As some of you know, I spent the first half of the ’90s living in Provo, Utah. I worked at two CD stores during that time and it’s quite possible that I sold more CDs by The Sundays than any other band. Perhaps there was a common misinterpretation of the Fourth Commandment but Provo couldn’t get enough of The Sundays. Which leads to my story…
There was this guy who came in to the CD store one night and he said, “I love The Sundays. Do they have any other albums out?”
“No,” I said, “but if you like them you might enjoy Shelleyan Orphan. Similar female vocals and even more interesting instrumentation and song structures.”
“Hmm,” he said. “I don’t know. Do they sound just like The Sundays?”
“They’re even better,” I said, handing him a copy of Century Flower (the most Sundays-ish of their three albums). “If you don’t think so, you can return the CD.” Keep in mind, according to store policy I could not return opened merchandise, so this would have meant me buying back as used and paying him the difference. My co-workers warned me, this guy wasn’t going to go for something as adventurous as Shelleyan Orphan. But I was sure he’d not only appreciate my recommendation but tell all his friends about his new find.
Same time the next day, he walks in. “I didn’t like it. It doesn’t sound anything like The Sundays.”
That’s when I realized, to go back to the Bible, I was casting pearls before swine. I wasn’t going to be able to talk him into liking Shelleyan Orphan. So I paid the man from my own pocket and told him he wasn’t getting any more advice from me. “Let me know when the new Sundays album comes out,” he said, as he walked out the door.
Shelleyan Orphan disbanded shortly thereafter, no doubt disheartened that some dork in Utah didn’t think they sounded enough like The Sundays. After 15 years of soul-searching and playing in other bands, Caroline Crawley and Jemaur Tayle have recorded a new Shelleyan Orphan record, We Have Everything We Need, available in October 2008. Please enjoy the bluegrass-inspired single, which I will admit sounds nothing like The Sundays.
First, my apologies for the unplanned hiatus from 3hive. It’s been a month since my last post, though I swear it doesn’t feel like it. To break the silence I’m taking it back to the old school—or is it the new school?—folk genre. Don’t know if it’s Joe’s long-awaited 
In teaching high school history, especially the things I lived through, I’ve often used a simple rule when choosing primary sources: don’t use things you love. In other words, avoid being hurt, intentionally or otherwise, when everyone else is unimpressed by that which changed your life. And so, it’s hesitantly and humbly that I offer up John Prine today. A few years ago, the 3hive writers came up with a “dream post” list, and Prine was high up on mine. I don’t know where I’d be without having internalized a degree of the optimistic outlook on life expressed in songs like “Please Don’t Bury Me,” or that remembrance of what matters in “Storm Windows,” or the embrace of passion and self in “Angel from Montgomery.” You know I could go on and on. John Prine is a legend, a treasure, a gift. I know I’m breaking my rule, but I also know I’m right.
Although the shuffling Gypsy cabaret of “Prove Me Wrong” may not sound like either rock or punk (or folk, for that matter — genre categories can be so imprecise) a trip through E.S.L.’s full length album Eye Contact will offer up all that and more. A rollicking Polish love song (sung po polsku), experimental strings and craziness, rock, Beastie Boys, Neil Young and Velvet Undergraound covers — this all-girl Vancouver quartet’s got it. You know, today is my birthday; maybe they’ll play at my party.
It’s been a while since we’ve checked in with J. Tillman, the Seattle-based songwriter with a melancholic voice and American Gothic disposition…and more facial hair. “Steel on Steel†is a pretty and melodic ditty that may not be the most summery of songs in the other 49, but you get the feeling that it’s the perfect antidote to that Peugot Sound Gray.
Haley Bonar first appeared on these pages almost four years. I’m not so into acoustic guitars, but seeing her live almost four years, I was completely blown away by the power of her voice. Her albums, a thoughtful mixture of folk and delicate tunes, don’t seem to be able to fully capture that voice; they give just a little picture of what she’s got. The new album, Big Star, no doubt named after one of her influences, is out June 10.
There’s been a fair amount of turmoil in my life of late: relocation from The Big Northeastern City to The Little Southern City, new job, first house, first child—basically we’ve inadvertently fit all of the major milestones of adulthood into about a 12-month span. It’s got me a little out of sorts, which may explain why I’ve gravitated more than normal toward singer-songwriters. Surely I’m softening in my mid-30s, but there’s just something about an acoustic guitar and a single voice that brings focus to my overactive mind. Joe Pug’s voice and guitar have a particular resonance in this regard. Pug is a Chicago carpenter by day and a troubadour by night. He possesses the eyes, mop, and even a hint of the vocal cords of a young Bob Dylan. More importantly, he possesses the strumming fingers and lush songbook of an all-American folk singer. In Pug’s hard plucking, exaggerated choruses, and lyrical vignettes you can draw a pretty straight line from Woody Guthrie to Bob Dylan to Johnny Cash to Bruce Springsteen to Steve Earle to Josh Ritter. Like all of them, Pug is a populist at heart, a singer who can’t help but talk about all of us when he sings about himself and can’t help but sing about himself when he’s talking about all of us. I’m a sucker for a good line and this one from “Hymn #101” is one of my favorites right now: “I’ve come to meet the sheriff and his posse/ to offer him the broad side of my jaw/ I’ve come here to get broke/ and maybe bum a smoke/ we’ll go drinkin’ two towns over after all.” It could just be a comic-tragic put-on and you probably have to feel some turmoil yourself to truly appreciate it, but “Hymn #101” is full of lines that will fill you with both heartbreak and euphoria. It’s good to be reminded that that’s why we listen to music in the first place.
Stars Like Fleas is a Brooklyn-based collective of musicians you probably haven’t heard of from bands you probably have heard of (especially if you’re a regular to 3hive). At the nucleus are Montgomery Knott (vocals) and Shannon Fields (everything else). It was Shannon who emailed us to say that Stars Like Fleas will be releasing their third album after “a fair bit of wandering-in-the-desert time.” That’s gotta be some kind of crazy metaphor ’cause they recorded the album in Iceland—with Bjork’s producer, Valgeir Sigurðsson—and I don’t think there are any deserts there. Wherever it was that they wandered, they appear to have lost their penchant for unstructured, free jazz compositions and replaced it with a knack for lushly-orchestrated pop epics. The single, “I Was Only Dancing,” is a precise audio replication of a cloudburst falling on parched earth, sandwiched between slices of warm sunlight. Bathe/bask in it and you’ll see why it’s already one of my favorites of the year.
Fast talking, fast picking (on the banjo) Old Man Luedecke’s just telling stories on these snappy new tracks from his third and latest album, Proof of Love. Although Old Man doesn’t really look that old, his narrative style and attention to detail and tradition certainly reflect a degree of maturity and experience. In general, though, it’s the toe-tapping familiarity of these songs that make then all warm and shiny. I can see Luedecke twanging his banjo around a Canadian campfire, telling tales just like people do.