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Horse Feathers is a Portland band that specializes in bluegrass harmonies, beautiful and haunting vocals and instrumentation fit for angels.
There’s a certain place in everyone’s heart where music like this fits perfectly, like a snug sweater.
Beauty and old-fashioned sounds make nostalgia palpable and dreams clear. Just like a cocktail made with bitters and home-brewed gin, the music of Horse Feathers will drive a spike through your timid life.
The taste below is off Thistled Spring, out now on Kill Rock Stars.
Horse Feathers: Belly of June
This just in from Colorado space control stars Woodsman…
First: a story.
I tripped over a power cable at the UP Ranch in Texas (yes, everything happened there.) The person who caught my arm and said “Hey that wasn’t my fault,” was a member of Woodsman. He had long blond hair and a gentle voice. We talked for awhile… but I can’t remember what about. Probably…. music?
Two days later Woodsman played the Mexican Summer/Gorilla Vs. Bear Showcase. They were loud and so intensely inspired, I was literally shocked. “This was the gentle voiced gentleman who caught me before I fell?,” I thought to myself. Hmmmm.
Woodsman is from Denver, Colorado. The blonde haired man told me that Denver gets more days of sunshine than any other place in the U.S., that I remember. We decided that was likely because of the city’s elevation. Perhaps this is why the blonde haired stoner boy looked like a surfer, but made music that sounded like it came from deep in the middle of the Earth. Colorado is landlocked.
Woodsman has an album coming out on Lefse on June 1.
“When the Morning Comes” is a sample from that album to get you ready. No, this is not a take on the jolly Grateful Dead song with a similar name. It couldn’t be farther from that song sonically. Mystically, they could be cousins.
Beautiful Woodsman videos….
Check them out on tour. Highly suggested. Playing June 18 somewhere in NYC, and June 19 at 87 Guernsey St., which is the Mexican Summer store.
Woodsman: When the Morning Comes
Holiday Shores is an interesting band. The music they make is pop-tastic, verging on the edge of rock and roll. Hard hit drums and discordant sounds fill the band’s sound with texture and give it an edge that separates them from the pack.
These Floridians make a jangly racket, and you can hear it even amid all the clatter of this recording- live from the best show at SXSW: the Underwater Peoples Ranch Show on night 1. The set was “captured by a 20 year old alarm clock/boombox,” tweeted the band. WORD.
A particularly fuzzy and perfect sounding recording is the track “Keyboard Song.” Listen below and get the whole set here.
Also, if you’re new to the band, you MUST listen to their “You Ain’t Goin Nowhere” cover. That’s a Bob Dylan song they did for Daytrotter.
I am not sure who made this video but it’s the best and most beautiful that i’ve seen of Mountain Man. Shot in Austin, Texas in March 2010.
Listen to the birds chirping… or is that the WOMEN? Hard to tell. Impossible to know.
Mountain Man haunt my dreams, still. When the album comes out- from the first drop of the needle until the last breath taken- I will listen and hold my own breath…Fearful of letting go.
Coma Cinema makes simple pop music that is light on first listen. But then there are dark and affected lyrics like this one:
“Gonna drive these feelings out, of my heart, and drown them in the lake.”
Ok bro! It’s ok to be sad!
“Sucker Punch” recalls what it feels like to be heartbroken. The sparse instrumentation and fun oooh ooooh vocals remind you that it doesn’t matter that much if the sun is shining.
The band gives all its music away…
Coma Cinema: Sucker Punch
Zs is making a statement with “Acres of Skin.” It’s not as overt as M.I.A.’s, but it’s a statement none the less. The sounds made by Sam Hillmer, Annon Friedlin, Ben Greenberg and Ian Antonio are almost a dare– to mankind.
Experimental is a label slapped on a lot of things. Everything from fusion cuisine to medical procedures are experimental. Experimental music is music that comes together as a result of experimentation. Something doesn’t sound experimental, it is experimental.
Check what Hillmer told Christopher Weingarten:
“Ben had an odd, kind of twisted riff that involved some detuned strings, and I suggested that it be a sort of follow up to our first clapping joint. After that, we just tried to let the material play itself out naturally. Then there was some work in the studio to make it pop.
“Acres of Skin,” taken from the upcoming New Slaves record, out May 11 on The Social Registry, is a name culled from somebody doing, you guessed it, experiments.
