Kathleen Edwards faces one of the toughest possible paths to popular success: She’s that singer-songwriter who’s so good, you can’t help but wish she stood out more. Like Tift Merritt and countless others who’ve preceded and surrounded her, Edwards resides in a shadowy netherworld between genres, where folk and pop and country morph into a genre-less place that’s ironically both accessible and hard to sell in a marketplace that requires its artists to fit into a clear niche. Read more...
About halfway through The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy, singer Matthew Caws issues a mission statement to sum up this and all Nada Surf records: “It’s never too late for teenage dreams.” Those seven hopeful words perfectly summarize a long-suffering rock group’s unflagging optimism and wise, wide-eyed love of life. Now in their early 40s, the members of Nada Surf — singer/guitarist Caws, bassist/singer Daniel Lorca and drummer/singer Ira Elliot — still function as perhaps the least cynical band in the world. They’ve been stars, back when they had a left-field novelty hit with “Popular” in 1996, and they’d rather be happy. Read more...
For a pair of young Swedish sisters, First Aid Kit’s Klara and Johanna Söderberg sure do attract a lot of Fleet Foxes comparisons. Those start, of course, with the pair’s gorgeous 2008 cover of “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song,” which became a YouTube sensation to the tune of more than 2.6 million views. But they’ll no doubt continue with the release of First Aid Kit’s second full-length album, The Lion’s Roar (out Jan. 24), which conjures an array of dense echo-chamber harmonies and a good deal of achingly somber portent. Much of the time, it stays nestled in a Foxes-friendly sweet spot of rich choral folk, suitable for moping and swooning along.
But, while the title track opens The Lion’s Roar on a serious note (“I’m a goddamned coward / but then again so are you,” First Aid Kit sings in the chorus), the album isn’t all doomstruck mountain music and solemn condemnations. It quickly finds a place for the charmingly goodnatured lilt of “Emmylou,” in which the sisters romanticize past musical Americana couples, while “King of the World” closes the album with a ramshackle, clap-along rouser — complete with guest vocals fromThe Felice Brothers and former tourmate Conor Oberst. Naturally, stark moments like “To a Poet” ratchet up the gloom along the way, but the Söderbergs are wise and versatile enough never to stay in one place for too long.
Raised in Mexico, based in Ireland, and not too far removed from life in metal bands — how could Rodrigo y Gabriela not wind up with a sound that splits the difference between jazzy flamenco and heavy rock? On 2006′s self-titled album and the 2009 breakout 11:11, fleet-fingered Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero craft their wild instrumental genre fusions using only acoustic guitars, but that changes on Area 52, out Jan. 24. Here, the songs remain the same — the album radically rearranges nine pieces from the pair’s past catalog — but the instrumental palette practically explodes. Read more...
After 20 years in the music biz, self-described “Little Folksinger” Ani DiFranco is still technically little, although her influence on fellow musicians, activists, and indie-minded people the world over has been huge. She still proudly identifies as a folksinger, too, but her understanding of that term has always been far more expansive than a bin at the record store or a category on iTunes, with ample room for soul, funk, jazz, electronic music, spoken word, and a marching band or two. Over the course of more than 20 albums, including the live double CD Living in Clip (1997) and the two-disc career retrospective Canon (2007), as well as the latest one, ¿Which Side are You On? (2012), Ani has never stopped evolving, experimenting, testing the limits of what can be said and sung. Her lifelong tribe of co-conspirators includes everyone from Pete Seeger and the late Utah Phillips to a new generation of twentysomething singer-songwriters who grew up with her songs and shows — and then there’s the motley crew of folks like Prince, Maceo Parker, Andrew Bird, Dr. John, Arto Lindsay, Bruce Springsteen, Chuck D, the Buffalo Philharmonic, Gillian Welch, Cyndi Lauper, and even Burmese activist and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, with whom she has crossed paths in a myriad of ways.
Born in Buffalo, New York in 1970, Ani spent part of her twenties in New York City, then returned to her hometown where she established first a business office and then a performance venue called Babeville as the twentieth century ground to a halt and the twenty-first one revved up. For much of the last decade she’s been based in New Orleans — but at her core she’s always seen herself as “a traveler,” covering pretty much the four corners of the earth by now, both solo and with her band. (There’s less corner-covering these days, now that she’s consciously slowing down a bit and raising a daughter with partner and co-producer Mike Napolitano, but she still gets around just fine, playing venues like Madison Square Garden for Pete Seeger’s ninetieth birthday bash and another star-studded lineup at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan for Wavy Gravy’s seventy-fifth.)
