Category: singer/songwriters

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Gorgeously Mournful Yet Hopeful Sound and Visuals of Daniel Land’s “New York Boogie-Woogie”

Written and recorded in a number of locations including London, Manchester, Devon, California and New York City and featuring over 20 musicians including members of Daniel Land and The Modern Painters, the backing bands of Andrew Saks (a.k.a. ASAKS) and Gerald Hopes (a.k.a Little Nova Sound), members of Land’s current band and ambient composer Bing Satellites, who co-wrote some material, co-produced and played several instruments on the record, Land’s forthcoming sophomore full-length solo album In Love With a Ghost may arguably be one of the more complex and textured efforts he has released.

Interestingly enough, the album’s material was written right after his longest running project Daniel Land and The Modern Painters had broken up, and in a period in which he had been forced to consider giving up music about halfway during the recording of the album, when he had suffered a number of health issues including a painful and chronic inner-ear infection that left him prone to bouts of extreme dizziness and partially deaf for over a year. And as a result, among several things Land had been thinking of during tat period influenced the tone and feel of his forthcoming album’s material. As Land explains in press notes: “This is an album about cities. It is an album about reinvention, and starting your life over. It is an album about growing up, finding love, and settling down. And to a lesser degree, it is about the damage that can be done to a person, or a family, by falling in love with the wrong person. With ‘In Love With A Ghost’, I came full circle for a while by incorporating a whole bunch of influences that pre-date my love of dream-pop and shoegaze. I really wanted to make a colourful, widescreen, detailed record. When I started the album, I didn’t have a live band, and most of the tracks were written on the piano, for my own amusement, rather than for a group with three guitarists.

“Unable to make music, and living in a new city made me feel, at times, powerfully depressed. This became a crisis of confidence that went very deep and it did seem, for a while, that I would never find my way back to making music again, ” Land continues. “Finishing the album was a process that involved re-evaluating my life and overhauling my relationship to music, and coming out of the other side more healthy, more humble, and more grateful. It’s good to be back again.”

And while possessing a mournful air about what was and what can never, be the album’s first single “New York Boogie-Woogie” manages to also simultaneously possess a hopefulness towards the future — with the recognition that things constantly change, and that you better respect and cherish that. Sonically speaking, Land’s plaintive falsetto vocals are paired with dramatic piano chords, propulsive drumming, shimmering guitar chords and a gorgeous sax solo to craft a song that possesses a cinematic yet moody sweep.

The recently released music video for the song features black and white footage in and around New York that captures a sense of endless wonder and possibility and profound loneliness.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Hazy and Aching Visuals and Sounds of Jess Williamson’s “See You In A Dream”

“See You In A Dream” is Heart Song’s latest single and it will further cement the Austin, TX-based singer/songwriter’s burgeoning reputation for crafting material that’s lush and cinematic while being profoundly intimate and vulnerable. The ache, longing, recrimination and resolve at the core of the song not only evokes the lingering ghosts that drift and haunt your loneliest moments — perhaps drinking alone at your local bar, when everyone else has gone home and the bartenders are beginning to clean up and shut down for the night. And much like Vera Lynn’s “Auf Wiederseh’n, Sweetheart” Williamson’s “See You In A Dream” there’s a sense of regret and begrudging acceptance of people growing apart, of relationships ending and something that was once part of your present becoming part of a growing and complicated past.

Directed by Daniel Hill, the recently released video for “See You In A Dream” was inspired by an old Roky Erickson video and was shot mostly on VHS — with the VHS footage representing dream sequences, emphasizing both the ache and the lingering ghosts that inhabit the sparse arrangement.

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

 

With the release “Help Yourself” and several other singles, Western Wales-born, London-based singer/songwriter and guitarist Sarah Howells’ solo recording project Bryde has received praise from Nylon, The Line of Best Fit and Earmilk and airplay from BBC Radio 6, BBC Radio Wales, Radio X and Huw Stephens’ BBC Radio 1 show for a sound that’s been compared to the likes of Jeff Buckley, Sharon Van Etten, Ben Howard and London Grammar, as her early work so far has thematically focused on complex and ambivalent relationships that can simultaneously entangle. Her latest single “Wouldn’t That Make You Feel Good” is a boozy and woozy dirge in which Howells’ aching vocals are paired with bluesy yet shoegazer rock-like guitar chords in a song that builds up to a cathartic and explosive bridge before gently fading out. Interestingly, Howells’ latest single sounds to me as though it could be indebted to the likes of PJ Harvey as it possesses a similar earnest yet stormy and dramatic quality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

