“Good Omens” by Mudhouse [a review]
October 17, 2023
When Bob Dylan heard Jimi Hendrix’s version of “All Along the Watchtower”, Wikipedia, that most trusted of sources, describes his reaction as such: “It overwhelmed me, really…he could find things inside a song and vigorously develop them. He found things that other people wouldn’t think of finding in there”, and that, when Hendrix died, Dylan would only play the Hendrix version thereafter.
Now, I am not Bob Dylan, nor will I ever be, and I will stand on my coffee table and say that. But as someone who has written a folk song (or a folk-gospel song) and had it sonically, emotionally, spiritually reinterpreted, I think I can grasp, if just a little, the revelation that our man Mr. Zimmerman experienced.
I’m thinking of a song that I wrote many years ago called “Sinking Ship”, which sits at the start of Mudhouse Music’s new full length, “Good Omens”. Michael Giacomoni and his shipmates (Tyler Keneep on drums, Alyssa Brandon on bass, Lauren DuBois on vocals and keys, Mitch Cavanaugh on electric guitar, Matt Varney on electric guitar) start the song just as mournful, just as aware of the inevitable crash before them, that I did many years beforehand; but when the waves start rising, when the sea starts roiling, the band reacts in kind, taking the song to new ethereal heights. The ensuing album charts these same waters. Booming vocals, broken whispers, pounding harmonies, silent prayers, grandiose laments. Ebbing, flowing.
The band hails from Lancaster, Ohio, and have played or are playing in local worship bands. Their history of playing and writing worship music informs the stirring musical push and pull that the band excels at—the propulsive rising toward crescendo, toward salvation, toward something, anything that can make sense of this feeling of brokenness inside. The songs here are a reach toward the mysterious, a belief—even if that belief is threadbare—that rescue is inevitable.
You can find the album on most streaming platforms, or support them directly thorough their bandcamp page here.
“Volume 2” by The Blue Winter [a review]
October 13, 2022
It only took until the end of song one that I began singing along to the Blue Winter’s second full length project, appropriately titled, Volume 2. Throughout the ten tracks, Aaron Troyer and Ben Roth build infectiously melodic rock anthems with splashes of pop and country that make it nearly impossible to sit still, to sit silent. The momentum, the joy, the enthusiasm is infectious, even when the songs slow down to an introspective amble. “I don’t know what you want from me,” begins the album, with a little fingerpicking in the background. A few moments more and the drums snap in, and the two performers—Roth taking up percussion duties and Troyer handling many of the instruments—are off to the races. It is the sound of two friends asking existential questions, pushing themselves musically, and having a lot of fun doing it. As the album progresses, the details become more specific: a 99 Toyota, a father/child heart to heart- stories that mine the small town terrain akin to country fringe artists like Jason Isbell and Chris Stapleton. The melodies, the lyrics, the playfulness— it all cooks. These songs could stand toe to toe with the best of them.
“Shame Chamber” by Shame Chamber [a review]
September 30, 2021
A lonely, isolated closet. Cables and wires. The pulse of a drum machine. “I’ve wanted to make heavy, loud music for a long time…” says John King. The artist, like many artists, adapting to a new way of doing things; forced by the shutdown to improvise alone. His frame hung over an electric guitar, his long hair casting shadows on the strings. DIIV on one shoulder. Chastity on the other. Kurt Vile is in there somewhere as well. “I didn’t have a concept…” he continues. “…just sort of a gut feeling”. It’s been a long, strange musical journey for King, taking him from Canton, Ohio to Mexico to the backwater town of Killbuck to a solitary bedroom closet where his newest project was born. “I just murmured weird sounds into the microphone for hours on loop”. He made an EP of music, one layer at a time, rocking out against the impeding chaos of a pandemic. “Dealing with the brink of desperation,” is how King puts it. The murmurs, the improvisation, the songs slowly took shape, while never sacrificing their looseness. They move about, like sounds bottled in a lava lamp, fluid, wild and beautiful, straight from the bedroom closet. His own private Shame Chamber.
You can stream and purchase the EP here.
Saturday Night & Sunday Morning
February 23, 2017
Hello dear readers. I’m taking a few short paragraphs out of my regularly scheduled music reviews and write-ups to point you toward a few of my own music projects. I recently released two very different albums that you can listen to or purchase at the links below.
The first is a 70s-style rock and roll project we call “Killbuck”. The album was mostly recorded live onto a Goodwill-purchased tape recorder, at the end of a gravel back road, in a cabin in Killbuck, Ohio. Matt Kurtz, John Finley, John King, Joe Farr and I collaborated over a love of dark sunglasses, Tom Petty and 3-chord rock songs. The result is our self-titled debut: 11 “heartland-soaked tunes full of Americana angst and Rust Belt blues”.
The second project is a new volume of hymns my friends and I recorded over the past year. Each of us took a different hymn to reinterpret and explore through our individual styles. All profits from the Harp Family Hymnbook: Vol. II will go to Mennonite Central Committee.
You can find Killbuck here , and the Harp Family Hymnbook Vol. II here.
“It Did Me Well” by Embleton [classic review]
June 28, 2016
This is an older review of the Embleton’s It Did Me Well, originally posted on this site in March of 2015:
In the song, “Leaving for Good”, Kevin Embleton and his band sing of a wandering friend, caught up in a desire to leave town and find meaning in destinations afar. The road-trippy strings of a country pedal steel guide his journey into the unknown while Kevin himself laments over electric chords. The melodies bounce from gentle to melancholic to rocking, like any good alt-country song should. But the lyrics, so full of ambiguity and mystery, set it apart.
“Leaving for Good” is the first single off of the band’s upcoming full-length record, It Did Me Well, releasing March 10. The song perfectly represents what makes the music of Embleton so communal and so relevant: Kevin paints his songs with bold imagery but omits key details. The listener must draw upon their own experiences to fill in the gaps. Amid country waltzes and strummed melodies, everyone shares the same humanity, the same emotions, the same story.
You can listen to and purchase the album at itunes, amazon or bandcamp. For more information, visit Embletonmusic.com.
let us make a record 