Jose Gonzalez: "Down the Line" Video
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Jose Gonzalez: "Killing for Love"
The official music video for Jose Gonzalez' "Killing for Love" from his new album In Our Nature (Mute). Directed by Andreas Nilsson.
Hailing from the small town of Moscow, Idaho, Josh Ritter?s songs are a rare gift of natural, intuitive beauty. Born in the late ?70s to two neuroscientists, Josh bought his first guitar from the local K-MART after hearing the Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash classic ?Girl From The North Country.? He began Oberlin College with the intent to follow in his parent?s scientist footsteps, but instead, discovered songwriting and the music of artists like Gillian Welch, Townes Van Zandt, and Leonard Cohen. He graduated and then moved east for its close proximity to historic folk clubs like Club Passim in Boston. On a shoestring budget he recorded his critically acclaimed break through album Golden Age of Radio in 2001 at various tiny, one-room studios on the East Coast. In the fall of that year, Josh pressed up several thousand copies of Golden Age, which quickly sold and funded more touring. A copy found it?s way into the hands of Jim Olsen and Signature Sounds Recordings, and the record was released nationally in the US in January 2002. Critics called the modest album ?stunning,? ?elegant,? and ?damn near perfect,? landing Josh in the pages of Details, the New York Times, and Maxim. ?Come and Find Me,? the modest anthem of Golden Age, was featured over the end-credits of HBO?s uber-hip series Six Feet Under, and several successful tours followed. Meanwhile, at a Boston open mic that spring, Josh met Glen Hansard, the lead singer of The Frames. Hansard invited him to open a string of shows for the band in Ireland. Josh?s career took flight in Ireland, buoyed by the single ?Me & Jiggs,? which entered the Irish Top 40 and helped gain Josh full blown cult status, complete with sold-out headline tours, late-night TV appearances, and his very own cover band in Cork. Josh ran the gamut at the Irish Hot Press Reader?s Poll Awards, landing in the Top 5 for Best International Folk Act, International Male Songwriter, and International Male Singer, putting him in the company of Springsteen, David Gray, and Johnny Cash. Josh would spend much of 2002 splitting his time between the US and Ireland, sharing bills with such eclectic artists as Beth Orton, Liz Phair, Damien Rice, and Joan Baez, as well as a celebrated appearance at the 2002 Newport Folk Festival. In the process, he garnered impressive acclaim not only for Golden Age of Radio but also for his richly textured and intimately engaging live shows. Publications like The Village Voice, The Washington Post, and The Irish Times scrambled to describe what made Josh?s music so ?stunning.? Sold-out shows in New York, Boston, and Dublin, as well as a trip to the Sundance Film Festival kicked off 2003 in style. In February of that year, rested, refreshed, and more than ready to make a new record, Josh entered Black Box studios in rural France with his touring band and Irish producer David Odlum (the Frames, Gemma Hayes) to record Hello Starling. Recorded and mixed in only 14 days in an old dairy barn in the French countryside, the thick stone walls, high ceilings, and vintage gear (much of it Curtis Mayfield?s old equipment), made for a record which sounds conversational and honest and shimmers with a new-found confidence. The 11 songs on Starling retain the feel and flow of another era; these are catch-tunes and earnest lullabies that rekindle the warm glow of a young Springsteen or Leonard Cohen in both their literacy and honest enthusiasm. ?Kathleen,? a summer anthem about waiting around a party to drive a girl home, is a live favorite; ?Rainslicker? moves and sways with all the dust-stained imagery of the Clientele; and the show-stopping beauty of ?Baby That?s Not All? suggests an artist at the peak of his new-found powers. The legendary Joan Baez recently recorded ?Wings,? the haunting ballad at the center of Starling, for inclusion on her new album, placing Josh alongside artists such as Gillian Welch, Steve Earle, and Natalie Merchant. Additionally, Norah Jones nominated Hello Starling for the 2004 Shortlist Music Prize and his song ?Kathleen? won the 2004 Boston Music Award for Song of the Year. During 2004, Josh spent the spring on a U.K. tour that was followed by appearances at summer festivals, including the Cambridge Folk Festival (alongside Gillian Welch) and the V Festival (with The Strokes and the Pixies). In Ireland, Josh played his biggest show to date there, headlining one night of the Heineken Green Energy Festival. In October of 2004, Josh signed with V2 Records. V2 plans to release Hello Starling this February. This fall, Josh toured with Sarah Harmer in Canada. In December, Josh will play a series of East Coast performances. In the spring of 2005, Josh plans to enter the studio again to record another album for V2.
