Birds and Arrows

Birds and Arrows latest album, Electric Bones, is a collection of thoughtful compositions, dynamic harmonies, and stellar vocal performances reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac. A lush combination of moody soundscapes, 70’s groove, and classic folk-rock, the collection as a whole is a wild ride through this longtime-married duo’s psyche during 2020’s lockdown.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | TikTok

Viv & Riley

This is a seated show.A bittersweet nostalgia lies at the heart of Imaginary People, the new album from Viv & Riley, coming September 15, 2023 on Free Dirt Records. Over ten tracks, the pair applies an indie roots sheen to newly composed pop gems. Rooted originally in the folk tradition, the pair reframe the production into experimental territory, crafting songs that speak to finding a path forward into adulthood in an uncertain world. Gifted songwriters and multi-instrumentalists, Vivian Leva and Riley Calcagno’s first album under the name Viv & Riley is a subtle masterpiece of thought and reflection. The album brings a reflectiveness to summertime jams that speak of uninhibited joy and creative camaraderie. Coming on the heels of their acclaimed earlier albums that showed preternaturally talented songwriting from such young artists, now the songs have caught up with their lives. Now in their mid-20s, the two are building a life together, creating a supportive community, and looking back on everything they’ve been through. Based out of Durham, North Carolina, they’ve tapped into the area’s eclectic and collaborative music scene, recruiting Alex Bingham of Hiss Golden Messenger to produce the album. Bingham brings a sunny, lush sound to Viv & Riley’s music, moving beyond their earlier country roots and toward a layered sound and sonic experimentation. The songwriting has evolved as well, from the world-weary, stripped-down country songs they’re known for to indie songwriting at turns sweetly sad and gently sardonic. Ultimately, Imaginary People is about carrying and honoring our pasts, about letting that inform our new steps forward. No matter how much we might cling to where we are, sometimes we need to uproot and take a leap of faith, to open ourselves up to new experiences and ideas in order to grow and blossom.Website | Instagram | Facebook | SpotifyLou Hazel is a songwriter crafting genuine folk tales of honest longing, disquieted loss, and nostalgia through a brilliant sheen of fresh insight and humble humor. Grabbing us by the ears in a new-age, Prine-like grip, Lou transforms the minutiae of everyday life into ever more evocative music that surprises us all, including himself, with where we emerge.Website

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

Genre: Miscellaneous