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I used to be a huge Nick Drake fan. I thought no one could do better, and to this day, I still tend to argue that theory. Who in their right mind could even match the aura of Drake’s vocal chords. I did not think about it until I heard Jeff Buckley’s Grace. Then it became apparent that I found someone who I could respect as a singer/songwriter the same way I felt towards Drake. The feelings resurfaced years later when I discovered Iron & Wine’s The Sea & The Rhythm. The subtle EP blew my mind, not in the same way that Nick Drake’s Pink Moon did but a way that complimented this logical progression of musical acoustic greats.

And then a few years ago, I attached myself to an album by A.A. Bondy titled When The Devil’s Loose. The album was so impacting, that I am still amazed every time I listen to that album. He writes with the intent of turning his songs into timeless classics.

Something great tends to come along when I least expect it. It happens out of nowhere, or at least that is how it feels. For Fionn Regan, 100 Acres of Sycamore is not his first album. The End Of History was a great introduction to the Irish singer/songwriter. But for me 100 Acres of Sycamore is the album that did it for me, and I can link him with the musical greats that lead up to this moment. And more than being an incredible release, this is an album that is influential to Irish musical history.

But where his style is traversed is that instead of using traditional Irish folk to motivate his songs, he looks towards the British style of traditional folk music. The only thing that lays planted in Irish tradition is his accent.

I hear the title song, and I cannot help but associate it with the Amazing Blondel or Incredible String Band. To start of an album like that is quite the spectacle, not in an explosion of light but like a proud shimmering glow that gives you hope.

And not like “Sow Mare Bitch Vixen” is anything less satisfying, but the lyrics seem a little off-putting to the style he is presenting, especially when you pair it up to a song like “The Lake District,” an incredible postcard-like folk song.

“North Star Lover” is as great as any John Denver song. And when you hear “Golden Light” flashbacks of every religious-oriented folk album comes flooding into your mind. And if you had parents who became adults in the ‘50s/early ‘60s, then these albums are tucked away in the album storage bin next to that big phonographic stereo sitting in that living room.

100 Acres Of Sycamore is that cool breeze you inhale in from the morning dew. It’s refreshing, intimate, and expressive. It’s a lovely serenade of acoustic musical bliss, and I cannot see myself without it as much as I can see myself abandoning Pink Moon. It just won’t happen.

Link: Sassparilla’s Official Website

What an appropriate name for a roots rock/bluegrass/saloon romper of a band. When you listen to The Darndest Thing, you can smell the tar coming from the train tracks and feel the steam emitting off of the steamboat during a lazy trip down the Mississippi.

It’s as easy as that. Sassparilla is escapism to a simpler time, marred by a time of transit, progressiveness, and social change. Morality is in question, and mortality always looming one step behind, and music being a catalyst for both.

Sassparilla is a band from Portland. With a group that consists of Kevin “Gus” Blackwell (vocals, cigar box guitar, national resonator guitar), the father and son combo of Ross “Dagger” MacDonald (harmonica) and Colin “Sweet Pea” MacDonald (washtub bass), Naima (vocals, accordion, washboard), and Justin Burkhart (drums), they have the potential and reputation of creating a sonic blast of sweat-socked hootenannies. But a listen to The Darndest Thing, you feel more folk-rock tugging at their shoulders and a laid-back approach to their dog days concoctions.

Besides the Southwest, Portland would be a logical destination to inspire a band to create a mood like this. I would call The Darndest Thing kitschy in the most unconventional of terms and for Portland standards, trendy in the most unsuspecting of ways.

According to Blackwell, every record that this band does is a little different each time, so  it shouldn’t come as a surprise making something a little more sedate and brooding was in the cards. But it is. It also helps that The Eels’ Chet Lyster is at the helms of the production booth. That helps explain the direction the band took with this album.

“New Love” starts us out with a swampy drawl like a low-lit cabaret buried in the Deep South. It combines the sin and salvation with lusty desires. But “Same Old Blues” is like a street party that roams through the alleys and moss-covered streets of Savanna. It’s one of the more lively songs you will get on this album.

