Dylan Le Blanc – Cautionary Tale
In one of my favourite assignments, I once took a night-drive from Nashville to Muscle Shoals with Dylan Le Blanc. This was just before the release of his debut album, a time of great excitement and trepidation, and as we drove and talked, I remember feeling struck by how much this young man’s life was about to change. Over the next a couple of records, he did a heap of touring, drunk a lot of booze and suffered an increasing lack of confidence, so that by 23, he was back home in Alabama trying to write himself back together. The album he has this time produced is among my favourites. Mature and impeccably crafted, it features guest spots from Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes, and production from Ben Tanner (also of the Alabama Shakes parish) and John Paul White (Civil Wars). This track is the first single from the album; a perfectly poised balance of elegance and rough edges. There’s a distinct nudge of Neil Young and Lucinda Williams, but also a taste of how Le Blanc’s voice has developed over the past few years into a sultry, shape-shifting thing of wonder.
Neko Case – Maybe Sparrow
Since I’m mentioning favourite assignments, another took me to interview Neko Case at her farmhouse in Vermont around the time she released The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You. It’s hard to sum up my love for this woman’s music, but for me its impact comes from her particular combination of almighty strength and vulnerability. Her record label has just released a box set of her complete back catalogue on vinyl, and crowned it with the excellent title Truckdriver, Gladiator, Mule. This strikes me as a fine excuse to present one of my favourite Case numbers, Maybe Sparrow, from 2006’s Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. It’s a short, gut-flung song about a sparrow and a hawk, but in its wildness suggests very much more – the beauty and cruelty of nature, a great mourning for the preyed-upon and the lost.
Aidan Knight – The Arp
Victoria, BC’s Aidan Knight releases his third album, Each Other, in January, and it’s such a warm, beautiful and multilayered record. Knight is dusky-voiced without ever straying into the troubadour quagmire, thanks to the complexity and ambition of his songs, and the rich textures of their production (courtesy of Marcus Paquin, producer to Stars, the National, Local Natives). For me, listening to the album feels a little like listening to Andrew Bird – as if I am not so much hearing these songs as having some curious physical reaction to them. That’s a compliment.
Ella Jenkins – Many Pretty Trees All Around the World
This Record Belongs to _______________ is a collaboration between Light in the Attic and Third Man Records consisting of an album, accompanying storybook by artist Jess Rotter and portable turntable, all designed for children but without the music being garish, dumbed-down or destined to send adults delirious. The tracklisting comes courtesy of Zach Cowie, who curates LITA’s Country Funk series, and features Woody Guthrie, Nina Simone, Harry Nilsson, Vashti Bunyan and this humdinger from Ella Jenkins, the rich-voiced singer from Missouri known as the First Lady of the Children’s Folk Song. Here she’s singing the praises of trees from the oak and the elm to the eucalyptus and the cedar. Wonderful stuff.
El Vy – No Time to Crank the Sun
El Vy, a collaboration between the National’s Matt Berninger and Menomena/Ramona Falls’ Brent Knopf, play their first run of UK shows next week. Their debut album, Return to the Moon, came out at the end of October and proved a brilliant blurring of their respective styles: Knopf’s intricate near-glam tunes foiling Berninger’s telling of tall and twisted tales about recurring characters whose lives circle and overlap in the American Midwest. With its forlorn, near desperate vocals, this is one of its loveliest tracks, with Berninger singing like the last man drinking at the bar over Knopf’s haughty synthesised grandeur.
