a music blog
Earlier this year the lovely Balloon Machine blog decided to relaunch themselves as a record label and their first release, Laura Fell’s ‘Safe From Me’ is an absolutely stunning start. Continue reading “Album Review: Laura Fell – Safe From Me”
Last year in her song ‘The Greatest’ Lana Del Rey, with an eerie prescience, predicted the nightmarish world we are now living in. She sang about how the world was burning, how she missed New York, missed the music, how Kanye West was gone, how the livestream was on…calling it the greatest loss of them all. We didn’t know what we had til it was gone.
Some albums win end of year polls and are forgotten as soon as the year turns. Others define the mood of a whole era, and for me Norman Fucking Rockwell, with its bittersweet odes to our painful modern reality, does just that.
The final song on the album ‘hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but I have it’ is a necessary reminder that even in dystopian, pandemic hell we must need to cling to beauty, music, poetry, hope above all else.
In that song Lana described herself as 24/7 Sylvia Plath, which some may raise an eyebrow at – after all this is an artist who has long used such reference points as part of her glamodrama musical aesthetic. But this was no throwaway lyric. Lana was serious about writing poetry and has now published her first collection Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass. Continue reading “On Lana Del Rey and the sweet gift of ‘Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass’”
The human instinct to disconnect from the world has been with us long before the information superhighway made hyperfast, overwhelming connectivity a nightmarish reality. Artists have a long tradition of retreating into the woods to seek solitude and silence in the name of creativity. So much so that’s it’s almost a cliche now, with a million hipsters searching for enlightenment on Walden pond or the Pacific crest trail or at some wilderness retreat they paid thousands to attend.
However for some solitude is a vocation, not a vacation. Gwen John spent the latter part of her life in isolation, focusing on her art and writing in her notebook about how to keep the world away. Emily Dickinson chose to shut the door on the world, becoming the most famous recluse of all time.
Yet even she would be first to admit that being truly alone is impossible. Artistic solitude is accompanied by the pen, the brushstrokes, the guitar string, or just the sound of the mind whirring, the body containing the imprint of all who have lived and breathed before you. The outside world always gets in somehow.
Earlier this year Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker retreated to a cabin in the woods after the coronavirus ended her hectic touring schedule. Suffering in the wake of a relationship break up, this place offered her a chance to be at one with nature, to find comfort in the guitar, to listen to herself again. Continue reading “Album Review: Adrianne Lenker – songs / instrumentals”
Some artists set trends, others chase them and a few may be around long enough to do both. You can’t help but admire those, like Dolly, who refuse to exploit old glories or just fade away and have continually tried to stay relevant to the zeitgeist, no matter how difficult or desperate or futile the attempt.
White Limozeen and Eagle When She Flies were both hit albums because they combined classic country, a little of her eighties pop pizzazz and just enough of current country trends to return her successfully to the top of the charts. Slow Dancing With the Moon was a more calculated attempt at fully embracing the nineties pop country sound – line dancing and Billy Ray Cyrus included – ironically with more middling commercial results. Continue reading “Dolly Parton’s Discography – Slow Dancing With the Moon (1993)”
Recording her new album My Echo with her husband as the producer, while going through couples therapy which lead to an eventual divorce must have added more than a little tension to this new project by Laura Veirs.
However unlike say the Chicks angry and vengeful divorce epic Gaslighter, My Echo does not take aim at her partner, instead turning the disquieting feelings inwards. She accepts the crumbling reality of life and love, transforming her feelings into a quietly moving collection of songs. Continue reading “Album Review: Laura Veirs – My Echo”
Like her fellow Scandinavian sisters First Aid Kit before her, Norway’s Malin Pettersen grew up with a wanderlust for America and a deep love for its music. Her new album Wildhorse was recorded and mixed in Nashville and every song conveys an angelic Americana sound that would make even the toughest of cowboys swoon. Continue reading “Album Review: Malin Pettersen – Wildhorse”
Written in 2018 during a time of personal change, the new album from indie singer songwriter Emmy the Great is a lovely collection of songs which feel like a welcome bloom of springtime air in this uncertain autumn. Continue reading “Album Review: Emmy the Great – April / 月音”
Last week there was an online furore over an advert suggesting a ballet dancer should give up her career in dance and retrain to work in cyber security or some other such dreary, digital job. The world was outraged. Had the pandemic reduced us to such crass, cold hearted philistines? Who would dare crush dreams like this? The government of course, quelle surprise. Continue reading “A career in the arts shouldn’t be a pipe dream”
After going through personal and professional divorces, Lydia Loveless returns with her new album ‘Daughter’. Change becomes her, allowing for her world weary voice to echo bruised truths in the listeners ears. There will be no miracle rebirth or transformation here. Instead she knows that to move forward in life is to understand yourself for better, or worse. Continue reading “Album Review: Lydia Loveless – Daughter”
Highway Queens 