“Glass Period” by Caitlin Pasko [a review]
March 16, 2017
Strip mined hills, full of snow, stand tall in the distance like the Andes. “You are born alone”, Caitlin Pasko sings through my car stereo. The river drifts by, choppy, chunks of snagged driftwood pulled up and under the surface. Plastic trash is caught in the roadside fence. “Then you’ll die alone”. The cold is brutal. The county, the highway, the flocks of skittering birds—they are all carried along on the grief-stricken poetry and piano melodies of her new EP, Glass Period. It’s a hard journey, this highway of life that we travel. We suffer and laugh and love and hate, and some are able to put words to such abstract things. Some are able to allow their grief to be resurrected into something that heals. “But what about the time in between?” sings Pasko, and it’s a question for us all.
You can listen to and purchase the EP here.
“Shadow of the Sun” by Jonah Sissoyev [a review]
February 27, 2017
I have a difficult time pinning down the music of Portland’s Jonah Sissoyev. I started listening to his songs back in 2012. It was the first time that I truly lived alone, outside of a college dorm room—a quiet, light-filled apartment all to myself, on the top floor of an old house. I didn’t know what Sissoyev was singing about, whether it was God or girls, but I knew that it hit me—that it spoke to something far down, in that part of you that knows only a profound, Biblical groaning. Sissoyev is now releasing his third EP, Shadow of the Sun, and his sound has expanded somewhat over the years. There are more players. There is a greater scope to the recordings. But the songs are still rooted in those far down places. They still feel like an artist’s abstract search for love or peace or salvation of some kind. At the heart of it, Sissoyev’s songs remain strange, enigmatic and utterly beautiful.
You can stream and purchase his music here. Beginning March 1, you’ll be able to hear and buy the new EP, Shadow of the Sun.
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.
“You Are My Hiding Place” by Lenny Smith [a review]
November 27, 2016
I realized a few days ago, after listening to Lenny Smith’s new record amid the hurricane of a new election season, that the last time Lenny Smith released an album was during an election as well—and a tumultuous one at that. Harsh words were thrown back and forth. Brother turned on brother. And the world was all set to end.
Yet here we are, 4 years later, and the world’s still spinning. The rhetoric feels particularly brutal this time around, but maybe that’s because time really does heal all wounds—even political ones—and we fail to see history repeating itself as time spills out before us. All of this to say that Lenny Smith’s record, “You Are My Hiding Place”, has arrived from Great Comfort Records. It is full of life and love and celebration, and it serves as a nice antidote to the hate and fear that abounds. Once again, Lenny dives deep into scripture, looking to the poetry of the psalmists, of Ruth, of Jesus himself, to gives words to his worship. His family and friends sing and clap and shout along. Really, I think the world could use a little Lenny Smith right now.
You can listen to and purchase the recording at Lenny’s bandcamp page here, or explore more at Great Comfort Records.
“Moon Ballads” by Austin Wolfe [a review]
April 24, 2016
It’s late at night and I’m driving home, following the ghost of an old river canal. The sky is close to empty, a few silent stars giving off a dull light for any wayward stargazers that look heavenward. I pass graffiti on concrete. A pine branch sitting in the road. Austin Wolfe is singing Moon Ballads on my stereo. “Could it be now, mama, all that we have loved we’ve loved in vain?” Most of the farmhouses that drift by have a single orange light glowing on the porch. A tiny bit of hope for any wayward prodigals. My eyes grow weary. I consider the trees and the brambles and the loneliness that lives on that road. The loneliness that lives on all roads. Austin contemplates: “I’ll sing to you this longing through the telephone. We’ll think of something warmer and we’ll imagine it until we feel it in our bones”. He sings in fiery metaphors. He mines the ether for truth. The songs…a ray of hope for those late night travelers.
You can preview and purchase the album at https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/moon-ballads/id1100707613 or https://www.cdbaby.com/cd/austinwolfe12
let us make a record 