MP3: Caroline Weeks - “Elegy”

On April 7, 2009, Bat for Lashes’ mulit-instrumentalist Caroline Weeks is to release her debut solo album on Manimal Vinyl, the same Los Angeles based label for whom she covered “The Drowning Man” for their Cure tribute album. Available across CD, vinyl and download formats, the album Songs for Edna, features 9 tracks of stark minimal folk all with lyrics borrowed from the late American poet, Edna St. Vincent-Millay. Caroline songs are full of insight, sensitivity and intimacy and do justice to a poet whose love sonnets are undeservedly slighted in our day.

For info on Edna: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edna_St_Vincent_Millay

Having toured the states with Lewis & Clarke and performed across the UK, Caroline has gained cult status as a solo artist since stepping out from Bat for Lashes, for whom she will be opening on several dates of their forthcoming April UK Tour (see below for live dates). Her music has been compared to everyone from Karen Dalton to Sandy Denny.

Having been a full time member of Bat For Lashes for over three years, Caroline previously performed under the name Ginger Lee, but having discovered (via a somewhat shocking Google search) that a young American lady who appears to relish having her photo taken in the nude shared this particular moniker, Caroline has now reverted to using her family name.

Born and bred on the Sussex coast, Caroline comes from a long line of musicians: in the 1920s the fifteen-strong “Weeks brass band” was famed across East Sussex, while, more recently, her Grandfather can be seen playing the church organ in the movie of Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm.

A classically trained flautist and effortlessly self-taught multi-instrumentalist, Caroline currently prefers a three-quarter-sized classical Spanish guitar, which she uses to brew a heady mix of cantering finger picks and delicately decaying sound shapes, where the spaces are just as important as the notes. Add to this her own “secret” tuning (which has been known to flummox even the most competent of guitarists looking to have a quick strum in the Green Room) and you have a truly original sound.

All of this is topped of with a classic English voice. Her songs are both powerful and at the same time fragile; and to hear Caroline sing is to witness traditional folk music colliding with a contemporary stitching of everyone from Nico and Joni Mitchell to Kate Bush and Vashti Bunyan.

Caroline now lives in Brighton where, aside from her solo work and commitments to Bat For Lashes, she also plays accordion in Euchrid Eucrow (a howling death-folk-roots trio featuring British Sea Power’s Abi Fry), occasionally ventures out with the theatrical all-girl chamber quartet Pthhh (with fellow BFL player Quinta), sings in a Bulgarian folk choir and is also instigating an experimental vocal group and flute ensemble.

CAROLINE WEEKS

Mar 07 London Word Festival London
Mar 26 The Luminaire London
Apr 11 The Westhill Hall Brighton
Apr 12 Birmingham Town Hall Birmingham
Apr 13 Cambridge Junction Oxford
Apr 15 Anson Rooms Bristol
Apr 16 Brighton Corn Exchange Brighton
Apr 18 Cafe Oto London

Caroline Weeks
Songs For Edna
(Manimal Vinyl)
Street date: April 07, 2009

1. See Where Capella with her golden kids
2. What lips my lips have kissed
3. Wild Swans
4. Renascence
5. Oh, sleep forever in the Latmian cave
6. The return
7. Pity me not
8. I shall go back
9. Elegy

CAROLINE WEEKS LINKS:
MySpace - www.myspace.com/carolineweeks

Label Page - www.manimalvinyl.com

A Splice Original Compilation: The Old Lonesome Sound

In Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, Jim White’s documentary on Southern folk music, storytelling, and religion, banjoist Lee Sexton describes the traditional music of his native Kentucky hills as “the old lonesome sound.”

“These old hills are kind of sad looking,” Sexton says. “You get to feeling down and out, looking at these old hills, sitting on your front porch, and you get to playing these old tunes and it helps you. It builds your morale up a little bit.”

The old tunes that Sexton was talking about are the ones that have been with us for hundreds of years: hymns and gospels, murder ballads, protest songs, African-American spirituals, old bluegrass and country standards. Whether you hear them on albums by Dylan or Springsteen, or in films like O Brother, Where Art Thou? or Cold Mountain, they are songs that get reworked again and again, that cut to the heart and soul of the American story.

In his memoirs, Alan Lomax recalls the days on the Lower East Side of New York when Lead Belly and a young Woody Guthrie would stay up all night trading off on such songs, coming home after a show and playing for hours: “They had their whole, fresh, powerful, pure folk repertory intact: living, vibrant, and with the impact of a country mule ready to kick a hole into the future.”

