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A Facebook message showed up in my inbox the other day, from Stefanie Drootin, member of the well-known Omaha band The Good Life. It announced the availability of an album’s worth of songs she’d recorded with her friend Chris Senseney. No album title, no track order, unmastered. They went down into Stefanie’s basement and just had fun with writing and recording songs.
Why would Iowa folkie William Elliott Whitmore and Erase Errata frontwoman Jenny Hoyston re-record the six songs from their 2006 EP Hallways of Always for a vinyl-only release? Only they know for sure, but on their return, this time calling themselves Hallways of Always, the performances do seem sharper.
Iowa City indie pop quintet, The Wandering Bears, have offered up a potluck, of sorts, for their self-titled debut. The Bears have cribbed a little bit from nearly every great left-of-center pop act and placed it all in front of you in heaping, steaming, well-produced portions.
The group, comprised of members of The Western Front and Vagabonds, opens with the glitchy, down-tempo, electropop number “William S. Burroughs Teaches Photography” (they also have a knack for whip-smart-alec titles), followed by the alt-country swagger of “Tom Bodett Rearranges his Living Room.”
June/July 2010~ The Grateful Dead need to be rescued. Rescued from paunchy, balding nostalgia, rescued from the tribute bands, rescued from the scumbags who sold drugs in the parking lot at their concerts. Most of all, they need to be rescued from their hyper-recorded live career, spinning the same fifty songs again and again like […]
Local Albums: May 2010 – One and All, the sixth full-length from Pieta Brown, finds the folky at her most relaxed and confident. One and All feels like a commiseration at The Mill: It’s easy, fluid and full of prospective delivered in a comfortable drawl. The album opens with a double-shot of hopeless romanticism. “Wishes […]
Local Albums: May 2010 – The fact that you can hold this album in your hands is astounding. From the Privilege of the Grave faced nearly every hurdle imaginable–from technical and logistical issues to legal and financial difficulties. That it was worth the wait, is still more astounding.
Johnny On Point’s new CD Keefin It Real doesn’t do anything to bring dance music out of the shadows, but I doubt that’s his intent. He doesn’t bother to conform to any genre I know–they’re not House, Techno, Dubstep or what’s currently mis-labeled Electro. The only thing I can really call him is a stone-cold sound geek.
Local Albums: April 2010 – Back in the day–1979–Hawkeye basketball star Ronnie Lester was a hip hop ambassador. Ronnie took his boom box everywhere , playing “Rapper’s Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang nonstop. It was, to Iowa ears, something strange and alien, and yet irresistible. Idris Goodwin’s track “Isiah Thomas Camp” took me back to […]
Local Albums: April 2010 – Sad Iron Music is the musical persona of Jason Lewis, originally from West Virginia, but living now in Iowa City and attending the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He was in the alt-country band Star City that a few years back achieved some prominence, accompanied, unfortunately, by little financial success. After turning […]
Local Albums: March 2010 – Olivia Rose Muzzy makes an odd brand of folk music with a double bass, loop pedal, and her wild, expressive vocals. Her debut record, Fisherman’s Dream, presents her live act accurately, rather than tracking all of the many bass parts comprising each piece separately, we’re treated to marked addition as […]
Local Albums: March 2010 – Ben Schmidt is a guy who writes songs and plays guitar, which in Iowa City, means he has to work pretty hard to stand out from the crowd. Schmidt’s singing is precisely pitched and without ornament. His songwriting has a pleasant, relaxed accessibility. His guitar playing is accomplished, but Schmidt’s […]
Local Albums: April 2010 – Being of a certain age, and having been a kid in 1960s California, surf music is totemic to me. From listening to my uncle’s Beach Boys records on a blonde-tolex-covered suitcase record player, to hearing “Wipeout” played by every garage band on my walk home from Booksin Elementary in San […]
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