it’s fall in brooklyn but i don’t see the change

Stone Cold Fox – Seventeen (Acoustic)

What plays as a nod to The Walkmen in electric gets new life when stripped down on Stone Cold Fox‘s “Seventeen.” Stomp and clap with the celeste and tambourine up top, then check out the original below.

i get nervous when i see her stare

Little Racer – Dancing
http://filtermagazine.com/files/uploads/LittleRacer_Dancing.mp3″
Go here to download “Dancing”.

Punxsutawney Phil and friends may have seen their shadows and six more weeks of winter on the horizon, but “Dancing” by Little Racer has thawed my brain enough to let me remember that summer is a thing and it is coming. Flats, short floral skirts, and the will to leave the house are all in our future. “Dancing” might just help that future come a little sooner.

like downed telephone wires

It’s not often that beauty comes from tragedy, but The Island Moved In the Storm achieves just that. Inspired by a woman known as Tent Girl, who was found deceased on the side of a Kentucky road in 1968, Matt Bauer creates an obscenely intimate and haunting album.

Banjo, acoustic guitar, and female backing vocals make up the core of Bauer’s sound, with the occasional warmth of horns, strings, and slide guitar added for depth. The songs are often fairly simple, but the devil is in the details and ghosts come through on the often otherworldly vocals.

A creepy-through-context girl choir joins in with Bauer’s broken, strained whisper on “Barn Owl” as he croons things like ‘the snow blows like a bridal train / sideways through the pines’, while the two work in a push-and-pull harmony during “Blacksnake in the Carport”. The girls hit their peak on the 24-second title track, beckoning one to ‘come, I will tell you where the island moved into the storm’, opening a gateway to the cloy of “Florida Rain” and the pretty but deadly “Foxgloves” and ‘hummingbirds with ruby throats / invisible wings / invisible notes’.

Bauer gradually grows his sound on the final three tracks of the album, starting with the introduction of electric sounds on the very sonically interesting and powerful “Old Kimball” and continuing through the slide-guitar-laden country lament “(Corolla) The One You Love”.

Extremely well put-together, The Island Moved In the Storm is a broken fairy tale, a fever dream.

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The Island Moved In the Storm drops 09/02/08.
Download “Don’t Let Me Out” and visit his artist page here.