Episode 47
Whitehorse – Am I just Going to Stand Here (While You Take My Girl Away)
Maybel – Winter city
Mozart Estate – Vanilla Gorilla
Darlingside – Eliza I See
The Bad Ends – Thanksgiving 1915
Maya De Vitry – Never on the Map
Complete Mountain Almanac – May
Tanlines – The Big Mess
Feeble Little Horse – Steamroller
This week’s songs
Whitehorse – “Am I just Going to Stand Here (While You Take My Girl Away)” from From Strike Me Down 2021
Whitehorse is a long time favourite in the Old fellas camp. Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland have been releasing high quality roots inflected music for years. I recently heard this gem on the radio and assumed it was from the band’s latest 2023 release, I’m Not Crying Your Crying. This track is actually a couple of years old. I like the psychedelic vibe to this number.
These guys are great live. I encourage everyone to see them if you can.
https://www.fyimusicnews.ca/articles/2021/05/09/whitehorse-am-i-just-gonna-stand-here
Mozart Estate – “Vanilla Gorilla” from Pop-Up! Ker-Ching! and the Possibilities of Modern Shopping 2023
Mozart Estate, formerly known as Go-Kart Mozart, are an English indie pop band founded by cult figure Lawrence. Lawrence first came to mild prominence in the early 80’s as the chief member of The UK band Felt. If one is feeling lazy, Felt could be lumped in with other jangly bands of the era like The Smiths and REM. Here’s Felt performing one of their best known songs.
After 9 lps, Felt broke up. Lawrence eventually formed the glam/bubblegum pastiche Denim. Felt released nine albums in the 1980s, and Lawrence was the only constant member of the band from its inception in 1979 to its dissolution in 1989. After Felt’s breakup, Lawrence became somewhat of a eccentric recluse. He later remerged in the 90’s with Bubblegum/Glam Rock pastiche Denim.
There was a documentary made about his life and disappearance from public view.
He eventually bounced back with the group Go-Cart Mozart now named Mozart Estate. “Vanilla Gorilla” is a catchy little number taken from the latest release.
The Bad Ends – “Thanksgiving 1915” from 2023’s The Power and the Glory
This is a musical project involving former REM drummer Bill Berry and Mike Mantione from Five Eight. Both being residents of Athen GA, the two met up occasionally over several years and eventually they started sending demos to each other. This led to the formation of The Bad Ends. This is the first album that Berry had worked on in over 20 years. In 1995, at the height of REM’s powers , Berry suffered a cerebral aneurysm onstage and collapsed. he recovered but left music to become a farmer. The video is gratifying as shows some other old fellas shaking it up.
https://www.operationeveryband.com/sxswrec/the-bad-ends-thanksgiving-1915
Darlingside – Eliza I See
All of the four bandmates were also members of The Williams Octet during their time at the College. (Sofie Jones/The Williams Record)
Beautiful song, I hope you give this a listen!
Darlingside is a four-person indie folk band from Boston, MA. The band consists of Don Mitchell, Auyon Mukharji, Harris Paseltiner, and David Senft. Their style has been described as “exquisitely arranged, literary-minded, baroque folk-pop” by All Songs Considered.[1] Their latest full-length album, Fish Pond Fish, was released in October 2020.
The band’s name is a derivation of Lewis’ class motto: “Kill your darlings,” or, take out an idea that may be dear to you because that idea might be the very thing holding you back. “Darlingside is to darlings as pesticide is to pests,” Mitchell said. “We changed the ‘C’ to an ‘S’ just to have people not calling us ‘darling-kh-ide’ all the time.”
Maya De Vitry – Never on the Map
So, apart from the wonderful voice, Maya De Vitry has an interesting story about a hike she took. Read below.
In 2022, one of the ultimate acts of resistance is simply embracing our existence. That realization came after listening to Maya De Vitry’s “How Bad I Wanna Live,” from her third solo album, Violet Light. Maya takes the experience of her own harrowing hike on a washed-out trail abutting a severe cliffside and turns it into an anthem for continuation.
