Showing posts with label alt country. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alt country. Show all posts

November 21, 2007

Phosphorescent - Pride (Deep Ocean/2007)

It's almost unreal how the Athens, GA independent scene keeps providing us amazing artists, i'll don't even start talking about the Elefant 6 cast and their annual Popfest 'cause if i do so it'll take the whole post, but just to name some besides that: the decent post rock bands Japancakes and Maserati, the hip-hop producer Danger Mouse and so much others come from the little town down south of the U.S.

Phosphorescent is Matthew Houck's alias to make what i kindly call alt-country on acid, that was the first thing that came on my mind when i listened to Pride for the first time, it's so similar, but so different from his first EP and album (The Weight of Flight from 2004, and Aw Come Aw Wry from 2005) where you could hear Will Oldham and Neil Young all over them. On Pride, well you can also hear these but, you can be sure that Houck been listening to Wooden Wand and Animal Collective a bit, and i can say that he hitted a pretty good spot in this one, Pride is surely one of the best albums of 2007.

Tracklist
01. A picture of our torn up praise
02. Be dark night
03. Wolves
04. At death, a proclamation
05. The waves at night
06. My dove, my lamb
07. Cocaine lights
08. Pride


Take It

November 19, 2007

Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Ask Forgiveness EP (Drag City/2007)


Another effort from prolific singer/songwriter/actor/number one weirdo Will Oldham which this year has collaborated with plenty of artists such as Scout Niblett on her fantastic album, This Fool Can Die Now.

Ask Forgiveness is mainly a covers EP, with one new studio track from Billy. And well, one thing that he's really good at is doing weird covers, in this one he reworks Danzig, Frank Sinatra, Björk and uhm, yet another R. Kelly cover.

Way to go, boyo.

Tracklist
1. I Came Here to Hear the Music (Mickey Newbury)
2. I've Seen It All (Björk)
3. Am I Demon (Danzig)
4. My Life (Phil Ochs)
5. I'm Loving the Street (Will Oldham original)
6. The Way I Am (Mekons / Merle Haggard / Sonny Throckmorton)
7. Cycles (Frank Sinatra)
8. The World's Greatest (R. Kelly)

Take It