With the release of her debut effort under the moniker of Amber Arcades, Dutch musician and singer/songwriter Annelotte de Graaf quickly rose to international attention as the blogosphere and several media outlets praised de Graaf for material that thematically focused on a number of things — including both time and the relativistic experience of it, continuity, magic, jet lag and how being led by her own dreams has inspired the Dutch singer/songwriter’s personal, professional and creative lives. In fact, as the story goes, de Graaf has worked as a legal aide on UN war crime tribunals and while currently working human rights law, assisting Syrian refuges, she spent her savings on a flight to NYC, specifically to record her debut effort with Ben Greenberg, who has worked with The Men, Beach Fossils and Destruction Unit, and a studio backing band that includes Quilt‘s Shane Butler (guitar) and Keven Lareau (bass) and Real Esate’s Jackson Pollis.

Earlier this year, I wrote about “Turning Light,” a single that thematically explores being the protagonist in your own life story while you’re simultaneously a supporting player in the lives of everyone around you — and how those very different roles and various lives intertwine in ways that can be confusing.  While sonically speaking,  de Graaf and her backing band paired rapid fire, four-on-the-floor drumming, swirling and shimmering strings, twinkling electronics, a driving bass line and de Graaf’s ethereal vocals singing lyrics that reflect the relativistic nature of time to craft a woozy single that draws equally from shoegaze and Brit pop.

Building upon the buzz of her debut album and her Fall Stateside tour with Nada Surf, de Graff and her backing band went into the studio during a brief break on tour to record her latest single, a shimmering dream pop/bubblegum pop version of Nick Drake’s “Which Will” that manages to add a rather ironic take to the song while retaining the song’s earnest yearning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Jackson Dyer is an Sydney, Australia-born, Berlin, Germany-based singer/songwriter and is part of a growing number of Australians who have relocated to the Germany city for a creative and personal renewal and to advance their careers; in fact, since Dyer relocated to Berlin three years ago, he has opened for Grammy-nominated acts and countrymen Hiatus Kaiyote and Hozier, and has extensively toured throughout the European Union with Berlin, Germany-based indie folk act Mighty Oaks and Jamie Cullum. Adding to a growing profile, the Sydney, Australia-born, Berlin, Germany-based singer/songwriter has played at several European festivals.

Dyer’s third EP, Compartments was released earlier this year to critical praise, as the effort thematically and lyrically may arguably be one of the most personal efforts he’s released to date. And as Dyer explains in press notes, “Compartments is an EP of self-­reflection that I wrote at a time when I faced a lot of uncertainty and questions about my place in the world. Far away from home, often spending long hours in my studio on the industrial outskirts of Berlin, it was a period of introspection when I experimented with production and songwriting. In this space, I wrestled with many of my misgivings about the music industry, the nature of humanity and my own personal motivations. The title Compartments refers to the lyrics in “Pariahs,” which is about how close many people live to each other in cities and apartment blocks, but still lead very enclosed lives, unwilling to engage with even their neighbours. Ironically, I spent a long time in my own ‘compartment’ writing these songs and it wasn’t until I collaborated with others that they really came alive.”

Compartments’ second and latest single is EP opening track “The Absolute” and sonically speaking the track nods at the work of renowned Swedish singer/songwriter Jose Gonzalez and his work both as a solo artist and with Junip, as the song has Dyer pairing bluesy guitar chords played through generous amounts of reverb, swirling electronics, glitchy and stuttering drum programming with his soulful vocals to create a song that’s deeply introspective and achingly earnest; in fact, the song captures and evokes a narrator, who feels profoundly lost and alone and wrestling with the sort of existential questions that don’t have an easy answer. And while capturing someone at perhaps one of their darkest periods, the song manages to possess a resoluteness that suggests while many answers won’t come quickly, the song’s narrator will move forward and many of life’s most difficult questions will resolve themselves accordingly.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Renowned British-born Singer/Songwriter Miten’s Elegantly Simple Cover of a Beloved Beatles Tune