It’s not like “Bone Colored Moon” or “My First Lover” are snoozers in the slightest. Look at them as a more laid back, laissez faire approaches implied by conventional methods. On a song like the latter, the harmonica crying into the night sounds so tasty it almost hurts.

There are moments Sassparilla sounds a lot like early Alejandro Escovedo. It’s only when they present a smoothed-out roots rock vehicle with a life-burden contemplative tone to their lyrics does this come to light — “Fumes” immediately comes to mind.

But as the band prepares to make their grand exit with the song “You’ve Got It Bad,” it’s what we have come to know Sassparilla to be, the bearded bard twisting tales with the tongue by candlelit and a sketchy bottle of something in one hand. The fiddle wailing notes, more dramatic than the banjo’s picking. As the washtub bass serves as the rhythmic mediator between the two, it’s a fine departure and the close to another chapter in this band’s existence.

Link: Goldmund on MySpace

There is something about Civil War-era music that is haunting yet intriguing. When you sit down and listen to these songs, you gain an appreciation to the beauty and spirit of the music surrounded by the horrors of war.

Whenever I think about The Civil War, I feel a sense of folklore more than a disturbance of the bloody battlefields and war torn country. Even with the bloodiest battles the United States had ever experienced, the stories told are almost surreal in nature, and expressed like a ghost story. You feel the earth move and our Nation morph into a new and exciting time period from the sounds that echo out of this traditional music.

With these songs, you feel the essence of heroism and bravado through a tumultuous and turbulent period. The songs are so simple and delicate, you cannot hardly imagine these traditional pieces emanating from this time period.

Keith Kenniff treats these songs like gentle ambient giant. Recording under the name Helios, that ambient music project paved a path for how these songs are played. There is a shimmering delicacy with Kenniff’s guitar playing. Overtly simple, each note is handled with care and the Berkeley School of Music graduate plucks away like one note is the sole foundation for the direction of the next. The acoustic guitar is the percussion and the bass; the only sound that dominates this release.

You may feel the album like a soundtrack to a Ken Burns documentary, or you might feel justified in the American music as you feel intellectually stimulated by the care it took to replicate these songs in modern texture. You can almost feel Kenniff re-visit the painstaking process of using songwriting as solace that burns deep into the night.

It’s his Shoegaze leanings that allow him to treat the guitar with glowing clarity. His version of “Amazing Grace” is beautiful. The background instruments are sparingly used for atmosphere. You barely realize they are there.

“Dixie,” “The Yellow Rose Of Texas,” or “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” are songs that take on new meaning when Kenniff performs them. Respectfully so, All Will Prosper will give you a deeper respect for this 19th Century music. And to put it all into perspective, Kenniff adds a contemporary piece, “Ashoken Farewell” that puts no differentiation to the sounds of the past and the present.

Nihiti
Faced With Splendor
lo bit landscapes
Rating: 3 out of 5

Link: Nihiti’s Official Site

For Nihiti and Faced With Splendour, this was an experiment for a band acclimated to electronic landscapes. They ditched the gadgetry and recorded in an acoustic environment. For an acoustic album, the results are intriguing. For a Nihiti album, it’s hit or miss.

“The Kind Ropes” starts us out promising. A cello backs up the strumming guitar that instantly turns into some coffee shop hippy folk accolade. It’s in the structure of intimate British folk, without the British and without the countryside tales. It may be more of something you will find draping the backdrop of an Anthropologie store and an act of escape, unless you find the inflated prices and strange items at Anthropologie therapeutic.

But just when you like a song, it repetition is heard, just in another song context and for me, it’s not something my attention span can take.

For “The Devil,” it’s a song I really like. If you want stripped down and raw, you have it in all of its Nick Drake glory. But for “Golden Pavilion” you get a sense of deja vu. It’s like they find a good concept and replicate it. For an EP, that tells me the time they allotted for creative concept was limited. Nonetheless, the songs on here are an interesting twist to the band, and decent to the ears.

