Unpiano | Music Blog

Ventura’s Tall Tales And The Silver Lining have a knack for capturing the sounds of the California coast. Conjuring up the soft sounds of 70s AM radio and the winding Ventura Highway, Trevor Beld-Jimenez and his rotating cast of players deliver a summertime night drive’s selection of jangly, rambling psych-tinged jams with the delivery that matches the best of Vetiver, Wilco and the like.

Tall Tales And The Silver Lining – Collar To The Wind

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Dear Mr. Kanye West,

You are the only rapper/producer that can get away with sampling brand new songs, so you really need to get on the ball and give this girl a million dollars so you can sample it for your next massive hit.  The song sounds like Philip Glass was hired to arrange at Motown, I promise there’s nothing out there that sounds like this!  Seriously, just give her a single milli, you will easily make back 14 million, which leaves you 13 million to spend on solid gold suits of armor to surround your pewter toilet.  Just listen to it a couple times; you can easily make at least 3 hot beats with this (intro, verse, chorus, you know how to do), you can use the chorus as your own (just repeat her lines in a gruff rap accent!) and if you get nominated for some bogus award you even can hire Ms. Andersson to sing with you at your live performance.  Don’t be a fool, sample this song before it fades into obscurity and everyone else has to wait 15 years.

Love,
Johnny

Theresa Andersson – Hold On To Me

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I have no idea what to write about this band, I don’t know anything about them and the fact that they took their name from a Van Morrison song makes it very difficult to search for information.  The music is a bizarre mix of drone, noise, folk and metal, and it all sounds like it should be played in the background of a Spaghetti Western stand-off.  It’s dreary and depressing, sometimes heavy enough to rival Earth, sometimes folky enough to rival Neutral Milk Hotel, but always with an upbeat tone that keeps it feeling fun.  If you have a younger sibling in high school that is ready for some heavy mushroom trips, give them this to play in the thick of it; in an alternate reality I could hear this substituting nicely for classics like Pink Floyd or Zeppelin.

Also, they have literally the best order confirmation image I have ever seen in my life.  Seriously look at this shit!!

Dweller On The Threshold – The Woods-Electric
Dweller On The Threshold – Gallery of Stars
Dweller On The Threshold – Crumbling House

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The new Beach House album is wonderful. Everything that made you fall for them in the first place is intact and they even dropped some of the pop allure that made some people tune out the last album (check out the staccato guitar on ‘Wishes’). The internet is pretty locked down for the upcoming release of Bloom so I don’t expect these links to be live for very long. But between the officially leaked single ‘Myth’, and the songs below I think it’s safe to say that you should go buy it when it drops on May 15th.

Beach House – Wishes
Beach House – Irene

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Oh go ahead and write another uniquely American epic and put it to tape why don’t you Bill. I’ll bet his answering machine message is worth putting on repeat for hours on end.

Bill Callahan – Drover

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I’m not much of a Folkie, so a lot of the subtleties of the genre are lost on me.  But every now and then, a Folk project just sounds “right,” like the songs really did need to be written in an abandoned church in the woods.  Microphones – The Glow Pt 2 grabbed me this way, and it sounds like Phil Elvrum is a major influence for Mesita, at least for A Million Shades of Sky.  The long-form song structure, guitar vamp, subtle arrangements all nod to Elvrum, but Mesita isn’t afraid to layer in a synth or drum break half-way through the track!  Where Elvrum stays grumpy and depressed, Mesita bring a warm, up-beat optimism to their seasonal depression soundtrack.

Mesita – A Million Shades Of Sky
Mesita – Time Away From The World
Mesita – Somewhere Else

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Happy New Year – I can’t believe that we are still doing this. And I love that.
This is one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite people. Stay up in 2012.

N Amesake E – The Ocean Is One Day To Give Up Its Dead

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This Winter is going to be much longer and lonelier than I first thought. This means that I will need more music like Ami Sioux to help drag me through these next few months. Ami Sioux takes good photos and is friends with all your art and fashion heroes in Paris. Her songs are just okay.

Ami Sioux – Boot Cut Black Jeans

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Some places just have a “sound” and San Francisco is one of them. Its not just a group of related people consciously borrowing from each other, its a subtle line of connectivity that transcends generations and scenes and finds its way into recordings, most of the time without the musicians even noticing. There’s something about smokey voiced S.F. folky Norma Tanega’s first LP from 1966 that I hear in everything from The Aislers Set, to Romeo Void, to Deerhoof, to Jefferson Airlplane, to Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, to the Sic Alps and so on. I can’t put my finger on it exactly, its a sound, a small guitar lick, a chord progression, a quirky lyric, but as the record moves from track to track I find myself thinking “that sounds like (insert any S.F. favorite here)”, and even more so, “that sounds like a wall of fog pouring over the Golden Gate into the bay”.

Norma Tanega – Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog
Norma Tanega – A Street That Rhymes at 6 A.M.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

A respected figure in Michigan’s folk and rock scenes during the 60s and 70s, Ted Lucas released his self-titled solo album of home recorded psych-folk in 1975. With the gentle delivery of an acid-headed Nick Drake or a more-stoned-than-crazy Skip Spence, Lucas puts forth thoughtfully sparse, beautifully subdued folk arrangements, with the occasional room-noise tinged blues jam or fingerpicked ragga for good measure. Never capturing much more than local notoriety, this psych folk obscurity was unearthed and reissued last year. Definitely worth a spin on a hot, stoney summer day.

Ted Lucas – Plain And Sane And Simple Melody
Ted Lucas – It Is So Nice To Get Stoned

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.