Miten’s recently released Temple At Midnight is his first solo English language work in over a decade and in many ways the album finds him returning to his musical roots while writing deeply personal material inspired and influenced by his own journey to renewal, faith and love. And interestingly, the album’s latest single is an elegantly simple cover of The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” in which Miten’s soulful and wizened vocals are paired with a sparse arrangement that has Miten accompanying himself with guitar, a bit of piano here and there, a mournful string arrangement and some backing vocals from his partner and collaborator Deva Premal. And while radiating a quiet assuredness and tranquility, Miten’s cover also possesses the same wistfulness of the original.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Arguably best known as a member of Sons of an Illustrious Father, with whom she’s toured with since she was 17, Lilah Larson is embarking on a solo career with the release of her full-length solo debut Pentimento slated for release in early 2017. Recorded at Montreal‘s Hotel2Tango Studios with Howard Bilerman, who has worked with Arcade Fire, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Vic Chesnutt, the album is reportedly comprised of intimate meditations on deeply conflicted and confusing love, relationships long since failed and their lingering ghosts of ache and regret, in which Larson accompanies her vocals with drums, guitar, and a 19th century pump organ. Pentimento‘s first single “tbh” is a bittersweet yet ambivalent lament in which the song’s conflicted narrator misses and longs for a lover, who simultaneously makes her feel miserable and uncertain, and it evokes a dysfunctional relationship in which there’s an equally ambivalent and maddening push and pull — the sort of push and pull that’s better and maybe more exciting than a relationship that just peters out to its inevitable and crushing conclusion.

While featuring a sparse arrangement of Larson her vocals with strummed acoustic guitar, the focus is squarely on the singer/songwriter’s aching yet proud vocals singing heartbreakingly honest lyrics that expresses the wounded and confused psyche of someone desperately in love and yet kind of hates every single moment of it.

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

With the release of his debut single “Care Less, Love Less,” Hartlepool, UK-based singer/songwriter James Leonard Hewitson received attention in his native England for a sound that draws from Parquet Courts, The Walkmen and others paired with snarling and ironic lyrics and his latest single “The Screen” will further his reputation for his noisy, frenetic and anxious take on slacker pop — while making a pointed comment on the use of social media and how it impacts our lives. As Hewitson explained to Dork Mag “’The Screen’ is a song about the overuse of social media in our functioning daily lives, and the social illusions it creates as a result i.e. affirmation in picture likes, sociopolitical ideas derived from meme logic, or going for a meal with someone yet constantly checking your phone.”

Throughout the song, Hewitson describes the constant need to reaffirm oneself through social media as a disease that actually isolates you from people and from actually doing anything about changing the world, besides confirming their own biases and political opinions.

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Introducing the Jangling and Anthemic Guitar Rock of French Singer/Songwriter Pamela Hute

Pamela Hute is a Paris-based singer/songwriter, who began her music career in earnest at a very young age — as a teen she formed The Mashed Potatoes before going solo in 2006. And as a solo artist, she’s released two albums, 2010’s Tales From Overseas and 2013’s Bandit, with Bandit being mixed by John Agnello, who has worked with the likes of The Kills, Sonic Youth and Cyndi Lauper. Interestingly both albums revealed that Hute specialized in jangling guitar pop and synth pop with rousingly anthemic hooks paired earnest lyrics as you’ll hear on The Breeders and 90s alt rock channeling “Banshees,” the second and latest single off her self-produced effort Today. But at its core, Today manages to reveal what may arguably be Hute’s most personal songwriting, influenced by a trip she took to California.

The recently released music video is shot in a gorgeous and cinematic black and white, and captures Hute with her backing band performing “Banshees” live at La Fourmi in Limoges, France.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Although the famed duo of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart wrote “Blue Moon” in 1934, while commissioned to write music for MGM Studios, the old standard has an unusual history in which the familiar melody was paired with different sets of lyrics  — including a version sung by Jean Harlow in the 1933 film, Hollywood Party, another version titled “It’s Just That Kind of Play” was recorded and filmed for the 1934 film Manhattan Melodrama before being cut and then revised for a nightclub scene, sung by Shirley Ross. After Manhattan Melodrama was released Jack Robbins, the head of MGM’s publishing company decided that the tune was well suited for commercial release but needed more romantic lyrics and a punchier title. As the story goes, Hart was initially reluctant to write another set of lyrics for the same song but he was persuaded and he eventually wrote one of the more beloved and oft-covered pop standards of the past 100 years; in fact, the song was a hit twice in 1949 with Billy Eckstine and Mel Torme recording versions of the song.  And over the years, the song has been covered by an impressive array of beloved artists including Billie Holiday, Elvis Presley, The Mavericks, Elkie Brooks, Rod Stewart and Eric Clapton — with the arguably the most famous version being The Marcels’ doo wop version, which hit number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts and the UK Singles chart.