Hot Swedish electro artists The Knife?s third studio album Silent Shout will be in stores on July 25th. Based in Stockholm, Sweden The Knife create subversive, shape-shifting soundscapes that defy categorization. Moving between realms, from highly danceable to tightly intimate spaces, theirs is music left of center and on the avant tip. Silent Shout, The Knife's third album, debuted at #1 on the Swedish charts. Mute will release Silent Shout, The Knife's first domestic release on July 25, 2006. "Silent Shout," the first single and title track, will be released on 12" and CD June 27, 2006 and features remixes from Shinedoe, Troy Pierce and more. Brother and sister, Olof Dreijer and Karin Dreijer Andersson, began making music together as The Knife in 1999, releasing records under their label Rabid Records. Deftly utilizing technology to strip, break down, defile, rebuild, and renew, their self-titled debut album The Knife, released in 2001, was followed by a soundtrack for the independent film Hannah med H, and their second artist album, Deep Cuts, both in 2003. The Knife is also famously responsible for penning ?Heartbeats?, a soul-tugging track made popular by Mute label-mate (and fellow Swede) Jose Gonzalez.
There are few professions that force one to so constantly face down the march of time as that of the gloriously precarious job of rock stardom. And it is exactly that which makes the title of Dave Gahan's second solo album, Hourglass (Mute/Virgin Records), all the more poignant.
The Dissociatives: "Young Man Old Man"
The Dissociatives are Daniel Johns and Paul Mac and together they have crafted their critically acclaimed debut album, a unique collision of classic songwriting smarts and adventurous electronic production.
Country legend Charlie Louvin (of classic country duo the Louvin Brothers) pays tribute to his late brother Ira in this beautiful ballad from Charlie's 2007 self-titled solo album.
Hanne Hukkelberg: "Cheater's Armoury"
Following mainstream praise for her debut release Little Things, Norwegian singer Hanne Hukkelberg is set to release her sophomore album "Rykestrasse 68" in early March. Rykestrasse 68 is a collaboration of songs inspired by Hukkelberg's 6-month stint in Berlin where she wrote and recorded an eclectic masterpiece of ambitious lyrics and soulful sounds. With an early release to iTunes, Rykestrasse 68 has been received exceptionally well from the indie scene and is of The Wire's top 50 records of 2007. Hanne Hukkelberg has earned comparison to the great Billie Holiday and is sure to become a household name in itself with the release of Rykestrasse 68.
Home-recorded songs can feel incomplete whilst being as tantalizingly indicative as the sketches before a painting. The outlines, though interesting in their own respect, are not as satisfying as the finished version. Grizzly Bear, however, have approached song writing as a craft to master from their very first album, Horn of Plenty onwards. Enamored by how a song "reads", they were fully present from prologue to denouement even though singer/songwriter Edward Droste recorded them by himself in his Brooklyn bedroom. Fuelled by a bout of post-relationship inspiration, those first songs celebrated the creative liberation of the ProTools era. They explored the depths of break-ups through crystal-clear tones, field sounds and woozy, complex harmonies.
Iron and Wine: "Naked as We Came"
Miami's Sam Beam makes music under the name Iron and Wine and September, 2002 saw the release of his debut album, The Creek Drank the Cradle. That record was/is hushed, literate, intimate, melodic: a quiet treasure which, with its unaffected candor and depth, found fans all over. (Entertainment Weekly: "Based in Miami, of all places, [Beam] invests these songs with hypnotic beauty and sparkling melody, making them as accessible as they are affecting.") Our Endless Numbered Days is the second full-length album from Iron and Wine and it was recorded both at Sam's Miami home and in Chicago's Engine Studios with Brian Deck (Red Red Meat, Modest Mouse, Ugly Casanova, etc.) On it, Sam is aided and abetted by regular touring and recording conspirators: his sister Sarah Beam, Patrick McKinney, Jeff McGriff, EJ Holowicki, and Jonathon Bradley. Listening to Our Endless Numbered Days makes plain Sam's deft touch with words and melody; one that allows him to turn out stories about love, loss, faith, or the lack of it that are at once personal and universal, set to music that is sweetly haunting and timeless.
William Shatner shows his stuff in this sultry version of the classic Elton John song "Rocket Man." Recorded during a 1978 awards show, it's truly a thing of beauty.
