Ben Caplan's voice is the product of a smokers cough and a desire to be different. The album ranges anywhere from a crowded room to the sounds of a desolate hallway. Extensive and vast, Ben Caplan & The Casual Smokers sing rugged and romantic ballads about the peeling away of feeling and the wasted years spent in the wrong direction. But as each song comes to it's epic end, and as each instrument introduced in the beginning is re-infused in a blended mess of perfection, we find a sense of truth and understanding. Reminiscent of an early Tom Waits, Ben Caplan & the Casual Smokers may just be the next BIG thing. Feel Flows~
In 1975, Ted Lucas gave birth to one of the most influential albums that no one has ever heard of.
However, Lucas is constantly overlooked and dismissed as an artist.
He was just one of those musicians that fluttered right under everyones noses as they swooned over the rock gods of '75.
Does that make him unworthy of a listen? I think not.
Definitely going to be the best discovered album of 2013.
One of the most incredible musicians of his time.
Not only does he have one of the most versatile catalogues,
but the sound of his whistle might make your girlfriend swoon.
Noootttt-a-problem.
Feel Flows~
If you like Classical....
If you like Rock N Roll...
If you like Folk Rock...
If you want something that makes you say "Holy Shit!"
LIYL: The idea of things working out the were they were supposed to. ***PHOX UNBLUSHING was recorded in one take, mistaken lyrics, wonky notes and all, over the course of the last 5 days of May, 2012 Feel Flows~
Sometimes,
music is like a coloring book.
its really easy to stay within the lines..
Almost formulaic in design.
Color this, this color, and it will look good.
Its only when you venture out of the box, do you find something worth drawing.
This is the case with "Branches"
...Yes, they have original songs,
but its the reincarnation of the classics that they are concerned about.
The idea that songs dont grow old,
they just get refurbished.
polished and spit shined.
Feel Flows~
*Cheers to Josh Weinberg for showing me this tune.
LIYL: The Lucksmiths, Bon Iver, Iron & Wine, and M Ward Its good to acknowledge music as an exponential factor for change. The more we change, the more our taste for music change. and so it goes. However, sometimes the music itself sits solidified within its perfect structure. Styles harden and become a musician's own. Chord progressions and time signatures begin to represent the artist, and the artist represents the chord progressions and time signatures. and so it goes. An endless cycle of cause and effect that builds the (respected) genre into what it is now. All though, some musicians- like Christopher Wright- never really adapt new ears for new music. These musicians don't change- they don't alter their ways for the satisfaction of higher selling albums. Instead, they do what they always do. Perfect what has already been perfected. and so it goes. Feel Flows~
LIYL: The Oh Hello's, Of Monsters and Men, Coldplay, and Beirut
Step outside the box youve trapped yourself in,
to a crowded hallway.
Change the steps you take to walk,
to a slow hop.
Change the broken home alternative rock,
to a vast landscape of indie folk.
and you have Racing Glaciers.
Their songs build, glow, build, and refract.
In that order.
There was a time where Sam Beam from Iron and Wine had too many songs.
As docile as the man is, he searched for help to complete the songs that had filled his books.
From cover to cover, he taught the young band Calexico,
all of his songs.
Calexico, however, saw things differently.
They saw things a little bigger than one acoustic and a soft rounded spotlight.
They saw the songs as an atonement of everything holy and pure.
They recorded the album and stashed it within their book cases.
Always to look back on for some subtle advice as to how to write an album.
Point on telling you this: Dont allow yourself to get stuck within a bubble of your own music.
Step entirely out of your own box to find opinion. Besides, the fans are who you want to please.
LIYL: The Head and the Heart, Dr. Dog, Bowerbirds, and Devendra Banhart
I remember marching through the lined layers of evergreen and maple..
They established my trail back to the campus..
--It was the summer of 2009-- I think.
I consumed the morning- in the forest- behind the baseball field..
All the other kids (with their pumped up kicks) were going down to the football field.
-I wasn't interested-
I don't even remember what I was doing.
Probably trying to hug the wind --if i know my adolescent self
I just remember settling into a comfortable pile of soil + stone,
and listening to Andy Cabic's (Vetiver) catalogue on my Ipod.
It was so innovative at the time.
So avant-garde (if you will)
I found myself embedded within the soil itself.
Enough so, that I didn't leave that very spot until every one of his tracks were carefully examined.
... We all have this sort of pull string in our head.
One that yanks at our emotions every time something triggers it..
It could be an old picture of the house you moved away from all those years ago.
It could be the post card you got from your grandfather just before he passed away.