In just under three minutes of mid-tempo Americana — that seemingly could have sprung from the songbook of Richard & Linda Thompson in their heyday — De Vitry fends off mortality wielding nothing more than generosity, spirit and the soaring harmony she sings with Shelby Means and Joel Timmons of Sally & George. Whether you have been in danger of leaving the earth suddenly, like De Vitry was, or have like so many simply been cracking under the strain of recent events, this song is the perfect soundtrack for uncorking that emotion and (defiantly) loving life again.
Maya de Vitry’s dynamic and vibrant voice seems to rise out of some necessity of bringing songs to life, embracing listeners with what Folk Alley calls a “soulful intimacy”. She grew up in a musical family in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, understanding music to be a place of gathering, a way to spend a summer night by a campfire. She was surrounded by bluegrass and old-time music, and country, gospel, and folk songs. She took piano lessons from her grandmother, and took up classical violin in school, but it was some combination of the haunting fiddle music of Appalachia and the vulnerable poetry in Townes Van Zandt’s songwriting that first compelled her to begin creating tunes and songs of her own
Complete Mountain Almanac – “May” from Complete Mountain Almanac
This wonderful release is a collaboration involving Norwegian singer/songwriter Rebekka Karijord, poet Jessica Dessner, and from The National, guitarists Aaron and Bryce Dessner. I am going to let this article explain this compelling piece of music. https://beatsperminute.com/album-review-complete-mountain-almanac-complete-mountain-almanac/ The track we chose is “May”. This song is quote, “a pained address to the earth and indirect submission to St. Agatha (“I can give all of this back”
Feeble Little Horse – “Steamroller” from Girl With Fish
Feeble Little Horse is a band from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In the spirit of e.e. cummings, bill bisset and k.d. lang, the band sometimes goes with the lowercase. They formed in early 2021 The group signed to Saddle Creek Records in October 2022, and re-released Hayday. Last week they released their second album. Why discuss them when I can get Pitchfork to do the heavy lifting? https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/feeble-little-horse-hayday/
Here’s a live version of the song.
Maybel – Winter City
This is yet another example of a band with members who we knew as kids. A great band with Alison Hendra!!
“Winter City” by Maybel was written by Loris Kecaj, Le Ren, Fez Gielen & Alison Hendra.
Maybel is the new project of Montreal’s Lauren Spear — who released two beautiful country EPs in 2018 as Le Ren — and her bandmates Loris Kecaj, Ali Hendra, and Fez Gielen. Montreal winters can be notoriously intense and isolating, and the group says that their absolutely gorgeous and heartwarming folk gem “Winter City” is a love song dedicated to their hometown, “and the many Winters spent helping each other through.” Maybel adds, “The band hopes that this song will bring the listener some light during what can sometimes be a heavy season.” Listen to the exquisitely sparkly track, taken from the group’s forthcoming debut LP Gathering, below, and download it here.
Tanlines – The Big Mess
I really like this band. Pitchfork does not. Maybe there is a bit of ageism going on here??
When they were young, Tanlines made a couple EPs and an album that, at the time and still today, sum up a specific place and time. In their case, it was Brooklyn in 2012; but it was also the sound of at least half a dozen middle-class urban enclaves around the world, where, for a brief moment, straight white dudes got it up and started dancing. Tanlines did it with rare efficiency. It was good fun, which is harder than it sounds, and they made it sound easy.
and
As an album, The Big Mess isn’t really declarative, or sizable, or wrecked. It aims for something complicated and settles for complacency: a working definition of modern masculinity. If Tanlines once sounded effortless, now little sounds like it’s worth the effort.
but a five-star rating from All Music
Following an extended hiatus, Tanlines return with their introspective yet still anthemic third album, 2023’s The Big Mess. The record, which arrives eight years after 2015’s Highlights, reunites the duo of singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist Eric Emm and percussionist and instrumentalist Jesse Cohen. Having initially established themselves in Brooklyn as purveyors of arty, indie electronic pop in the vein of Vampire Weekend and Ra Ra Riot, Tanlines spent much of the time after Highlights away from each other, with Emm moving his family to Connecticut and Cohen working a marketing job in New York.
Whole-Hearted 