Lynn Blakey Christmas Show featuring Dave Hartman, FJ Ventre, Ecki Heins, Danny Gotham

It was probably inevitable that Lynn Blakey would eventually make a Christmas album. Such records are a challenge, as everyone has heard most holiday songs their entire lives; it takes something special to make them worth hearing again, anew. Blakey has that something special — a crystal-clear voice that rings out like yuletide silver bells, sparkles like moonglow on freshly fallen snow, and warms the heart on a silent, holy night.You might not have heard Blakey’s voice before. Or perhaps you have — in the Yep Roc Records trio Tres Chicas with Caitlin Cary and Tonya Lamm, or with her previous band Glory Fountain. Blakey has been making indie-pop music in the South since the 1980s, dating back to stints with Georgia group Oh-OK and North Carolina band Let’s Active; more recently, her backing vocals have turned up on records by the likes of Alejandro Escovedo and Chris Stamey.Along the way, she stole a German. Christmas is is credited to “Lynn Blakey and the Stolen German” thanks to Ecki Heins, a musician Blakey met on tour in 2005; he eventually joined her in North Carolina, where they’ve lived and made music together for more than a decade now. Heins is a secret weapon here, adding whimsical fiddle licks on “Let It Snow” and stepping out with a glorious violin melody on the disc’s classical-oriented hidden track. He and Blakey serve up tag-team vocals on “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” bouncing conversation back and forth with harmony and humor. Joining the duo in the studio were bassist FJ Ventre and engineer Jerry Kee, who added percussion and pedal steel.Most of Christmas consists of songs you’ll know, from traditional carols such as “Do You Hear What I Hear” to the World War II-inspired “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” to the chestnuts-roasting-on-an-open-fire sweetness of “The Christmas Song.” But there’s also a Blakey original here: “Love Finds (Allumette)” is more romantic ballad than holiday jingle, but its setting amid candles, garland and “the bones of winter waiting for the light” help it fit right into the seasonal theme.I first heard Blakey sing upon relocating to North Carolina almost two decades ago and being knocked out by her high notes on a spectacular tune she wrote called “The Beauty of 23.” It became a love-song of sorts for my wife and me, and when we moved away many years later one December, Lynn was kind enough to sing my wife’s favorite Christmas song, “O Holy Night,” on an early winter’s eve in a remote roadside tavern. To have her singing it on record now is something we’ll treasure forevermore.Peter BlackstockAustin, Texas, late 2018Twitter | Facebook

H.C. McEntire

Every Acre If naming is a form of claiming, of being claimed, how is one tethered to both the physical landscape that surrounds us, as well as our own internal emotional landscape—at times calm, at times turbulent, and ever changing? H.C. McEntire’s new album Every Acre grapples with those themes—themes that encompass grief, loss, and links to land and loved ones. And naming—claiming land, claiming self, being claimed by ancestry and heritage—permeates the hauntingly beautiful landscape that is this poignant collection of songs. The songs straddle the line between music and poetry, often weaving back and forth between each realm. In “New View,” McEntire cites poets “Day, Ada, and Laux, Berry, and Olds”—fixtures in the world of writing, whose works are beacons of light over bleak horizons. The beginning of the song is backed by soft guitar plucks that fall on the downbeat and spangle like stars, and, throughout, guitar, bass, and drums swell together gently, mimicking ebbing and flowing tides under the moon. McEntire’s voice (at once tender and fierce) intones the truth of both giving and taking, releasing and claiming: “Bend me, break me, split me right in two. Mend me, make me—I’ll take more of you.” Permeated by the constant heartbeat-like drums, “Shadows” develops quiet ruminations on surrender and loss—reminiscing, moving on. “Walk your way into the river…Is it fever, or surrender?” This ponderous, dreamlike song asks the question of how “to make room,” lyrics that serve as echoing foils to the familiar: “Cornmeal rising high in cast-iron pans. Cattails catching all the copperheads.” How does one make room, for self and for renewal and surrender, when it is so difficult to leave what you know behind? There is the temptation to “leave [a] place just like you found it.” Playing with slivers of descending chromatics, along with the occasional downward-stepping bass, here McEntire yearns for home, and for nesting. And there is also the reality of life—sometimes a casting off, sometimes a shrouded letting go. Perhaps one of the more grief-stricken songs, “Rows of Clover” is a lamentation, one that touches on the loss of a “steadfast hound.” The lone piano in the beginning of the song is rhythmically hymn-like. The stark verse arrangement gradually leads to a chorus that reads like a moody exhale, swollen with lush guitar strums and a Bill Withers–esque understated soul groove. Images of nature, often in mid-growth or decay, are braided through the lyrics. The clover covers “wasted dirt.” Cedars stand guard the ravaged land, a rotting pasture. But what stands out the most is an image of being “down on your knees, clawing at the garden”—the only explicit mention of a person in the song. “It ain’t the easy kind of healing,” sings McEntire, seemingly from further and further away as her voice echoes; and healing takes time, time takes time—truths that linger painfully.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | Soundcloud

