A "major" artist, and an "indie" artist. Considered.
Gemma Hayes
The Hollow Of Morning
2007 Second Motion
myspace.com/gemmahayes2006
Mercury Prize nominee and Meteor Award winning songstress Gemma Hayes' first two albums swung her well-layered tunes from one end of the spectrum to the other, well, the spectrum of Irish songwriter folk rock, that is.
Night On My Side (which I first heard while driving in Northern Ireland along a beach) was loose and noisy, but full of Hayes' whispery melody over a bed of spacious guitars.
Her second work, The Roads Don't Love You was a great blend of cleaner production (from Beck's often-drummer Joey Waronker), and aching songs, weary of early adulthood.
Which brings us to The Hollow Of Morning, her most balanced work yet. With guitar help from My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields, this collection of songs still draws deep from the well of songwriter folk, but Hayes' silver bullets have always been her haunting, carelessly smooth voice, and her proclivity to take the band underneath it all to real places of ambient rock, lo-fi pop, with a real sense of indie production. The depth of the production helps her to avoid too-maudlin territory well-handled by Damien Rice and The Swell Season, but keeps her in a little more wide-angled place.
The album kicks off with the little girl sing-song vocals of "This Is What You Do," a folky shuffle dotted with ambient guitars and random synth flourishes, all unhurried and thoughtful. From there the songs cycle back and forth from quiet and roomy folk ("Chasing Dragons," "January 14th") to poppy indie rock, culminating in the arching expanse of "Home," with its simple, yearning chorus of "this is home..."
The record ends with the patient, well-layered "At Constant Speed," a great closing with its assurance of moving on from a painful place: "I'm beginning to forget you/ I just see an outline..." Its quiet electronics are warm and wide, and slowly build into an almost M83-like crescendo of synths and electronic piano.
Hayes has always flown a little under the radar in the States, despite being featured on Grey's Anatomy, and mentioned in a Counting Crows tune (she's the "songbird of Ballyporeal (her hometown) in "Washington Square"). Yet this record deserves attention from both the main thrust of pop music and the indie world, as her quality and aesthetic straddle both streams well, and by now she has amassed a great collection of songs, unpretentious, and always interesting.
-----
Dosh
Wolves And Wishes
2008 Anticon
Martin Dosh, rhythmic powerman behind Andrew Bird, as he is usually known, released a small brilliance in 2008, and the sad thing is, many would not notice unless they paid particular attention to Andrew Bird, or saw Dosh open for the crazy/amazing Anathallo this past year.
Wolves and Wishes is a colleciton of almost entirely instrumental jams featuring Dosh's imaginative drumming layered under and over a cornucopia of instruments acoustic and electronic. While Anticon is known as a label of indie-minded hip hop and electronic music, Dosh doesn't fit easily into that sort of category. Indeed, two external considerations both enhance and change the reception of this music into your ears.
The first is that of Anticon and the electronic label itself. The great value of these tunes is found in the tension between the delicate acoustic instruments (such as Andrew Bird's violin in the manic "If You Want To, You Have To"), and the raucous electric guitars, percussion, banged-on Rhodes, swathes of noise, and chiming bells that dot the entire record. It doesn't feel particularly "electronic," like anything of an 80's throwback, or a proper dance band. It also doesn't feel like hip-hop in almost any sense, save for the emphasis on drums, and it feels more like what Allmusic describes as "the hip-hop equivalent of post-rock."
The second thing to consider the music with is the startling live-ness of the whole creation process for Martin Dosh. This video shows him at work on one tune from the record, "Capture The Flag." To picture this music being performed in all of its complexity and blend of live and pre-made, samplers and drum kit, guitars and violins...well, it is impressive and impossible all at once.
The reward and cost of the music is that being both instrumental, and lacking the traditional hooks and melodies, it is often a difficult listen. The danger of appreciating this as visceral and not particularly emotive is always present, and I would love to see Dosh balance these forms in the future. Yet for now, it is a reward indeed to mine the moments of loveliness and breath from the deep channels of groove and noise embedded in Wolves and Wishes.
