Music Review: Iron & Wine, Archive Series Volume No. 1

By Melissa Bratcher

Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam does what he does exquisitely well. For over a decade, Beam has been creating hushed, intimate acoustic songs of love and domesticity and family, sepia-tinted nostalgia for right now.

The songs that make up Iron & Wine’s new Archive Series Volume No. 1 are pulled from tapes that Beam made before he was Iron & Wine, prior to the release of 2002’s The Creek Drank The Cradle. These songs were made only to be heard by his family and make up what feels like a diary of sorts, accompanied by his acoustic guitar. They are songs full of striking imagery, like in “The Wind Is Low,” a paean to a family of three “including the little one”: “We sail in the smallest boat/sleep just when the wind is low.”

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Music Review: Dan Deacon, Gliss Riffer

By Melissa Bratcher

Electronic collage artist Dan Deacon has returned with another eclectic offering in the very appropriately titled Gliss Riffer. A play on the the word glissando (sliding from one note to another) and riff (a repeated motif in a piece), Gliss Riffer is full of swooping keyboards and repeated movements, disembodied voices and dance-ready rhythms. It’s a heady mix.

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Music Review: The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, So Delicious

By Melissa Bratcher

For a trio, The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band sure do make a lot of noise. I listened to their latest, So Delicious, without knowing a thing about them, and assumed that there had to be at least six people in the Big Damn Band. It’s called The Big Damn Band, after all. And they’re loud. Looking at their bio, though, I was stunned to realize that the band is the Reverend Peyton, a Delta-style guitarist who sings; Breezy Peyton, who plays washboard and supplies backing vocals; and drummer Ben Bussell.

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Music Review: Steve Earle And The Dukes, Terraplane

By Melissa Bratcher

Steve Earle has always had a genius gift for lyrics that relate the life of the working man, the wronged person, and the misfits of the world. On his latest album, Terraplane, he again explores those characters and inhabits them so deeply that taken as a whole, the album is like a collection of fully realized short stories with accompanying soundtracks.

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Music Review: Jeff Austin, The Simple Truth

By Melissa Bratcher

The Simple Truth, the debut album of Jeff Austin, former Yonder Mountain String Band mandolin king, is an engaging trip through Austin’s musical influences and passions: there’s straight bluegrass, soaring power pop, edgy noise experimentation, and some serious funk. The wonderful thing is every one of those songs works deliciously. There’s not a false moment or note on The Simple Truth. It’s an album made by someone who seems to be really enjoying his work, and it shows. (Or sounds. Hears?)

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Music Review: Murder By Death, Big Dark Love

By Melissa Bratcher

With a band name like Murder By Death, I wasn’t surprised by the heaviness of their latest, Big Dark Love. It’s a heavy record lyrically, touching on depression and chronic illness, obsession, and isolation. It inhabits a dream-like space, but the kind of dream that borders on a nightmare—the kind of dream where things are just a bit wrong, but you can’t put your finger on why exactly. It’s the kind of dream where you always end up alone, in an unfamiliar, sinister place, with wolves baying. Big Dark Love is unsettling in that subtle way, and quite effective.

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Music Review: Various Artists, Stoned – A Pscyh Tribute To The Rolling Stones

By Melissa Bratcher

Tribute cover albums occupy such an odd space. If a band covers a song too faithfully, they’re destined to be compared, probably unfavorably, to the original. If you add nothing to your interpretation, then why cover the song in the first place? If a band goes too far afield in their musical choices, and they make the song truly their own, then they have the purists who complain that they haven’t hewed closely enough to the source material. It’s a tightrope.

On Stoned – A Psych Tribute To The Rolling Stones, the artists from the neo-psych scene (the Allah-Las, The Tulips, Clinic, Tashaki Miyaki, Yeti Love, et al.) tread that tightrope. Some of the covers are straightforward, faithful renditions (with more reverb, because it’s neo-psych music), and some take the songs in a much different direction. It’s an intriguing record.

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Music Review: Jim White Vs. The Packway Handle Band, Take It Like A Man

By Melissa Bratcher

Jim White’s collaboration with The Packway Handle Band is an early entry in the “most delightful albums of 2015” list that I am currently compiling (in my head). Full of clever, cinematic lyrics and ripping bluegrass, Take It Like A Man is a joy from start to finish.

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Music Review: Elephant Micah, Where In Our Woods

By Melissa Bratcher

Elephant Micah’s (Joseph O’Connell) songs on Where In Our Woods sound archaic and primal, but in a quiet kind of way. They’re hushed and spare, connected to the earth and the air and the migratory patterns of birds. Where In Our Woods haunts and moves me, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

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Music Review: The Vagaband, Medicine For The Soul

By Melissa Bratcher

It’s difficult to describe the sound of the UK’s The Vagaband. They’re a little folky, with a dash of vaudeville, a generous dollop of rock, and a not fleeting resemblance to Pink Floyd. They traffic in pastoral sounds with interesting instrumentation. Their second album, Medicine For The Soul, is a pleasant surprise; it’s chock full of banjos and horns, jaw harps and fiddle, and charming, ear-wormy tunes, as well as a smart cover of a Ween song.

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