Darren Kiely

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Setting

Setting is Nathan Bowles (solo/trio, Pelt, Black Twig Pickers) on strings, keys, and percussion; Jaime Fennelly (Mind Over Mirrors, Peeesseye) on harmoniums, synthesizers, and piano zither; and Joe Westerlund (solo, Califone, Sylvan Esso, Jake Xerxes Fussell) on drums, percussion, and metallophones. Their debut album “Shone a Rainbow Light On” on Paradise of Bachelors traverses textural, phosphorescent topography with a certified organic folk-engine. Fueled by a vibratory hybrid of acoustic and electronic instrumentation, the four stately longform pieces sound like a UFO slowly sinking into a peat bog. Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Label Artist Page

Town Mountain

Raw, soulful, and with plenty of swagger, Town Mountain has earned raves for their hard-driving sound, their in-house songwriting and the honky-tonk edge that permeates their exhilarating live performances, whether in a packed club or at a sold-out festival. The hearty base of Town Mountain’s music is the first and second generation of bluegrass spiced with country, old school rock ‘n’ roll, and boogie-woogie. It’s what else goes into the mix that brings it all to life both on stage and on record and reflects the group’s wide-ranging influences – from the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia and the ethereal lyrics of Robert Hunter, to the honest, vintage country of Willie, Waylon, and Merle.The Rolling Stone says “Call it an evolution or a revolution but its clear that Town Mountain is at the forefront.” Town Mountain features guitarist and vocalist Robert Greer, mandolinist Phil Barker, fiddler Bobby Britt, and Zach Smith on bass. Town Mountain’s album New Freedom Blues (October 2018) is their second consecutive album to debut in the top 10 on the Billboard Bluegrass Chart, and receive multiple mentions by Rolling Stone, No Depression, Music Mecca, and more. Full of new material and featuring several guest artists including Tyler Childers and Miles Miller (Sturgill Simpson, drummer), they prove they have staying power by regularly cranking out authentic hit albums. The impression the band has made on fans is clear through their engagement at top tier festival appearances, and those sweet Spotify streams (30+ million). And if you still can’t get enough of this hard working group, you can look forward to new music in 2022.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube

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Eliza McLamb

Listening to Eliza McLamb lilt her vivid, carefully-placed lyrics rife with empathy, emotion, and sensitivity, you get the sense that this is an artist who takes her time. Her earliest releases were recorded in a laundry shed, with little else but her voice and a guitar. Now, with the help of producer Sarah Tudzin (aka illuminati hotties), her sound has opened up into gut-wrenching riffs and lush, full soundscapes — but that original intimacy remains, unwavering and unshakeable even as the sonic world around her expands.While her audience connects deeply with the experiences and emotions put forward in her work, McLamb isn’t performing for the observer: her creative process is a personal practice that borders on spiritual. She’s been writing songs since she was six, and never really expected anyone to listen except herself. Even as her work spread to millions of viewers online, she never divested from her belief in art as a personal — almost therapeutic — act. The fact that her intimate anxieties and experiences can resonate so deeply with so many strangers only confirms the philosophy that runs through her oeuvre: that strong emotions are what connect us all to each other, and that we’re all a lot more connected than we may think. McLamb doesn’t write her music to be gospel — to her audience, it’s something more like a mirror. When you connect with what she writes, you’re really using her writing as an intermediary to connect with yourself. Her work encourages you to self-reflect, accept sensitivity, embrace connection, and perhaps most of all, feel as deeply as you possibly can. Instagram | Twitter | YouTube | Soundcloud Mini TreesFor better or for worse, life keeps moving forward. It’s this fundamental truth that Lexi Vega, the creative force behind Mini Trees, confronts throughout her debut album Always In Motion. But coming to terms with this inevitability has been a life-long struggle. The daughter of a Cuban-born father and Japanese-American mother, the uniqueness of her identity has been an ever-present tension in Lexi’s life. She never quite fit in growing up within predominantly white communities in suburban southern California, with few who around her outside of her family to understand the generational scars caused by both exile and internment. When she was only 5 years old, Vega’s father, a professional drummer himself, took his own life. These traumas set in motion an ongoing questioning of Vega’s own self identity — and Mini Trees has provided the palette for Vega to process, to persevere, and to grow. After playing drums in various projects for years, Vega began writing and recording her own music under the moniker Mini Trees in 2018. She recorded her first solo track in the Summer of 2018 with producer Jon Joseph and was immediately hooked on the feeling of creating something that spoke directly to her as an artist, fully in control of her own vision. Mini Trees debut EP, Steady Me, dropped in 2019 and Vega followed it with 2020’s EP, Slip Away. Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

