Kate Wolf: Lines On The Paper

I just got a copy of Kate Wolf‘s 1977 LP, Lines On The Paper, and like all of her albums, it is possessed of that same purity of vision and message. Really enjoyed it. 

From the back cover:

“This is the second album of songs from the north coast of California, where Kate lives and is known as a singer-songwriter and radio personality. At the time of these sessions her band, The Wildwood Flower, included Don, Paul, Barlow, and Blair (featured on “Backroads”). They are joined on this record by several friends and four members of the Cache Valley Drifters, David, Cyrus, Bill & Wally.

Like “Backroads,” this album was recorded live in a living room. During a week in November the band, sound crew, and cooks took over the bunkhouse at Chanslor Ranch above the Pacific Ocean, with horses and sheep on the hillsides and pinball machines a 5-minute drive away in Bodega Bay.

We invite you to listen to these lines on the paper and share that time with us.”

{{ Buy Kate Wolf Stuff }}

[download] The Trumpet Vine

[download] Lay Me Down Easy

-kevin-

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Alasdair Roberts: The Wyrd Meme EP

“The hallucinator lives upon an island,” Alasdair Roberts, in his familiar Scottish brogue, sings on the opening track of the upcoming Wyrd Meme EP. His style of linear, seemingly stream of consciouness songwriting used to put me off in some ways — don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed his music greatly, especially 2005’s No Earthly Man — but I didn’t find myself returning to his records as often as others of the time. But today I find myself listening to the Wyrd Meme over and over again as I travel, maybe because his visual, visceral writing style speaks to a place in my own mind that I had yet to explore until recently. During my brief week and a half in the Brtish isles, Alasdair’s music held even more powerful sway, as if for the first time I truly grasped his rambling scope and Celtic whimsy. His songs are so rich in imagery that I find myself staring out of train windows watching unfamiliar landscapes blur by and, perhaps only fleetingly, daydreaming about long distant shores and open sails and lost loves.

The Wyrd Meme EP will be released October 20 on Drag City. You can pre-order and stream tracks here.

=tyler=

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Steven R. Smith: Cities

Cities is the newest offering from Steven R. Smith (of Hala Strana, Ulaan Khol, Thuja, Mirza).

It feels to me as though he has captured some of my core on tape. Gentle, darkly textural passages give way into melodic beauty. The songs are amorphous, but there is never a moment where the changes lack form or substance. Everything is part of a whole that is evolving from one spontaneous present to another.

The titles of the tracks might evoke images of twilit city buildings, aging in rows along the streets, bits of trash or a few patches of hardy plants, pavement, the tiny lights of distant cars, the hollow intimate spaces within apartment buildings. But the music is human; timeless, placeless.

Cities was recorded entirely on analog equipment and pressed to vinyl in an edition of 900 copies. You can order a copy here.

[download] The Paling Day

[download] The Road

-kevin-

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