Category: Mailbag

Mailbag: Hip Hatchet – Men Who Share My Name

These past few weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of listening to Hip Hatchet‘s Men Who Share My Name album.  Hip Hatchet hails from Vermont, and is the work of Philippe Bronchtein (vocals, guitar, clarinet, saxophone, piano) and several of his friends.  The songs are acoustic, featuring traditional instruments like clarinet, bassoon, and violin, and are built with delicate harmonies and spacious arrangements.  Indeed, the album reminds me of the wide-open Vermont spaces that I’ve so often wandered – especially those moments when the Sun finally fades, and one is left only with conversation to hold the night back.  To me, the sound of this album seems imprinted by Winter and woodland, and carries all the warmth and determination of a soul that has passed through those things time and again.

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Mailbag: He and Him – At the Foot of Mount Tabor

Honestly, is there anything better than getting great, free music in the mail?  Such is the question I’ve been asking all evening, as I sit and listen to He and Him‘s delightful At the Foot of Mount Tabor.  He and Him is a recent collaboration between Douglas Jenkins (Portland Cello Project) and David Shultz (David Shultz and the Skyline).  The music is a rich combination of acoustic guitar, cello, and a warm baritone vocal.  The kind of sound that reminds you of Summer evenings – those simpler times, perhaps out on the porch, with friends and fireflies.  In a nutshell, if you’re feeling a little out of place, it’s almost certainly “just what the doctor ordered.”

Follow me to read more, and hear the music:

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Mailbag: Small Sur – Bare Black EP

The fine folks over at Aural States pointed me towards the warm, folk-tinged music of Small Sur, and I’ve been happily listening to it all evening.  In fact, it’s fair to say that it has become my evening – pushing aside the English Summer to make room for visions of vast, American forests and skies.  All I’m missing, really, is a campfire and the gentle hum of crickets… Here’s how the folks at Aural States describe the band:

Small Sur stands opposed to today’s quantity-over-quality stampede, in which the pursuit of fleeting Internet notoriety threatens creative continuity, growth, and a sustained sonic relationship that honors the listener as well as the creator. The band’s patient, near-obsessive exploration of warmth, depth, and space makes each offering an experience rich in sensory detail—quietly compelling listeners to turn their iPods off shuffle and allow the entire release to envelop them from start to finish. […]

Small Sur is the primary musical alias of Baltimore-based songwriter Bob Keal and current collaborators Austin Stahl and Andy Abelow. The project was born during the spring of 2005 in a friend’s Southern California bedroom, where Keal recorded the self-titled Small Sur EP shortly before relocating to the East Coast…

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