The marvellous o’death are back with a new album of fiery, gothic-tinged folk and bluegrass that is as authentic as the Appalachians from which they could be hewn.
Having been away for a couple of years, Out Of Hands We Go brings a wonderfully refreshing contrast to the plethora of faux traditionalists that have sprung up like weeds in their absence. This is intense, spine-tingling stuff, adventurous and bold, that retains at its heart stories of a more personal nature than we’ve ever been exposed to before.
The album is released on Northern Spy Records on the 7th October – you can pre-order it here. Until then, check out the wonderfully unsettling funereal stomp of Wrong Time.
Scottish Kate is a great friend of this blog and has often offered her (sometimes pithy) opinions on the world of music – and very good taste she has too.
She also runs the always excellent (sometimes pithy), and often provocative blog A Burdz Eye View for all things Scottish (of course), political and musical. Here are her aural selections for 2011.
The Burd’s Best Songs of 2011
Well it doesn’t get any easier. Though given that all my old schticks are in here aplenty – drums, noise, shoegaze, jingly jangly guitars, quirkiness, blues and reverb – it really should be a doddle. This girl is forever stuck in her groove and that’s just the way I like it.
10. Cashier No9 – When Jackie Shone
Gosh, why do I like this? It’s just got that whole throbbing bass line thing I like. Layers of sound. Odd vocals. And drums. Of course. Like it? Love it. The louder the better.
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9. Other Lives – For 12
Nearly my choon of the year. Deceptively simple, soaring, swooping and positively swoonsome.
Download Other Lives – For 12 mp3 (from Tamer Animals)
8. Josh Schroeder and Meredith Adelaide – Where Are You
It could so easily have been So it Goes, for both choons have been on a near constant loop at various times this year. But seeing as I have to choose – and I must, I cannot have the ignominy of a twelve instead of a ten two years in a row – then this one wins out. Not for nothing my Twitter bio suggests I’m not nearly as scary as I pretend to be.
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7. Secret Colours – Faust
A late contender but a worthy one. This choon is the musical equivalent of a three course meal and therefore ticks all my bluesy-rock boxes. So long as you like your meat and potatoes with no veg.
See? Stomping, strummy, just a little shoogly and I’m sold.
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5. We were promised Jetpacks – Medicine
Ye cannae beat a wee jangly Scottish band, especially one that throws everything but the kitchen sink into their music. It should be a mess but it so isn’t. After a difficult year out, with this track they exploded back onto the music scene and it was like they’d never been away.
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4. Slow Club – Beginners
A knickerbocker glory offering of shoegaze. With a big dollop of retro on the side and some reverb sprinklings up top for good measure. Dreamy.
Boy Wonder’s favourite moshing/air guitar choon of the year. We have pogo-ed round the sitting room to this. Oh yes. For those who don’t know, he’s the eight year old, supposedly I’m the responsible adult.
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2. William Elliott Whitmore – Field Song
The man with the voice that sends shivers down my spine is at the peak of his powers. Occasionally I have to lie in a darkened room to listen to this album – all the better to wallow y’see. The title track is truly a thing of beauty.
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1. The Low Anthem – Matter of Time
They made it into 2009 and 2010’s list and here they are again. The grandmasters of less is more, of making a symphony out of a three minute track.
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Favourite cover of the year
Barry-Sean and I share some bizarre commonalities. There are Killie fans in his family too, and it would appear, the influence of Buddy Holly on our musical heritage. The standout cover version for me this year? Patti Smith doing Words of Love and making it all her own.
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Favourite discoveries of the year
Actually, this was a rediscovery. In reprising the career of the late, great Jackie Leven, I found myself falling in love with Doll by Doll all over again. Gypsy Blood is a great album, and only recently recognised as a modern rock masterpiece. Aye but it’s the punkish tendencies that make it so.
Guilty pleasure
Diddy – Dirty Money Coming Home
Yes really. The year I discovered what makes the young folk tick. This far though and no further.
