“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.
Some Thoughts in Response to Damien Jurado’s New Record
April 18, 2018
A week or two ago, I attended a pre-release listening party for one of my favorite artists. Under the dim lights of Canton’s Deli Ohio restaurant, after hours, I scribbled a few thoughts down as Damien Jurado’s new record spun. I added a few more later, the sound still lingering…
Gray skies over Canton. A whirling April snow. Red lights turn to green.
A voice is carried along on the reverb; a winding stream. It sinks into the wood grain.
Thomas Wolfe. Bruce Springsteen.
Otis Redding. Percy Faith.
Lost in America; stuck in the 70s.
Bob Dylan. Bill Fay.
The red of the exit sign. The hum of the cooler.
Leonard Cohen tells a crude joke.
Lazarus and resurrection. Jonah bouncing around Nineveh.
Old Testament fire. New Testament glory.
A life detached. A glass darkly.
Charlie Brown on the streets of Laredo.
The horizon just laughed.
“The Horizon Just Laughed” will be released on May 4th.
Those Lavender Whales’ first album, Tomahawk of Praise, was an album of pure joy. Sure, there were moments of questions; times when singer/songwriter Aaron Graves put a stumbling faith at the forefront of his wild folk melodies. But everything was viewed, sung, strummed through a haze of unfiltered, contagious joy. Five years and several lifetimes later, the band is poised to release its second full length, My Bones are Singing, and yes, there is joy on the record, but it’s a new kind of joy. A bittersweet joy. A joy that comes from being tossed about on the harsh waves, to and fro, until finally being spit upon the shore. The new album finds Graves working through the complexities of life and death, having struggled through a life threatening brain tumor and the long treatment that followed. His praise and outlook isn’t as self-assured as it was the first time around. A deeper darkness has seeped into the songs. The guitars are louder. The weight is heavier. But this is not a somber album. This is music as medicine. This is a power-of-positivity record, full of friendship, seeking, searching, faith, doubt, resurrection…and it most assuredly rocks.
My Bones are Singing releases April 7 on Fork and Spoon Records. You can listen to and purchase the album here.
let us make a record 