Love Over Gold is the name of a new collaboration between Pieta Brown and Australian singer-songwriter Lucie Thorne, who met during a tour of the land down under a couple of years ago. The two became fast friends, and, after some correspondence and planning, they formed the group named after a Dire Straits song.
Local album reviews
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Reviews: The White Elephant – Fly
The White Elephant The White Elephant (“Fly”) www.thewhiteelephantband.com The history of distortion effects on guitars dates back to what is usually considered the first rock and roll song, “Rocket 88.” […]
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Album Review: Dylan Ettinger and Goldendust – Split 7″
This two-song single, the first release on new Atlanta lable DKA, feature’s Iowa City’s Goldendust and Bloomington Indiana’s Dylan Ettinger. As with nearly all music on the outskirts of popular music, these songs are a re-imagining of a musical style from the past—in this case, 1980s darkwave synth pop. Both Ettinger and Goldendust favor big analog synth sounds and archaic drum machine rhythms; there’s no sound in either song that departs from a musical palette available 30 years ago.
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Album Review: Nic Arp – Tiny Wings
It’s hard to define an Iowa sound exactly, but Nic Arp has it, inexactly: not quite country music, but folksy; not exactly rock & roll, but with the occasional snarly electric guitar line. I hear echoes of 1970s Iowa folk artists like Bonnie Koloc and Freeman and Lange, but Arp has an unusual voice, with some of Elvis Costello’s timbral quirks–he goes from growly to nasal in two syllables.
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Album Review: Douglas Kramer Nye – No Good Samaritan
There is something amazing about watching a musician evolve from square one. Shawn Reed from Wet Hair described it as the “without a net” stage of a musician’s career: They tend to be a little more timid, experimenting with voices, phrasings and nuances for the first time. Onstage you can watch them fail and succeed during what can be a spellbinding evolution of their talent. Douglas Kramer Nye had only been playing the guitar for three months when he wrote his first songs. And, over the course of three years, he learned more guitar chords, wrote more songs and made connections around the Iowa City music scene. His album, No Good Samaritan, is the record of these first steps.
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Album Review: The Blendours – Drama Queen EP
The Blendours’ Trevor Treiber is a contemporary and West High classmate of Lipstick Homicide, and the one time I met him he was hanging with Rachel and Kate at Gabe’s. So, it’s no surprise that there’s a strong affinity between The Blendours and Lipstick Homicide when it comes to songwriting: They both write songs that are short, sweet and infectious. The Blendours songs on this EP are performed simply with acoustic instruments. Still, there’s a lot of pure punk rock energy even with a single guitar and no band.
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Album Review: Dustin Busch – Down Home
Down Home is Dustin Busch’s first solo album in a long time (he was 15-years-old when he made his first), and showcases his slide guitar and country blues. In most people’s hands—at least people who weren’t born 100 years ago, poor and black in Mississippi—this is a recipe for embarrassing tedium. Yet Busch combines a complete mastery of the technique and style of blues, as well as a relaxed, nothing-to-prove attitude to make serious music that never takes itself too seriously.
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Album Review: Radoslav Lorkovic – Clear and Cold Remastered
I’ve mentioned on these pages before that my first time in a bar underaged was seeing Bo Ramsey and the Sliders playing Potter’s Mill in Bellevue, IA.
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Album Review: Curt Oren – Is Anyone and The Elder (far right) Explains a Navigation Chart
Curt Oren is a saxophonist who plays his own solo compositions. You have to admire him for that even before you hear what he does.
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Album Review: Lipstick Homicide – Out Utero
It’s hard for me not to think of Lipstick Homicide as kids; they’re contemporaries of my children. I first heard them when they were barely old enough to drive, and now they’re all grown up, actual 20-somethings. Throughout that time they’ve been remarkably consistent—they play melodic punk rock.
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Album Review: Limbs – Diverted Urges
I was a little worried by the first song (past the trippy intro) “Roll Like Down,” because it had such a late-90s Matchbox 20/Smashmouth/Sugar Ray sound to it. I could do an entire review-length rant on how much I hate that kind of thing. But there’s more to Limbs than the tunes they heard in mom’s car when they were kids. They also manage to avoid the other godforsaken musical monster of the ‘90s: rap rock. MC and singer Ty James has the rap thing down, but these guys have cooked up something stranger and more interesting.
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Album Review: King of the Tramps – Wicked Mountain
Before receiving a review copy of Wicked Mountain I hadn’t even heard of King Of The Tramps’ hometown, Auburn, Iowa. It’s apparently a ‘suburb’ of Carroll, Iowa, which is to say it must be vanishingly small–the sort of Iowa town that barely exists and keeps getting smaller. Completely irrelevant to this review, but it’s worth visiting www.auburniowa.net, whose homepage is dominated by a slideshow of a town completely devoid of human habitation. The town motto should be “Auburn: Park Wherever You Like.” It’s a place where you make your own entertainment or go quietly mad.