LINKS
www.splicetoday.com

MP3:Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele - “Meet Me In The Garden”

Jackson, Mississippi native Dent May grew up singing in local church groups, acting in school plays, and performing at nursing home gigs with a recorder choir. In high school, he wrote synthy power-pop with his band The Rockwells while recording erotically charged novelty tracks with friends on the side. After three unsuccessful semesters at NYU’s film school, May moved to North Mississippi where he helped found the Cats Purring arts collective and formed a country-rock band called Cowboy Maloney’s Electric City. In late 2007, inspired by Serge Gainsbourg and Lee Hazlewood, he began performing as Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele and released a digital EP of cheeky lo-fi tunes, A Brush With Velvet. The title is a reference to The Partridge Family, episodes of which May obsessively collected and organized on VHS tapes as a teen. His debut album, The Good Feeling Music of Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele, was recorded with Rusty Santos in May’s home, a double-wide trailer in Taylor, Mississippi (population: 300). He continues to perform with Cowboy Maloney’s Electric City, and recently began recording dance music under the moniker Dent Sweat.

DENT MAY & HIS MAGNIFICENT UKULELE

2/20 Vancouver, BC The Biltmore Cabaret *
2/21 Seattle, WA Neumos *
2/22 Portland, OR Doug Fir Lounge *
2/24 Sacramento, CA Harlow’s *
2/25 San Diego, CA Casbah *
2/26 Los Angeles, CA Troubadour *
2/27 Santa Barbara, CA SOho Restaurant and Music Club *
2/28 San Francisco, CA The Independent *
3/01 Eugene, OR John Henry’s *
3/02 Boise, ID Neurolux
3/05 Minneapolis, MN 400 Bar
3/06 Chicago, IL Schubas
3/07 Pontiac, MI The Pike Room at The Crofoot
3/08 Cleveland, OH Beachland Ballroom
3/10 Ithaca, NY Castaways *
3/11 Toronto, ONT Lee’s Palace *
3/12 Montreal, QC Il Motore *
3/13 Providence, RI Club Hell *
3/14 Boston, MA Paradise *
3/15 New York, NY Bowery Ballroom *
3/18 - 3/21 Austin, TX SXSW
3/22 Bristol, UK The Trinity #
3/23 Nottingham, UK Rescue Rooms #
3/24 London, UK The Forum #
3/25 Leeds, UK TJs #
3/26 Liverpool, UK The Static Gallery #
3/27 Dublin, IE The Tripod #
3/28 Belfast, UK Stiff Kitten #

* = w/ A.C. Newman
# = w/ Animal Collective

Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele
The Good Feeling Music of Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele
(Paw Tracks)
Street date: Feb. 03, 2009

1. Welcome
2. Meet Me In The Garden
3. College Town Boy
4. Oh, Paris!
5. Howard
6. Girls On The Square
7. You Can’t Force a Dance Party
8. God Loves You, Michael Chang
9. At The Academic Conference
10. 26 Miles
11. I’m an Alcoholic
12. Love Song 2009

DENT MAY LINKS:

MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/dentmay

Press Materials - http://www.paw-tracks.com/dentmaypresspage.html

FREE mixtape dropping soon feat. Slug, Aesop Rock, Busdriver, WHY?, Buck 65, D Styles, and more - appearing at Coachella, SXSW and Noise Pop

Themselves, the Bay area duo of Doseone and Jel (both also key members of the group Subtle), have returned from a six year hiatus with a flurry of activities and releases planned for 2009. It’s no mistake that this resurrection comes hot on the heels of the Anticon label’s tenth anniversary - Themselves have long been one of the label’s flagship groups.

First up for Themselves is a trio of festival appearances, starting with Noise Pop in San Francisco next week, then SXSW in March, and Coachella in April. In early March, theFREEhoudini mixtape will drop in various places around the internets, featuring a dizzying array of guests, including Slug, Aesop Rock, Busdriver, WHY?, Buck 65, Passage, DJ Baku, Alias, Pedestrian, Sole, Serengeti, D Styles and The Lionesque. As Doseone put it, “TheFREEhoudini is an inspired Themselves rendition of the classic mixtape medium, housing a medley of original music, it features every rapper we have ever shared a cause with in the past decade. It is also a gift, for these curious times in the consumption of music.”

In August 2009 Themselves will drop its third official full-length album, CrownsDown which Dose refers to as such - “CrownsDown is our statue - to rap as it reered us - and the arch and arrow, of what it is to be us, in a decade of music made and the temperature of these two thousands.” It’s also worth pointing out that theFREEhoudini mixtape and CrownsDown will be the 19th and 20th releases of Doseone’s career, respectively.

THEMSELVES

02/28 San Francisco, CA The Apple Store (Terrorbird / XLR8R Noise Pop Day Party)
03/18 - 03/21 Austin, TX SXSW
04/19 Indio, CA Coachella

Themselves
theFREEhoudini
(Anticon)
Dropping March, 2009

Featuring:

Aesop Rock
WHY?
Busdriver
DJ Baku
Buck 65
Alias
D Styles
Sole
Serengeti
Pedestrian
Slug
Passage
The Lionesque

THEMSELVES LINKS:
MySpace - www.myspace.com/themselves

Press Materials - www.anticon.com/pr/themselves.htm