Crib Notes

FIXED GAZE: Alela Diane looks to a simpler place and time.

When not on the road, folk singer Alela Diane splits most of her time between Oregon and California, and a sense of place and geography plays a defining role in her lush songs. Her sophomore album, To Be Still, released earlier this year on Rough Trade Records, depicts the songwriter’s surroundings as vividly as it depicts the songwriter. “[My songs are] definitely informed by geography and where I am,” says the 26-year-old Portland, Ore., resident. “I definitely write about the things that are happening in that time of life, or reflecting back on dreams. Wherever I am, my songs will be shaped by the places I am.”

“Dry Grass & Shadows,” for instance, is one such tune. The gorgeously lilting song hopes for a return to a lost yet still attainable countryside, and Diane coos and keens over light banjo and guitar. And on To Be Still, Diane expanded her musical palette, growing beyond the basic acoustic guitar-and-vocals of her 2006 debut album, The Pirate’s Gospel. She credits the album’s recording process with influencing the sounds.

Continue Reading “Alela Diane makes herself at home”

(Photo Courtesy Rough Trade)

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Eleni Mandell with Holland Dutch and Old Custer. $10. 9 p.m. Sat., July 25. Star Bar, 437 Moreland Ave. 404-681-9018. www.starbar.net.

Los Angeles-based singer Eleni Mandell has always been a dabbler. While her rich voice served as a constant, Mandell has swung through various musical styles on her releases over the past decade. Her new album, Artificial Fire, finds Mandell combining her disparate interests into an upbeat, cohesive collection. “My early writing was so much about being sad and in turmoil, or angry,” she says. “My younger self would be pleased that I decided to have fun and bring a lot of joy to the music.”

Starting out with heavy, noirish rock and roll torch songs on early albums like Wishbone and Thrill, Mandell later conjured flirtatious Nashville on 2003’s Country for True Lovers, sauntered through jazz on the following year’s EP Maybe, Yes, and sang conventional songs-for-guitar on 2007’s Miracle of Five. Then she also spends time with the Living Sisters and the Grabs, side projects that let her play around with straightforward, forceful pop-rock. These stylistic departures have been experiments for Mandell, who says she’s eager to explore different emotions, ideas and sides of her personality through her music. Through it all, Mandell has rarely fallen flat, and her vintage leanings have avoided the sticky easiness of kitsch.

Continue reading “Eleni Mandell matures into her own teenage dreams”

(Photo by Lauren Dukoff)

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Last night Athens’ much-heralded power trio the Whigs played an unannounced show at the small hometown venue Tasty World, debuting a number of songs off the band’s upcoming third full-length. The sign on the club’s door announced the band as the Bumpkin Café — something the club owner came up with, said drummer Julian Dorio — but text messages and Twitter work fast, and soon enough the club was bustling with a few scene vets and more than a few still-in-town-for-the-summer college kids eager to check out the tunes.

Over the past month the band has been holed up in its Athens practice space working out the new songs’ kinks, and frontman Parker Gispert recently decamped to Newnan, Ga., for a little time among the trees, a little time upon the lake to get some more lyric writing done before heading into the studio next week and out on tour later this summer.

Here, we’ll let Gispert explain it:

How are the new songs? More after the jump:

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DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS SONGWRITER PATTERSON HOOD RELEASES LONG-AWAITED SOLO ALBUM.

Now that Drive-By Truckers songwriter Patterson Hood has settled back into Georgia after touring with Booker T. Jones and lecturing at Princeton, he’s ready to set the stage for the release of his long, long, long-awaited solo disc Murdering Oscar (and other love songs).

Available right this minute for pre-order at Hood’s personal site in digital, CD and vinyl incarnations, Murdering Oscar’s also available in a pricey deluxe package too: a limited edition featuring special artwork from longtime Trucker artist Wes Freed along with some other shiny bonuses. Tuesday, June 23 is the album’s official release date.

As for touring to support the release, Hood wrote this on his MySpace page:

Due to the logistics of touring with a band comprised of members of various other bands (plus David Barbe’s studio schedule) there will only be a limited number of shows initially, but we are hitting Chicago and both coasts this summer and hope to do some more dates later in the year.

Backing Hood on this current outing will be David Barbe (Sugar), Will Johnson and Scott Danbom (both of Centro-Matic) and regular Drive-By Truckers John Neff and Brad Morgan, playing collectively under the name The Screwtopians.

Tour dates and more Truckers news after the break:

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Lynch, Sparklehorse, Danger Mouse collaboration in limbo?

Though he’s been out of state for a while now, Danger Mouse has kept his Georgia roots well… um, watered? Sure, that works. The prolific producer’s newest project has been long in the works, but the collaboration between him and ecstatic songcrafter Mark Linkous — Sparklehorse to the rest of y’all — seems to be in a bit of limbo.

On the same day that NPR posted a stream of the collaborative album Dark Night of the Soul, Billboard.com reported that the release has been presently… abandoned? Things look a little muddy, though, as the site for Dark Night of the Soul still exists, and the album remains somewhat for sale. Here’s the thing: you’re still able to purchase the album and its accompanying book of 100+ photos by David Lynch, and it’ll come complete with a poster and all the artwork, but it’ll lack one thing — the music.

Per the site:

“Due to an ongoing dispute with EMI, Danger Mouse is unable to include music on the CD without fear of legal entanglement. Therefore, he has included a blank CD-R as an artifact to use however you see fit.”

There’s not mention, naturally, of the fact that the music leaked in early May, and is readily downloadable. So, y’know…

The Sparklehorse album Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain saw the first collaboration between Linkous and Danger Mouse, and the mish-mash and cooperative nature continues; Athens artists like Heather McIntosh, Scott Spillane and Vic Chesnutt show up alongside Iggy Pop, Frank Black, Julian Casablancas and Nina Persson, among others.

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