Imouhar
Maddie Jay – Stop me if I’ve told you this story
Andrew Gabbard – If I Could Show (Then You Would Know What I Mean)
Abigail Lapell – Rattlesnake
Beth Gibbons – Floating On a Moment
King Hannah, Sharon Van Etten – Big Swimmer
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings – What We Had
Cold Specks – How it feels
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Frogs
Notes this week
Maddie Jay – Stop me if I’ve told you this story
Stop Me If I’ve Told You This Story – Maddie Jay
From Maddie Jay herself on Facebook
My debut album “I Can Change Your Mind” is finally out in the world in full. This has been the most consuming and life changing project I’ve ever engaged in and I feel such a huge weight lifting now that it is out. I never imagined the circumstances around its release would be so dire – my heart is in LA and my brain is oscillating between excitement and fear and joy and heartbreak. I am holding it all at once.
this is the reason I chose this as my first song – her intervew on Tom Power’s show
Maddie Jay recalls her life-changing encounter with a travelling fiddler
Great interview and an interesting story about Oliver Schroer coming to Smithers every year to teach music lessons.
here is the CBC link
Abigail Lapell – Rattlesnake
This song I picked out while driving around the past week. It’s from North Americana and I had to bump another song to get this one in here. A great sound to this track. Like always, I don’t know anything about Abigail Lapell.
Abigail Lapell – Rattlesnake (Official Video)
Rattlesnake is getting play on the radio and Lapell is an artist who has been around since 2011. A little more from Wikipedia
Abigail Lapell is a Canadian folk singer-songwriter, who won the Canadian Folk Music Award for Contemporary Album of the Year at the 13th Canadian Folk Music Awards in 2017 for her album Hide Nor Hair[1] and again for English Songwriter of the Year at the 15th Canadian Folk Music Awards in 2020 for her album Getaway.[2]
Based in Toronto, Ontario, Lapell released her debut album Great Survivor in 2011.[3] In 2016, she won the Colleen Peterson Songwriting Award for her song “Jordan”.[4]
Hide Nor Hair, her second album, was released in 2017.[5] In addition to her Contemporary Album win at the CFMAs, she was also a shortlisted finalist in the Contemporary Singer of the Year category.[6]
Her 2024 album Anniversary featured several tracks recorded in collaboration with Great Lake Swimmers.[7]
There are a few short pieces in Exclaim! Magazine, this one announces the release of her sixth album in 2024
Abigail Lapell Announces New LP ‘Anniversary’
Abigail Lapell is looping a sixth album under her belt. Anniversary is set for release on May 10 via Outside Music.
Anniversary deals with the concept of growing old with someone, bringing forward themes of eternal love, fading youth and the dearly departed. It’s meant to frame commitment as both haunting and consoling. “I wanted to explore some of the contradictions within the pop culture notion of love,” Lapell said of the effort in a press release.
With the announcement, Lapell has shared lead single “Anniversary Song,” which was recorded alongside the rest of the record at the 200-year-old St. Mark’s Church in Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON
She has a lovely voice and her guitar playing is distinctly beautiful.
Here is another single from her new album
Abigail Lapell – Anniversary Song (Official Video)
King Hannah, Sharon Van Etten – Big Swimmer
King Hannah – Big Swimmer (Official Video)
Here is a review of Big Swimmer on Pitchfork
here is a little bit
If you think of other artists while listening to Big Swimmer, that’s not lost on King Hannah. Singer Hannah Merrick namedrops Bill Callahan, titles a song after John Prine, and recruits Sharon Van Etten on two songs; the album, Merrick’s second, is clearly the product of those influences. It’s easy to hear echoes of Callahan’s dry humor and Van Etten’s plaintive vocals; Cassandra Jenkins’ meditative jams and Courtney Barnett’s stoned observations come to mind as well. It’s all in service of Merrick’s meandering writing style, which finds meaning in small vignettes borne from traveling America
here is a bit of their origin story pre-2019 from Stereogum – Band to Watch – King Hannah
All the best songwriting duos have a connection that produces something far greater than the sum of its parts, an alchemy that’s hard to define but impossible to ignore. This sense of destiny is abundantly true for Liverpool-based pair King Hannah — aka Hannah Merrick and Craig Whittle — and, suitably, their origin story also feels like something close to fate.