With the band coming back around to electronic form next year, Faced With Splendor will feel like a subtle diversion.

Crane
Jump With A Child’s Heart
Constant Clip
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Link:

• Annie Crane Music
• FaceBook Page
• Twitter Page

You can feel the air in Annie Crane’s music. The pauses in her songs are distinct. You become aware of them as they provide punctuation to her vocal communication while it builds effect at the end of her stanzas. It helps build a foundation to her Irish and folk musings.

She extracts an instant wonderment on the title track. A slide guitar tries to show off to a simple acoustic rhythmic hook. And when Crane comes in belting lyrics with a howling Irish accent, you are not sure if you are roaming down dusty roads or the illustrious green hillside. Either way you get that Cowboy Junkies enchantment that is all the more positive for it.

“You & Me & The Evergreen” adds a trumpet to the mix. It’s an unnecessary twist to the elegant feel of the overall song. However, when the horn re-appears on “The Island Manhattan,” it is used in just the right context; notes float in a lonely cadence used more as a purpose than as an accentuation. It’s defiance in spite of what is going on in the song, and unity that it can co-exist.

“Copenhagen Heart” is absolutely lovely. The strings flutter around a simple folk tune that tells a story that will fascinate you to soak up every essence of her skills as a singer songwriter.

There are a lot of amazing things that are going on in this album, and some things that don’t need to be littering up the album. I am sure you will find a few songs that you want to pluck out and enjoy all the way into the coming damp spring air.

Brown Bird
Salt For Salt
Supply & Demand Music
Rating: 4 out of 5

Link: http://brownbird.net/

NPR at the Newport Folk 2011: http://www.npr.org/2011/08/08/137184250/newport-folk-2011-brown-bird-live-in-concert?ft=1&f=1039
Have you seen the size of David Lamb’s beard? I am not talking ZZ Top status here, but  the fullness of Lamb’s facial bush is one to behold. That beard tells a story just like Salt For Salt tells a story.

The richness of this duo’s sound (add MorganEve Swain) is that of an oak-aged timelessness. A song like “Chairkickers” preserves traditional elements to this eery waltz while giving it intrigue. Call it Lamb’s voice, or the chamber folk elegance that is as creepy as the words that warp around the strings and guitars into this death march. It’s not a drastic movement like Slim Cessna’s Auto Club or 16 Horsepower. What you feel is the hallowed ground were the music stems from.

If you like the Eels you will find Brown Bird a compliment. It’s what Deep Cricket Night can do but with two people. And both are equally spunky in acoustic versatility.

“End of Days” is a darkened night etched in candle-lit storytelling as Swain gracefully leads this number. The strings will make your skin tingle. Other songs like “Shiloh” or the bluegrass-meets-Far East sounds of “Ebb & Flow” brings the ghosts of long past into this bedroom pop serenade.

It makes you want to experience this album in a large church where sound bounces off into infinity and the lush musical relationship between Lamb and Swain are that much more bonded.

Link: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Case-Studies/129211387138861?sk=wall

Dutchess & The Duke songwriter, Jesse Lortz, does well on his own. He’s creepy in the way that when you listen to his songs, you feel like you are settling down for a night of dimly lit oak-stained folk tales with a road-weary croon. The way the acoustic flows around is words are mesmerizing. I would be fine with just that. But other vocals have to chime in and that’s when things get cluttered, despite some efforts to conceal the punchiness of dual harmonies as in the opener, “From The Blade Of My Love.”

You will find this album to be about community. You take away the painstaking process of solitude that Lortz is known for by inviting some friends and musicians to hole up in a cabin. The World Is Just A Shape To Fill The Night Out is the result.

The immediacy of this album does not come until the end of the second song, when the kick drum finally enters and the band feels complete. But it’s not a common practice on this album.

The collective wanders through folk (“You Folded Up My Blanket Like We Were Already Lovers,”) bedroom rock (“Secrets”) and ‘60s hippie singalongs (“My Silver Hand”), all with interest. However, I conclude that the experience itself was more impressive than the final product.

