Released August 13, 2020

Allie Crow Buckley

Today's recommendation is about Los Angeles singer-songwriter, Allie Crow Buckley. Her music is half-pop/half folk, and she's been brewing up incredible, crunchy Americana music since the release of her first EP, You Thought You Had Me, back in 2017. Her songs are hella catchy and have a way of bringing out the inner flower child/woman-of-the-earth persona that lives in everyone. Allie Crow Buckley's music is "of the high-lonesome, Pacific variety -- a product of a life lived within a stone's throw of the ocean's roar. In February of 2019, Buckley released her debut EP, So Romantic, which showcased her natural knack for evocative lyrics and oceanic inspired grandiosity" (Bandcamp). In her own words, "Hanging tough", is about "being broke, but hopeful. About trying to live the good life, before life gets good". 

Released October 22, 2020

Samana - The Spirit Moving EP

One of our writers discovered Samana, the stellar and pioneering duo from Wales, on Bandcamp a couple days ago. Their music is like elixir for the soul. Check them out.

"Samana was realised in the heart of a mountainous forest, during a year-long journey Rebecca Rose and Franklin Mockett undertook across the natural wilderness and distant cities of Eastern Europe. Lending their instincts solely to the road, and to the embodiment of freedom, their first creations were written in the vast isolation of nature and performed on the streets of the towns and villages they passed through. As two multi-disciplinary artists, Samana weave together their distinct poetry, music, striking photography and fine-art into one unique project."

"The spirit Moving EP is an interaction with the realms of the soul. All three songs are improvisations, being immediate impressions, lifted from the dialogue of the subconscious onto 1/4 inch tape. Carving out the contours of instinctive emotions and poetical intuition, they are conjured from the transcendental ritual of creation. Each song is a journey, a message, a philosophy, a deliberation, preserved and imprinted into its own sonic landscape. Together, they conjure an observation of the spirit moving through dimensions of time and existence, and into the search of being."

Released July 21, 2020

Ben Harper and Rhiannon Giddens, Anti-Records

This cover of Nick Drake's "Black Eyed Dog" brings together the amazing talents of Ben Harper and Rhiannon Giddens. Released on East of Nashville, Vol. 1 (an Experimental Country and Folk Compilation) in 2020 from Anti-, it features Ben Harper on lap steel and Giddens on banjo with vocals recalling a time and perspective mostly forgotten. As Harper states, "Rhiannon and I are both black purveyors of American roots music... We have unquestionably tapped into the same creative well of influence, carrying on the tradition through our own individual instincts and perspectives." In the era of Black Lives Matter, this glimpse of our American past in the form of two Black musicians covering an English musician's song written in an Appalachian style couldn't be more current, or more beautiful.

Released November, 13, 2020

Charlie Kaplan - "Light of the Day", Sunday

Charlie Kaplan is a singer/songwriter from New York. His latest album, Sunday, is a complete delight. The cover of the album, Sunday, is an image of himself, comprised of just a few squiggled pen marks. Winston Cook Wilson writes: 'In 2014 - two months after the passing of Kaplan's father - a stranger at a bar in Brooklyn sketched it for him on a napkin, as a birthday present. "I couldn't tell if the drawing was of me or my dad," Kaplan says, remembering the moment of receiving the gift. "I knew it was a drawing of me, because it was I who sat before that anonymous, taciturn artist at the bar. Yet the features were just the same as my dad's: a swoosh of hair; round glasses; full lips...It shook and somehow comforted me at the same time. That artist in the bar saw me; not just me sitting there but the negative space within me." Sunday has been in process more or less since that night.'

Released November, 26, 2020

Jade Bird - "Houdini", Glassnote Records

London-singer, Jade Bird, released her hugely popular, self-titled debut album in 2019. Her music is a combination of "traditional country, vibrant pop, insightful folk, and hollered blues into a heady mélange both fresh and familiar". Jade Bird is an incredible artist and lyrical storyteller whose idols include Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Sheryl Crow. Her newest single, "Houdini", was written at the start of 2020, and gives listeners a taste of her soon-to-be sophomore album (released sometime next year). 

Released October 13, 2020

Ex-Olympian - "Ripple in Time", Dot Dash Records

From Melbourne, Australia, artist Ex-Olympian (Liam McGorry) just released his new album, Afterlife. It's a super groovy, bop-filled record. On his bandcamp profile, McGorry dedicates the album: "This record was made on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of thr Kulin Nation, and we pay respects the Elders' past, present, and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded. Always was, Always will be Aboriginal land."

Released November 19, 2020.

Wild Pink - "You Can Have It Back", Royal Mountain Records

Brooklyn and Queen's band, Wild Pink, just released "You Can Have It Back", a single off their upcoming album, A Billion Little Lights. I first saw this band randomly in 2018 at a chance concert in San Francisco, and they were really good! The latest album explores that "dichotomy of finally achieving emotional security -- of accepting the love and peace he deprived himself of in his twenties -- while also feeling existentially smaller and more directionless than ever before" (Spotify, Eli Enis). 

Released March 2, 2018

Haley Heynderickx, I Need to Start a Garden, Mama Bird Recording Co

Gosh, has it really been 2 years since this album came out? I tried to start a garden  back when everyone else was doing it during Spring lockdown (shocker: the garden came out horribly and was attacked viciously by deer, Mr. Hedgehog, Mrs. Badger, and just a lot of insects). I digress. Haley Heynderickx is from Portland, Oregon. I Need to Start a Garden, produced by Heynderickx and Zak Kimble, was the artist's debut album. It was recorded "while Heynderickx balanced a job at a bakery and school, 'playing a ton of shows [and] being in weird relationships'; due to various obstacles in the recording process, the album ultimately took three attempts to complete." Heynderickx's influences include folk music of the 60s and 70s and her fellow Portland musicians.

Released January 20, 2018 

Eden Atad

Eden Atad is a musician from Tel Aviv Yafo, Israel. He has been writing songs and playing the piano since the age of 13. Now he is a regular soldier. He grew up in north Tel Aviv, with the home studio built by his father, which became his playground and the place where he would open what would become called "Gray". His songs often refer to the Bible and Greek mythology and include puns are not exactly typical of Israeli indie. He is a prolific composer, and has produced a total of 8 EPs and albums since 2017.

נסענו לדרום ביום חמסין לחתונה של כליל אני מגביר את המוזיקה כשההורים משוחחים אנחנו לא שומעים אחותי מספרת על המפעלים ועל הבולענים ירדן שואלת מה התפקיד של הנשיא ומה של אלוהים אנחנו לא יודעים משהו חייב לקרות משהו חייב להזיז משהו אולי בערב שבועות חג אחרון ונסיים את השנה אולי אחרי הקיפאון בא שיטפון אהובתי שונאת משחקי מילים, שותקת ביאוש למה ארצות הברית נכנסת לאפגניסטן? כיבוש אנחנו לא צוחקים אף פעם לא נגיע, אני מצהיר, למיה יש בחילה אבי אומר שהארץ בקרשים ולי נעים דווקא רק שיהיה מזגן.

Lyrics Translation: We went south on a hot summer day for Klil's wedding/ I turn up the music when the parents talk/ We do not hear my sister tells about the factories and the sinkholes/Jordan asks what is the role of the president and what of God we do not know something must happen/After the stalemate comes a beloved flood that hates word games, is silent in despair/Why does the United States enter Afghanistan?/ Occupation we do not laugh we will never reach, I declare, Mia has nausea/Avi says that the country is on the planks and I actually just like to have an air conditioner.