EKKSTACY

In the eight months since the release of EKKSTACY’s aptly titled, goth and post-punk indebted sophomore record, Misery, the Vancouver-born indie star has been touring basically nonstop. Between shows and festivals across Europe and North America, including his Lollapalooza debut, EKKSTACY found time to work on a third album, the self-titled EKKSTACY, forthcoming January 2024. Featuring melodic rappers The Kid LAROI and Trippie Redd, EKKSTACY’s new project is more expansive and dynamic than anything the 21-year old musician has yet made. EKKSTACY came up on his brooding, raw sound — epitomized by his breakthrough single “i walk this earth all by myself” — but here we find him, increasingly involved in the music’s production, leaning into brighter indie rock and surf punk sounds that epitomize an increasing confidence in his craft. It’s giving 2010 — the year of Wavves’ King of the Beach, Surfer Blood’s Astro Coast, Beach House’s Teen Dream, of Girls, MGMT, and Japandroids, all of which can be felt within the sonics of EKKSTACY. Despite the fact that, at the time, the artist was still a few years from learning guitar. Songs like “fuck,” “luv of my life,” and “goo lagoon” have the energy of garage rock shows on the waterfront. “goo lagoon” in particular, a marquee track written in a hotel room in L.A. and one of Ekkstacy’s personal favorites, is guitar-heavy, lively, and a little bit sticky: At the start, a wacky B-horror voice informs us we’re about to enter “A stinky mud puddle for you and me,” in which we get drunk by the water and get lazy by the coast. Heck yeah. Meanwhile, “i guess we made it this far” and opener “i don’t have one of those” are low-key jangly, dreamy and drum-driven tunes that are melancholy in a sunny way. It was music that became EKKSTACY’s outlet after battles with mental health. It’s clear why: There’s joy in the music that shines through the goo of gloom. Though EKKSTACY and friends and collaborator Mangetsu and Apob wrote and recorded this third record in fits and spurts, during tour downtime over the past several years, and though EKKSTACY is accustomed to and prefers the speedy release process of his SoundCloud origins, EKKSTACY really feels like an album. (The album is made up of a few “little rolls,” EKKSTACY says.) It’s not surprising that EKKSTACY and co were listening to lots of Ramones, The Strokes, and My Bloody Valentine. You can feel the playful punk, the indie rock power chords, the celestial production. It’s a rollercoaster-esque sinking-rising feeling all the way through the ups and downs. Wanting to cry, causing problems, rather drink than fuck. Remembering trips in the backseat of the car, needing to be alone with a guitar — it’s alright, haunted, quickening heartbeats, reminiscing about Chicago, clouds and rain and sunshine at the same time — and all the while these chords that go from languid to swift, and the sweet stretchiness of EKKSTACY’s vocals.Instagram | Twitter | Spotify | YouTube | Soundcloud

Katy Kirby

Let’s face it: There’s no such thing as “real life”. There is only experience and the negotiations we undertake in order to share it with other people. On her second album Blue Raspberry, the New York-based songwriter Katy Kirby dives headlong into the artifice of intimacy: the glitter smeared across eyelid creases, the smiles switched on with an electric buzz, the synthetic rose scent all over someone who’s made herself smell nice just for you. An exegesis of Kirby’s first queer relationship, Blue Raspberry traces the crescendo and collapse of new love, savoring each gleaming shard of rock candy and broken glass along the way. Originally from Spicewood, Texas, Kirby was living in Nashville when she started writing Blue Raspberry’s title track, the first of the album’s songs to take shape. “‘Blue Raspberry’ is the oldest song on the record. I began to write it a month or so before I realized, I think I’m queer,” she says. “There’s a tradition of yearning in country love songs. I like the male yearning songs better, usually. I started writing ‘Blue Raspberry,’ and I was thinking about, if I was in love with a woman, what would I love about her? Especially if she was someone that I couldn’t touch, but that I was pining for. What would I be caught on? And I thought that I would probably be particularly charmed by the choices she made on how to look after she woke up in the morning. I thought about tackiness, and the ways that’s a dirty word. That’s where the title comes from — loving someone for those choices, for the artificiality.” Blue Raspberry follows Kirby’s acclaimed debut album Cool Dry Place, which was also recorded in Nashville and released in February of 2021. While the songs on that record unfold amidst Kirby finding her voice, Blue Raspberry is a polished and confident sophomore effort that deepens the questions that bubbled through Cool Dry Place about how people can reach each other despite all the hazard zones where human connection caves in. After realizing that her romantic interest in women went beyond the confines of a songwriting exercise, Kirby kept writing songs that sought to untangle that false binary between the real and the fake, to celebrate the spectacles people put on for each other when they’re falling in and out of love. She committed herself completely to the work of drawing out these songs, often stealing away to her van to write immediately after playing an opening set while on a 2021 tour with Waxahatchee. For the first time since she started writing songs, Kirby stopped tamping down on her impulse to craft ornate, generously embellished music. “I felt less embarrassed about just wanting to write really gorgeous songs,” she says. She started weaving more intricate chord progressions and melodies into her work, and in turn she felt emboldened to hold onto the more baroque flourishes of her lyrics without whittling them down into plainer lines. Many of the songs that make up Blue Raspberry stemmed from a single page of lyrical fragments, words and phrases that kept their hold on Kirby even as she slipped them into multiple settings. Images repeat on different songs throughout the album: cubic zirconia gleaming at a woman’s throat, the lab-grown substitute indistinguishable from earth-crushed diamonds; salt crystallizing as seawater dries on reddened skin; teeth that shine in a grin and then bite till they bruise.Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook

Genre: Miscellaneous