” ‘Acres of skin’ is a quote from the dermatologist Dr. Robert M. Kligman who conducted tests on prisoners in the Holmesburg prison in Pennsylvania. He was conducting experiments, which proved to be quite dangerous and permanently detrimental to his subjects. Later, when describing the environment he’d chosen for these experiments, he said something to the effect of ‘I walked into the prison and all I saw were acres of skin.’ “
GROSS! But certainly inspiring.
“Acres of Skin” sounds, as was said earlier, like a dare. It’s maybe more appropriate to say it feels like a dare. 7 minutes and 40 seconds of clapping, saxophone squeaking and wailing, balls and metal clanging. The band is daring you to get real deep in it, to feel the harsh sounds and to follow the beat wherever it goes. Do it. Dare ya.
In a field awash in haze and fuzz, Zs comes through loud and, believe it or not, clear.
Zs is playing a record release on May 11 at the Knitting Factory with Exceptor, Mick Barr and Silk Flowers.
Zs: Acres of Skin
Street Chant has a ferocious drummer that fills his fills with heavy loads of smash smash, bang. Just listen to the first few moments in “Yr Philosophy.” How can one not appreciate that kind of drumming? It’s both a throwback to hardcore and a wink to the future… which of course means that the future will include sounds from the past. But what doesn’t? There are no new sounds, someone famously said.
Street Chant likely patrols the streets of Auckland constantly doubled over in fits of laughter. That’s how I picture this threesome.
The band’s debut album is out later this year on NZ label Arch Hill.
Street Chant: Yr Philosophy
Thanks to Rose Quartz for the turn-on.
TONIGHT
Hole at Terminal 5, 8ish (and Wednesday)
WEDNESDAY
The Morning Benders, Twin Sister, Twin Shadow, Papa at Mercury Lounge, 730ish
THURSDAY
Cold Cave, Cult of Youth, Beaut at Le Poisson Rouge, 11ish
Fiasco, Total Slacker, Life Size Maps, Movement at Death by Audio, 8ish
FRIDAY
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings at the Apollo, 8ish (and Saturday)
Tanlines, Keepaway, Memoryhouse, Light Pollution, Psychobuildings at Glasslands, 830ish
John Doe, Exene Cervenka at City Winery, 8
SATURDAY
Pizza Forest (Coasting side project), and other side projects at the Coasting House, details TBA.
Rights of Spring Haiti Benefit w/ Alex Ross, Bjork, Dave Longstreth and more at Above the Auto Parts Store, 8ish
SUNDAY
Weekends, Truman Peyote at Glasslands, 8ish
The new song from Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, “Round and Round,” is really hard to escape these days. Rezound played it the two times i’ve attended events he’s DJ’d: at the Twin Sister Tortilla show and on Saturday at the Real Estate show at PS1. Anyway, I was pretty obsessed with this song and thus listened to it into the ground. Searching for other Pink songs I came across this Real Estate cover of “My Molly,” recorded by NYC Taper at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in March. It’s great and doesn’t sound much like Real Estate.
Real Estate: My Molly (Ariel Pink cover)
Caged Animals is the side project of Vincent Cacchione from Soft Black. The music is a little disconcerting at first. Take “The Way it Feels to be Haunted,” which could win an award for being the most aptly named song of the year. Listening to the track makes you feel like you have a ghost inside you that’s madly scratching at you trying to get out.
The high pitched and squealing vocals are well used. They aren’t pretty at all.
“We live in a jungle…”
This song could go a little farther. The melody and vocals are a bit hypnotizing, but the song lacks drama. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the intention seems to be to make the listener feel awkward, or caged.
Supposedly, Cacchione, who blossoms into Yellow Malrone while performing as Caged Animals, was hit by a truck while working as a flower delivery man. Then he started making this music. Ouch is an understatement. It makes sense why someone would make music like this to deal with something like that.
The self/titled album is out on June 1.
Caged Animals: The Way It Feels to be Hunted
CORRECTION
This song is actually called “The Way It Feels to be Hunted,” not haunted. Not sure how I got that wrong, perhaps I really felt haunted by the music, as I wrote in the post, and so I saw what was actually not there. I am not changing the post, but I stand corrected. (Fixed in song link above.)