Gemma Hayes
The Hollow Of Morning
2007 Second Motion
myspace.com/gemmahayes2006
Mercury Prize nominee and Meteor Award winning songstress Gemma Hayes' first two albums swung her well-layered tunes from one end of the spectrum to the other, well, the spectrum of Irish songwriter folk rock, that is.
Night On My Side (which I first heard while driving in Northern Ireland along a beach) was loose and noisy, but full of Hayes' whispery melody over a bed of spacious guitars.
Her second work, The Roads Don't Love You was a great blend of cleaner production (from Beck's often-drummer Joey Waronker), and aching songs, weary of early adulthood.
Which brings us to The Hollow Of Morning, her most balanced work yet. With guitar help from My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields, this collection of songs still draws deep from the well of songwriter folk, but Hayes' silver bullets have always been her haunting, carelessly smooth voice, and her proclivity to take the band underneath it all to real places of ambient rock, lo-fi pop, with a real sense of indie production. The depth of the production helps her to avoid too-maudlin territory well-handled by Damien Rice and The Swell Season, but keeps her in a little more wide-angled place.
The album kicks off with the little girl sing-song vocals of "This Is What You Do," a folky shuffle dotted with ambient guitars and random synth flourishes, all unhurried and thoughtful. From there the songs cycle back and forth from quiet and roomy folk ("Chasing Dragons," "January 14th") to poppy indie rock, culminating in the arching expanse of "Home," with its simple, yearning chorus of "this is home..."
The record ends with the patient, well-layered "At Constant Speed," a great closing with its assurance of moving on from a painful place: "I'm beginning to forget you/ I just see an outline..." Its quiet electronics are warm and wide, and slowly build into an almost M83-like crescendo of synths and electronic piano.
Hayes has always flown a little under the radar in the States, despite being featured on Grey's Anatomy, and mentioned in a Counting Crows tune (she's the "songbird of Ballyporeal (her hometown) in "Washington Square"). Yet this record deserves attention from both the main thrust of pop music and the indie world, as her quality and aesthetic straddle both streams well, and by now she has amassed a great collection of songs, unpretentious, and always interesting.
-----
Dosh
Wolves And Wishes
2008 Anticon
Martin Dosh, rhythmic powerman behind Andrew Bird, as he is usually known, released a small brilliance in 2008, and the sad thing is, many would not notice unless they paid particular attention to Andrew Bird, or saw Dosh open for the crazy/amazing Anathallo this past year.
Wolves and Wishes is a colleciton of almost entirely instrumental jams featuring Dosh's imaginative drumming layered under and over a cornucopia of instruments acoustic and electronic. While Anticon is known as a label of indie-minded hip hop and electronic music, Dosh doesn't fit easily into that sort of category. Indeed, two external considerations both enhance and change the reception of this music into your ears.
The first is that of Anticon and the electronic label itself. The great value of these tunes is found in the tension between the delicate acoustic instruments (such as Andrew Bird's violin in the manic "If You Want To, You Have To"), and the raucous electric guitars, percussion, banged-on Rhodes, swathes of noise, and chiming bells that dot the entire record. It doesn't feel particularly "electronic," like anything of an 80's throwback, or a proper dance band. It also doesn't feel like hip-hop in almost any sense, save for the emphasis on drums, and it feels more like what Allmusic describes as "the hip-hop equivalent of post-rock."
The second thing to consider the music with is the startling live-ness of the whole creation process for Martin Dosh. This video shows him at work on one tune from the record, "Capture The Flag." To picture this music being performed in all of its complexity and blend of live and pre-made, samplers and drum kit, guitars and violins...well, it is impressive and impossible all at once.
The reward and cost of the music is that being both instrumental, and lacking the traditional hooks and melodies, it is often a difficult listen. The danger of appreciating this as visceral and not particularly emotive is always present, and I would love to see Dosh balance these forms in the future. Yet for now, it is a reward indeed to mine the moments of loveliness and breath from the deep channels of groove and noise embedded in Wolves and Wishes.
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