Category: Folk

Mailbag: Dan Petrich – Sycamore Tales

In 2009, Dan Petrich released the excellent Sycamore Tales, and I really wish that I had gotten to know this deeply introspective album sooner.  The sound is built on a foundation of folk and Americana, and ranges from hints of 70s radio (“Chance the Pearl” and “The Seeds are Wasted”) to beautiful folk ballads and instrumentals (“J.P. Special” and “Treasure Lake”).  It’s a remarkable debut, which My Old Kentucky Blog called: “…a sparse and powerful record about real people dealing with real problems.”

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Recommended: Balto – October’s Road

 

I’m going to jump right to it with this one: Balto’s October’s Road is gorgeous.  Goosebump-inducing gorgeous.  The album, which is available on Bandcamp, is the work of Daniel Sheron and five of his friends (including Philippe Bronchtein of Hip Hatchet), and comes attached to a truly excellent origin story:

Balto came into being when Daniel Sheron abandoned his life in Moscow, Russia and went alone into Siberia. Against an ever shifting backdrop of railways and desolate wastes, he wrote a cycle of songs to tell the story of what had happened in that strange country, why he had exiled himself, and why he thought it mattered. In train cars and crumbling cities he encountered PEOPLE, and they inhabited the songs he was writing and the notes he was taking. In the fall, Daniel brought Balto back to America and called his friends to record an album in one day. On December 15, 2010, six people entered a basement in Brooklyn, New York and emerged that night with an album that no one had expected. October’s Road.

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Mailbag: Katie Davis – Three Songs EP

Seattle-based singer/songwriter Katie Davis writes beautiful, melancholic songs about the ambiguities of love and loss…and she performs them fearlessly with a voice that is as clear and strong as it is soft.   It’s a combination rarely found, but one that speaks to an enormous wealth of talent.  When her EP – Three Songs – landed in my mailbox, it came with a tease from Performer Magazine: “This is the type of CD you listen to when you’re drunk and alone, contemplating calling your exes to ask them why they stopped loving you.”  And I can see that, but I also feel in these songs the cautious, slow, inward steps toward making peace with something beautiful that just never delivered.

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Coming Soon: Greater Pacific – “Rainfall” EP

Greater Pacific began when Kyle Kersten and John Phinney, members of Travel By Sea, decided to take their love of pedal steel and country folk into a new realm.  On the Rainfall EP, out 1/25 as a six-track, digital release on Yer Bird Records, the pair are joined by fellow Travel By Sea member Mike Cusick on drums, as well as L.A. favorite Angela Correa.  The result is a gentle, rolling cascade of expansive, haunting songs that draw us to those places of quiet solitude that mark a Winter’s night, a walk in the Spring rain, or where we go inside when no one else is looking.

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Recommended: Black Prairie

Admittedly, I’m a little late to the party on Black Prairie.  But boy, what a party!  The band, which is comprised of 3/5 of the Decemberists, as well as two other folk musicians from Portland, OR, works with an amazing combination of musical styles (string band, folk, bluegrass, etc.) to produce something that just gushes out atmosphere.  What becomes clear, right away, is that the band’s songs (which are heavily weighted towards the instrumental) are born out of a love of genre, authenticity, and antiquity.  Watching them perform on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic (which you can see below), you see a seriousness and a joyfulness that makes for some excellent music.

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