It’s rare that I’ll write about or mention pop standards in any fashion, but bear with me here, there’s a reason. Matilda Mård is a Swedish singer/songwriter, who spent several years writing and performing under her name in Stockholm, Sweden before relocating to the small industrial town of Borlänge as an escape from Stockholm’s busier pace and as a way to rejuvenate and revitalize her approach to music somewhere with far less distractions. And as the story goes, Mård found her creative liberation in a rather unlikely place — a Borlänge karaoke bar. The karaoke bar became a “free zone,” Mård explains in press notes, “far away from my own self doubts and prestige about music.” After several years of piling up songs without releasing them, the Swedish singer/songwriter felt relieved of the pressure she had long felt towards her own original material and began again under the moniker Many Voices Speak. Her debut EP as Many Voices Speak Away For All Time is slated for an October 28, 2016 through Hit City USA Records and the EP’s latest single is a gorgeous and atmospheric rendition of “Blue Moon” in which Mård’s tender and aching vocals glide over a sparse arrangement of shimmering guitar chords and swirling feedback — and as a result, Mård’s rendition adds a bitter and aching sense of regret and nostalgia to the song, while retaining the familiar and beloved melody.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

With the release of his critically praised 2002 debut, The Headphone Masterpiece, singer/songwriter Cody ChesnuTT was universally hailed as a modern-day soul troubadour with many critics comparing his early work to the likes of Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield and Stevie Wonder, thanks in part for frank and socially conscious rumination on modern Black life. Interestingly, ChesnuTT’s rise to critical and commercial acclaim came about as part of a particularly conscious neo-soul movement that included Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, The Roots and others, proving that artists can release work that’s important, relevant and necessary — and be fairly commercially successful. But after a meteoric rise that included a collaboration with The Roots, ChesnuTT abruptly disappeared from public view for the better part of a decade. And in that decade period, ChesnuTT went through a period of deep, personal reflection and observation and raised a family — and those experiences informed and influenced his 2012 sophomore effort Landing on a Hundred, an effort linked contemporary Black music to the classic, singer/songwriter soul of Marvin Gaye, Bill Withers, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield and others while pointing out that the hopes, frustrations, loves, and struggles that those legendary artists spoke about then have remained unchanging.

After touring to support Landing on a Hundred, ChesnuTT had been pretty busy, contributing to the soundtracks for the Oscar Award-winning major motion pictures 12 Years A Slave and Idris Elba Presents Mi Mandela, as well as working on the material that will comprise his forthcoming, third, full-length effort My Love Divine Degree, slated for a February 2017 release.  Produced by Anthony “The Twilight Tone” Khan, a BMI Award, Grammy-nominated producer, songwriter and DJ, who has worked with Kanye West, Common, John Legend and Pusha T., the album will reportedly further cement ChesnuTT’s reputation for writing frank and earnest observations of modern Black life, while pushing the boundaries of what contemporary R&B and soul can sound like. Interestingly, the album’s second and latest single “I Stay Ready” is according to ChesnuTT is a call to arms for positivity in the face of adversity. As the singer/songwriter explains in press notes “In a time of global economic uncertainty, it is an uplifting charge to use one’s natural talents and gifts of creativity to forge ahead positively into purpose and economic well being.

The feeling of this track is rooted in one of the most beautiful guitar riffs I’ve ever been given…a gem that found me ‪around 4AM. Accompanied by the exciting drum breaks programmed by legendary Chicago DJ Anthony ‘The Twilight Tone’ Kahn, the energy and sentiment of the song for me, is a pure shot of life.”

Sonically speaking, the song finds ChesnuTT’s silky smooth vocals paired with big, 808-like breakbeats, layers of buzzing synths, sinuous bursts of guitar and distorted vocal samples in a swaggering and cocksure song that may arguably be one of the most upbeat, “we can do this” songs he’s released to date.