Case Studies: Daggers from Case Studies on Vimeo.

Link: http://www.myspace.com/aabondy

When A. A. Bondy released When The Devil’s Loose, I had no idea just how great of a folk album it would become. A.A. Bondy’s intimacy and vulnerability transformed him into one of the singer/songwriter greats of our time, creating timeless and haunting music. Even now, songs like “False River” and “I Can See The Pines Are Dancing” still remain lodged in my cranium, right up there with the fumes of “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

Believers is more edgy while playing out like an ambient trajectory. The rhythms are sometimes hypnotizing while other times cinematic.

“The Heart Is Willing” takes him back to a more youthful Bondy and the rock beat pulls him in with an interstellar direction. Let me slow down because we are not talking sonic proportions. This is still Bondy, and it’s moody as hell, as is “Down In The Fire (Lost Sea).”

We get that now iconic Bondy approach to songwriting in on songs like “Skull & Bones” and “Surfer King,” although as gentle as it is, “Surfer King” is one of his more upbeat Beach Boys under candlelight numbers he has produced.

Believers works like Frank Sinatra’s In The Wee Small Hours. His music is accessible, but it also burns with a haunting personality glowing deep in the night. Bondy’s sound will come to you in dreams, it will follow you down dark city streets, and as you sit alone in that room staring face-to-face with morality, his voice is the sobering reminder ringing in your ears.

Link: http://www.facebook.com/BigHarpMusic

Although Big Harp hails from the sprawling city of Los Angeles, their style descends down the Sierra Nevadas and more toward the foggy atmosphere of the Bay area. Chris Senseney has the demeanor of Mark Eitzel while their music stretches across the Plains.

But instead of tales of desperation, you get noir stories from the streets. “Nadine” weaves a tale through honky tonk pianos setting the stage. It’s the perfect aura to the ghosts of the westward expansion.

The first time I spun through “Everybody Pays,” I was not too impressed. But multiple passings, and I quickly warmed up to this song. The unique acoustic configuration breathes across an African landscape while keeping the lyrics atuned to an urban-worn tale. I cite this as an example because many of these songs warm up to you the more you listen. At first you sit with a blank stare, but then once the music sinks in, you get it and its dark vaudevillian approach to the metropolitan circus they paint.

“Steady Hand Behind The Wheel” sounds like a lost song off of Lou Reed’s Coney Island Baby, while “All Bets Are Off” is Nick Cave swooning. As Senseney raises his voice and the levels begin to heat up, you expect a fight at any time. It comes at the end of the song.

The husband/wife (Stefanie) duo has created an honest release that is straight forward and out there for all to grab on to. For a debut, it feels like Big Harp has been at it for a long time. The music is that progressed.

Big Harp: Everybody Pays from Love Drunk on Vimeo.

Link: http://brettdetar.com/
(You can download the album for free at his website)

Where do all the aging punks go? They usually exchange their busted-up electric guitars for a busted-up acoustic and try to charge the stage like a leathered folk singer taking charge of a revolution. The results are generally not good.

But what happens when the lead vocalist for a famous alt-rock band ages? He exchanges the electrified power of rock for the dusty confessions of alt-country. And for the ex-vocalist of The Juliana Theory, it works to glorifying results and fortifies Brett Detar as being an accomplished artist for the ages.

Bird In The Tangle is one of the best alt-country album I have heard. The production is crystal clear and the drive behind every song is performed at 110 percent.

The slow-moving  “This City Dies Tonight” preserves the essence of traditional Country and plays like it emits from a corner of an old Texas diner jukebox on a hot summer day, where “The Devil’s Gotta Earn” gives the impression that Slim Cessna is behind the hootenanny.

From the revivalist sound of “Cocaine Whiskey and Heroin” to the intimate Country waltz of “Caged Bird” there is not a bad moment on this album. If you did not know better, you would think Detar has been following the gleam of Nashville his entire life.