It’s been quite a while since our last installment of our popular (Re)Covered series, in which we revisit previous posts through the new and noteworthy. But a growing collection of stunning apres-post reader submissions and a mailbox full of new upcoming works from previously-featured musicians cry out to be shared, and we’re long overdue. Without further ado, here’s some new covertracks and newly-found folk favorites worthy of your attention.
We’ve celebrated Kristin Andreassen, Ruth Merenda, and Aoife O’Donovan here on Cover Lay Down in the past, both as solo artists and as members of Uncle Earl (Andreassen), The Mammals (Merenda), and Crooked Still (O’Donovan): the three are central players in the new, rising neo-traditional cadre of folk musicians working to redefine the relationship between modern folk and more traditional forms such as bluegrass and appalachian music, and I believe them to be among the cream of the crop. I am a huge fan of these young ladies, and if you told me they were performing at two a.m. tomorrow night, separately or in combination, I’d skip out on my sleep and head over in a heartbeat, school night be damned.
Your Heart is a Glorious Machine, which drops March 10th from Signature Sounds, is the second album from this trio, which performs together as Sometymes Why, and I’ll be honest — it’s not what I expected at all. In fact, at first listen, the album is hardly folk at all. Instead, where their previous projects were grounded in both traditional and singer-songwriter folk, Your Heart comes off as a form of soul-influenced indiepop, heavy in tambourine and organ, targeted towards fans of Jenny Lewis or Feist. Heck, even the cover art speaks to a more indie audience.
Okay, so the album represents a significant departure from both their previous work as separate musicians, and their debut album as Sometymes Why. But once folk fans get past the shift in sensibility, with a few notable exceptions, Your Heart is surprisingly strong and eminently listenable, featuring a diverse collection of great songs and sweet, airy harmony vocals throughout. From the synthesized intro and sultry vocals of opener Aphrodisiaholic to the sweet and delicate acoustic guitar, harmonica and bells of Shine It and Slow Down, to the powerful Diamond, with its indie echo and a light foreground of strings and synth, this is music with a folk twang but plenty of soul, sure to appeal to modern folk audiences and the new indie crowd alike.
Unfortunately, those few notable exceptions come early in the tracklist. Both My Crazy and the single cover — a take on Concrete Blonde’s Joey — suffer from issues of pacing and too-precious overarrangement; as I wrote elsewhere when Joey first hit the blogs, “The song makes a decent light lullaby, but the arrangement here is too back and forth, and ultimately the hard rock organ, fuzz-guitar, and drum beat of the “forth” isn’t the best showcase for the team’s light folk harmonies.” Still, every new band deserves a few missteps, and even mostly-perfect albums are hard to come by; in the end, this is still a solid album, worth owning. Check out Joey below, and then head over to Signature Sounds for a few more (and more representative) samples while you pre-order.
Sea of Tears, the new disc from Eilen Jewell, represents a similar departure from her previous work. Jewell’s second album Letters from Sinners and Strangers was a masterpiece of crisp, light-hearted acoustic countryfolk swing which swept the folk-world upon its 2007 release; her work with the Sacred Shakers, which we wrote about when it emerged last summer, took that gorgeous, girlish voice and acoustic twang and applied it to old-timey gospel tunes, creating something “just a peg looser than a classic country gospel album.”
Now Jewell has moved away from that crisp, Sun Records-gone-organic sound to reimagine the jangly, twangy sounds of the British invasion of the sixties. As with the Sometymes Why album, regular listeners will likely find the result takes a while to get used to, with several songs heavy on the surf guitar coming at you right from the get-go, creating a sonic consistency easily mistaken for sameness. But upon further listen, in both these and a few softer rock ballads later on, the album ultimately attains its goal, rewarding the listener with a return to form and mastery, framed in a new sonic environment which really does pay homage to “the roots of rock and roll”, effectively and enjoyably.
Sea of Tears is due to drop from Signature Sounds in April. Here’s a new cover from the album, plus a more mellow older favorite, to prove it’s worth the wait.
In other news, a continued pursuit of the best new tradfolk heard at two recent festivals — The Boston Celtic Music Festival and The Joe Val Bluegrass Festival — has led to some lovely finds over the past few weeks, including two songs with a coincidence factor which collapses the traditional genre and performer distance between the two musical forms.
First, Scottish-bred and now Boston-based vocalist and fiddler Hannah Read, who sat in with the wonderful young folks of the Berklee Bluegrass Collage at Joe Val and performed as part of the Folk Arts Quartet at BCMFest, turned out to have a lovely cover of A Taste of Honey on her MySpace page. And second, Emma Beaton, who I wrote about here recently in glowing terms, has just unearthed a bluegrassy version of Red Rocking Chair, which she previously performed as a sparse banjo ballad; this second take is performed with some of the Berklee Bluegrass folks as well.
Coincidences abound here, including the fact that Hannah has photos of herself performing with both Aoife O’Donovan and Kristin Andreassen on her MySpace page. It would also seem that Berkley is a source to watch right now. Those living in the Boston area would be well advised to keep an eye on the Notlob concert series, which is featuring many folks from this scene this year: Hannah Read will perform with the Folk Arts Quartet on April 11; both Emma Beaton and the Boston Boys, which feature some of the Berklee Bluegrass crowd, will appear on May 9.
I’ve included a wonderful old-timey bluegrass cover of Rider on an Orphan Train here, too, because I picked it up at the Joe Val Fest after finally figuring out what all the fuss was about Dry Branch Fire Squad. We featured contemporary folk dulcimer-player David Massengil, who wrote the tune, when he appeared this summer at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival.
Finally: our recent feature on the songs of Fleetwood Mac led to a few wonderful recommendations from the peanut gallery; I’ve never been so grateful to have readers who consider the blog a true dialogue as I was when I tracked down Anna Ternheim‘s sweet, ringing acoustic take on Little Lies, and the gentle countryfolk harmonies and slide guitar of Nora O’Connor‘s version of That’s Alright. We’ll make a Fleetwood Mac fan of me yet, I guess. Keep ‘em coming, folks.
Are you an artist, a promoter, or a fan with a cover to share? Send ‘em along via the contact link at the top of the page — all songs considered, just like it says on NPR.
