The big release this week at iff is Iron & Wine's The Shepherd's Dog (buy it), an album I'm warily looking forward to. Less on the basis of any sort of quality and more on my personal taste, Iron & Wine's releases have been getting progressively fewer spins from debut The Creek Drank the Cradle forward. The sort of intimacy Sam Beam got across on songs like "Upward Over the Mountain" has been steadily giving way to more atmospheric and band-oriented arrangements. Metacritic has a full review roundup.On the reissue front, one of my very favorite albums of the 1990s is being reissue
d in a too-good-to-be-true ultra-deluxe edition. Hefner's Breaking God's Heart (buy it), packed with twitchy, sly and incredibly catchy folk-punk and now sports a crazy 30 bonus tracks spread over 2 discs. It collects all of those endless, hard-to-find singles and EPs from the early days, as well as plenty of 4-track demos.
d in a too-good-to-be-true ultra-deluxe edition. Hefner's Breaking God's Heart (buy it), packed with twitchy, sly and incredibly catchy folk-punk and now sports a crazy 30 bonus tracks spread over 2 discs. It collects all of those endless, hard-to-find singles and EPs from the early days, as well as plenty of 4-track demos. Despite running a blog with indie and folk in the title I've never been on the Devendra Banhart bandwagon, and I actually hadn't heard his music for a long time until I checked out preview track "Seahorse" from his new Smokey Runs Down Thunder Canyon (buy it). Not as offputting as I remember, but still naggingly striking me as a bit of a put-on.
Steve Earle nods to folk with the title of his new disc Washington Square Serenade (buy it). "City of Immigrants" strikes me as the type of exuberant, mock-innocent mini-anthem Dan Bern is great at churning out.
2 comments:
OMG! I am doing my daily tour (9/26) of the Hype and I downloaded a live version of Dave Brubeck's Take Five, and then I clicked on your mp3 of Seahorse, and damn if that Take Five groove doesn't kick in at the 2 minute mark!
And I know what you mean about being a bit of a put-on. Good word (conjunction?) to describe a lot of "indie" or alternative music.
iron and wine are incredible. the original of such great heights especially :)
and devendra banhart, whose songs strangely enough appears in many adverts here haha
you guys have really good taste in music :) most of which consist of my ipod xD
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