It could even be the developing lines on your mothers face as time canyons in and out of dark and light.
It could be a lot of things.
But music is the best at doing that..
One note can send you spiraling down the rabbit hole and into a fresh wound.
...It can flood your veins with emotions you were certain you defeated.
...But we should be embracing that feeling.
Embracing the hardships
Embracing the misery and misfortune.
Embracing catastrophe.
"Dont be upset that the rose grew thorns...
be happy that the thorns grew a rose."
Home-Work Assignment:
In light of all the shit you have on your plate,
sit and listen to a song that brings you back to a better time..
Reflect on it.
Realize that time heals all.
Realize that you cant remember the stress you were under during the first time you heard that tune back in 2009, 8, 7, 6, whatever
This is because our consciousness doesnt allow us to dwell on the difficulties,
and because music -when you want it to- tends to buffer out the bad.
It shelters you from the universal truth that time is passing by.
...Now attempt to grasp the concept that your future holds- relative- but higher levels of stress.
And all the stress you tend to find yourself under now
is merely an obstacle in time that you must work through to forget.
Sit and listen to a song that brings you back to a better time,
because music is the only thing that can solidify itself enough for you to still recall the melody
even after years of neglect.
LIYL: Lost in the Trees, Matt Pond PA, and Elvis Perkins
There are times,
when the only thing you want to listen to is something that will make your heart do a backflip.
Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, maybe Animal Collective.
Something heavy and fearless.
Hailing from the same record label (Domino)
we have a completely different sound than expected.
Conor Obrien, who's original band hit stardom with one album,
sunk himself into a comfortable chair and wrote another masterpiece.
Yes, it came out a while ago.
No, i dont care.
Yes, i want you to trust me.
The Oh Hello's are what you get when you combine an acoustic guitar with a thunder clap..
A butterfly and a raven.
An open wound and a scar you cant remember how you got.
Songs of reminiscence.
From the places your heart takes you when you're in love
to the fields of trees we remember from when we were children.
The duo is made up of a brother and sister,
and most of the song structure is done in the studio.
but that doesnt change who they are as a band.
Who they want to be.
their melodies are infectious,
and each song marches along to a hammer and nail foot stomp.
Before I get into this- let me explain- their music is seasonal.
I find it constantly dragging me to the idea that the sun lasts forever.
But it doesn't.
Therefore, before we greet the winter,
lets enjoy the last bits of sunshine we have left.
-Cheers-
LIYL: Bon Iver, Bright Eyes, Dodos, Beirut, and Phosphorescent.
Its hard describing the feeling I get when listening to the Bowerbirds.
Their sound takes me back to the woods that line my property at the house i grew up in.
It takes me back to watching the caterpillars fall (fly with style) from one leaf and on to another.
It takes me back to the solitude
-not the kind you hate-
but the kind you cherish.
Their inspirations are as follows:Nature, Earth, Mary Sullivan, and Magic Mushrooms.
...and thats not a bad thing...
In fact, it opens their eyes to issues that are bigger than what the average musician writes about.
They're music is a form of opposition.
A form of discontent.
A form of love through pure hatred of what destruction has occurred "to this wondrous earth"
The Bowerbirds are hypnotic and endlessly beautiful.
Everything is sung with a light coo, over a deep rooted acoustic and accordion.
Everything is dressed in black.
But underneath it, hides a cold steel armor.
In the end, it all bares bright colors.
Spending nights alone,
The collective of friends who call themselves The Novel Ideas spent their summer away from their homes in Massachusetts and in a barn in New Hampshire.
They spent their days
away from their families.
Away from their loved ones.
Away from their pets and occupations.
Away from their problems.
They paused life for a short while and quickly did what they always wanted to do..
...Write an album.
Novel Ideas are what they call "a folk rock outfit"
Id like to think of the outfit as something they changed into. Something they can take off.
Under this outfit is a stripped down version of something they're not.
Ideas that are put on paper, find themselves to be too simplistic once they leave the paper.
Artist's try and spice up their own words, their own guitar riffs, and rhythms .
They try to blur the line between artist and computer.
However, there are brief moments where The Novel Ideas understand this conundrum, and try to rectify it.
I imagine they do this, by way of a recording technique...
I imagine that; Instead of standing over a microphone watching the equalizer flick its flicker,
They recorded the entire album on rocking chairs.
With beers in their cup holders.
With eyes on each other and nowhere else.
And with time on their side, friendship in their hearts, and a good attitude,
the world gave birth to the Novel Ideas.
And they were accepted. Just as they accepted the world.