Close but no Cigar
O’Death – Bugs
This is a beautifully meaningful song on so many levels. Especially when you know the back story.
Echoes of their ramshackle and punkish best, but this time it is cocooned in something more subtle and thoughtful too.
Download The Whalers – That Rabbit mp3 (from How The Ship Goes Down)
Playing a wonderfully straightforward blend of thudding, bass-heavy rock that makes us think of QotSA melded with the Black Angels and then given some 60s style reverb treatment.
Download Middle Brother – Me Me Me mp3 (from Middle Brother)
Classic rootsy Americana show indie supergroup can live up to the hype.
Download The Barettas – Touche mp3 (from Touche 7″)
An energy filled, rough edged pop number – like bubblegum wrapped around a six inch nail.
The tribal beat and brilliant riff is a perfect combination of the heavy and the accessible. Imagine The Vaselines making music with The Ruts on a chaotic acid binge.
Seething primal punk-blues holler with a twisted take on everything from goth to garage.
Download Brother Gruesome – Tubes mp3 (from For The Morphine Makes You Comfortable 7″)
Mixing a sound that has evolved from their dark folk roots with a full on Sabbath-esque interlude.
Download J Mascis – Not Enough mp3 (from Several Shades Of Why)
Acoustically tinged pop par excellence.
Download Hunx & His Punx – Lovers Lane mp3 (from Too Young To Be In Love)
Tongue-in-cheek homage to the Shangri-Las, doo-wop, bubblegum pop, beach cruising and prom night teenage angst and finishes with the obligatory spoken word denouement – this time with flamboyantly camp overtones.
Download Bored Man Overboard – Abigail mp3 (from Rogue)
Vibrant, dark and reserved, they tell stories about forgotten people, of resignation and subdued wine buzzes. The music sounds like it has been dragged screaming from being immersed in six months of darkness – a wonderful antidote to the empty pop fluff that abounds.
Top quality fuzzed out, reverbed up, psychotic blast of glamorous garage rock.
Download The Heavenly States – Model Son mp3 (from Oui Camera Oui EP)
A foot-stomper with added rasp, rhythm and groove.
And to finish off we have two excellent covers for you, Loch Lomond’s reverential take on a Fleetwood Mac classic and Bat for Lashes tackling Depeche Mode, as well as the first tastes from new albums by Summer Camp and Julian Lynch, and finally a brand new song from folkies Romany Rye.
Download Loch Lomond – The Chain mp3 (Fleetwood Mac cover)
Download Bat For Lashes – Strangelove mp3 (Depeche Mode cover)
Unique NY folk-rockers O’Death are back with their third album Outside.
Despite some really difficult personal times for the band, they’ve kept going, and if advance track Bugs is anything to go by, we should be grateful they did. There are echoes of their ramshackle and punkish best, but this time it is cocooned in something more subtle and thoughtful too. A pleasure!
Being laid up on a week’s bed rest means at we’ve at least managed to finally get our longstanding idea for a blog/website for wannabe writers up and running.
Roundthecampfire.wordpress.com is a new idea where we regularly give you a couple of titles, and you use that stimulus and your imagination to write something. You can write whatever you like, in any genre and any style. It can be long or short, a novel or a verse. Go crazy!
You send it to us and we publish the ones we like. Then other folk get to read them. Simple as that.
You can download a submission form by clicking here or direct from Roundthecampfire.
The first two titles are up for all would-be authors. They are plucked, as you might imagine, completely at random from our iTunes library (our one golden rule) and they are Low Tide or The Sound Of The Crowd. All the details you need folks at Roundthecampfire.wordpress.com
And in honour of that, here are those two songs to mark the occasion. Classic 8os synthpop and some malevolent, twisted Americana. You’ll probably know which is which. Enjoy.
Scottish Kate is a great friend of this blog and has often offered her (sometimes pithy) opinions on the world of music – and very good taste she has too.