How they came together is a nice story
The pair first crossed paths when Whittle saw Merrick play an open mic set at Liverpool University, where she studied. The performance stuck in his brain for two years before they accidentally met again, when Hannah was tasked with teaching Whittle — a new staff member at the pub she worked at — how to lay tables properly. It reads something like a rom-com, but for finding your perfect musical partner.
Cold Specks – How it feels
Cold Specks is the stage name of Somali Canadian singer-songwriter Ladan Hussein,[1] who was previously known as Al Spx.[2] Her music has been described as doom-soul. The name Cold Specks is taken from a line in James Joyce’s Ulysses (“Born all in the dark wormy earth, cold specks of fire, evil lights shining in the darkness.”).(Wikipedia)
interesting – her first album I Predict a Graceful Expulsion, was short-listed for the 2012 Polaris Prize.
Cold Specks – How It Feels (Official Lyric Video)
more from Stereogum on this beautiful singer
In 2017, Cold Specks released the album Fool’s Paradise. Today, the Toronto musician is finally back with “How It Feels,” her first new material since then. “’How It Feels’ was written in 2019 at a time when I was struggling with money,” Ladan Hussein, aka Al Spx, said. “I was struggling with my mind as well, and I was reflecting on my experiences. It was written one magical night in the dead of winter in a studio around midnight. It came together quite easily and Chantal [Kreviazuk] is a gem.”
The song was written after a diagnosis of bipolar and time in the hospital. Below you also learn that she has experienced periods of homelessness as well
The song follows a bipolar diagnosis that arrived after time in the hospital for her mental health. It was written with Kreviazuk, recorded by Graham Walsh of Holy Fuck, and features piano by Johnny Spence, strings by composer Owen Pallett, and brass by Terry Edwards. Listen below.
a little more about Cold Specks from an interview with two guys talking about music (not us)
Mdou Moctar – “Imouhar” – Funeral for Justice
Mdou Moctar is a Nigerien musician who performs rock music inspired by Tuareg guitar music. His music first gained attention through a trading network of mobile phones and memory cards in West Africa. He sings in the Tamasheq language. His first album, Anar, was recorded in 2008. In 2019, American label Matador Records, showed interest in his music and released his fifth album) in 2019. In the lyrics, Moctar encourages the Tuareg people to not let their Tamasheq language become obsolete.
Released to critical acclaim Funeral Justice came out last year
Imouhar was the first single.
Andrew Gabbard – “ If I Could Show (Then You Would Know What I Mean)” – Ramble & Rave On!
Andrew Gabbard comes from the Ohio music scene. He has played with Thee Shams, The Buffalo Killers, and The Gabbard Brothers. Gabbard is currently part of the touring band for The Black Keys. All of the songs on Ramble and Rave On wouldn’t sound out of place on mid seventies AM radio. None more so than our choice
There definitely a Neil Young vibe to this track.
Beth Gibbons – “Floating On a Moment” – Lives Outgrown Mojo # 3
Beth Gibbons is an English singer and songwriter mainly known for her work in Portishead and the album she released with fellow English musician Rustin Man, in 2002. Last year she released her first solo album without collaboration, Lives Outgrown. The album received critical acclaim and was nominated for the 2024 Mercury Prize. Here’s a great live version of our selected track.
Mojo magazine loved the album making it #3 album of the year.
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings – “What We Had” – Woodland
For more than 28 years, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings have been wowing listeners with their sparse and dark musical style. Welch and Rawlings have collaborated on nine critically acclaimed albums, five released under her name, three released under Rawlings’ name, and two under both of their names. This haunting song from 1996, still sends chills down my spine.
Their latest, Woodland was nominated for a Grammy and was #4 on Mojo Magazine’s album of the year. The album’s material was influenced by a 2020 tornado in Nashville that virtually destroyed their recording studio.
Here’s a great live version of What We Had
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – “Frogs” – Wild God Mojo#2
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are a rock band from Melbourne Australia. They are considered “one of the most original and celebrated bands of the post-punk and alternative rock eras in the ’80s and onward”. I first encountered Cave when he was the leader of early 80’s band The Birthday Party
Somebody has gone to the trouble of explaining Frogs so I’ll leave it to them
Whole-Hearted 
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