Early in her career, Ani made a choice that is now so obvious to so many people that it’s hard to remember it was once considered brazen: to say no to every record label deal that came her way, and yes to being her own boss. That decision has earned her plenty of attention over the years, but it has never been what brought sold-out crowds to her shows around the world, fans debating every nuance of her lyrics, and fellow performers clamoring to work with her. No, all that has more to do with another choice she made early in life: To use her voice and her guitar as honestly and unflinchingly as she could, writing and playing songs that came straight from her own experience, her boundless imagination, her sharp wit, and her ever-more-nuanced understanding of how the world works. She did it in noisy bars with nothing but a shaved head and a lone guitar in 1990, and she’s doing it with renewed intensity today.
During the past decade, Lamb of God has become one of the most prolific American metal bands in the world. If not for the realities of time and a flagging music industry, Lamb of God would likely compete with the Big Four (Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax) in terms of popularity. Those two factors are the only things preventing the Virginia-based group from being included with the most famous bands in all of American metal. With six ground-breaking albums behind them (including one under their former name Burn the Priest), a remarkably stable line-up, and one of the most supportive fan bases in the world, Lamb of God is one of the only bands that manages to get bigger with each new release. Their newest album, Resolution, will definitely continue that trend, with even more destructive compositions for the listening pleasure of their fans. Read more...
On 2002′s “The Big Come Up,” the Black Keys were all grime. Recorded in the most lo-fi of ways — in drummer Pat Carney’s basement using an old 8-track — the duo’s debut was as close to the blues as two young white boys from Northeast Ohio were going to get. And it was impressively close.
Nine years, six albums and one hell of a slow burn later, the Black Keys aren’t exactly the same straightforward duo. Lyrically, they’re the same guys they’ve always been — times get tough with women-folk, and their rate of staying versus going hovers around 50 percent. Musically, there have been multiple attempts to step outside of their signature sound; there have also been several attempts to find a place for producer Danger Mouse in what they do. Read more...
Marking his 17th studio album, ‘Wrecking Ball’ features 11 new Springsteen recordings and was produced by Ron Aniello with Bruce Springsteen and executive producer Jon Landau.
Said long-time manager Jon Landau, “Bruce has dug down as deep as he can to come up with this vision of modern life. The lyrics tell a story you can’t hear anywhere else and the music is his most innovative of recent years. The writing is some of the best of his career and both veteran fans and those who are new to Bruce will find much to love on ‘Wrecking Ball.’”
A special edition of ‘Wrecking Ball’ including two bonus tracks and exclusive artwork and photography is also available. Reserve your copy now at Bridland! Read more...
Our friends at Goldmine Magazine did a terrific article on us. We’ve reprinted here and if you’d ilk dot see the original, you can read it here.
You’ve gotta love a record store that loves music as much as Birdland Records does. The shop was named for Charlie “The Bird” Parker, and it helped to spread the “Norfolk Sound” throughout the nation. If that didn’t win you over already, the store’s philosophy should do the trick.
What was your first job?
Barry Friedman: Starting in 1968 when I was 14, on weekends, I used to help my father with the record store. Read more...
“Fallen Empires,” the sixth studio album from Northern Ireland’s Snow Patrol, drops today after more than three years of radio silence from the band. Despite the lull, lead vocalist Gary Lightbody explains that the six months they took to the make the record in the Malibu sunshine heavily inspired them, allowing a more creative process and dramatically affecting the tone of the album. Here’s a track-by-track look at “Fallen Empires”.
Kathleen Edwards faces one of the toughest possible paths to popular success: She’s that singer-songwriter who’s so good, you can’t help but wish she stood out more. Like Tift Merritt and countless others who’ve preceded and surrounded her, Edwards resides in a shadowy netherworld between genres, where folk and pop and country morph into a genre-less place that’s ironically both accessible and hard to sell in a marketplace that requires its artists to fit into a clear niche. 
