Clare Burson is often compared to Lucinda Williams, so clearly she’s got something good going on. The Nashville-based Burson’s very personal tales, often of searching or longing, are hypnotic and gritty and completely endearing. As evidenced by the number of free downloads, she’s a generous soul as well, offering up for easy access about half the body of her recorded work. My favorites are from her full-length album The In-Between, on which her country roots are most obvious. Like several other 3hive picks, Burson’s music has been used in a hip TV show (Six Degrees on ABC? If it’s not Dora the Explorer I don’t know about it) so we wish her luck in landing a big fat record deal and implore her to remember the good old days of sharing the sharing.
Huma
Huma started out as a duo of New Jerseyites who wanted to counter the smothering influence of malls and suburban sprawl. Their answer: Folktronic pop blessed with a childlike innocence. Score one for the good guys.
More Lismore, Including Smashing Pumpkins Cover
Pixies loudQUIETloud DVD Release and Free Screenings…In Your Town?
Roger O’Donnell
A man and his Moog. Not just any man mind you, Roger O’Donnell has tickled the ivorys for The Cure and Psychedlic Furs. However, don’t expect his solo album to flash you back to the glitter and glam of the 80s, rather, The Truth in Me is an exercise in limitation. All the music here is composed using one instrument, the Moog Voyager, an analog synthesizer (a few tracks feature vocals by Erin Lang). You’ll hear that what Roger O’Donnell discovers is both warm and chill, human and machine, the collision of opposites that makes truth possible.
Ace Fu Gets Bonked
Josh Ottum
Josh Ottum’s “The Easy Way Out” reminds me of the old joke about the weather in Michigan — if you don’t like it, wait a minute. I lost track of the abrupt tempo changes after about 45 seconds and just let the song play on, digging the cute pop (think Ben Kweller) vibe. The remaining tracks available for free download aren’t quite so schizophrenic, and for me they’re actually more enjoyable. “Who Left the Lights On?” has a great groove, nice simple hooks and a thick sound, while “Freedom” sounds like a synth-ed out video game love song. With all this polished pop, all I want to know is, where are the hand claps?
She, Sir
Austin-based quartet, She, Sir recently built a lovely wall-of-sound EP, stacked with layers upon layers of guitars, modal harmonies, and hushed melodies. With the subtle hooks and deep atmospherics of Who Can’t Say Yes, She, Sir drop pop music to an even vaguer level than Loveless. She, Sir beautifully fractures music for the next generation of dream-pop connoisseurs.
Muggs
I know this one’s a few years old but this is such the un-Muggs album and perfect for this moody time of year. Muggs is best known for the venomous hooks behind all your favorite Cypress Hill and House of Pain joints, as well as collabos with various hip-hop all-stars under the Soul Assassins umbrella. On 2003’s Dust though he pays homage to his less obvious influences such as Pink Floyd and brought in some lesser known vocalists in Amy Trujillo and Josh Todd. Dusted, natch, but broadly accessible.
The Silent Years
Listening to The Silent Years takes me back to my oh-so-glorious college radio days. We were on the AM frequency and didn’t have an FCC license so we couldn’t broadcast off-campus, which wouldn’t have been so limiting if it hadn’t been a commuter campus. The quietude afforded us time and space to make mistakes, build playlists with no real agenda, and explore the piles and piles of promo CDs stacked around the studio (despite signs asking that everything go back to from whence it came). The Silent Years is like a band I may have found in a pile, an earnest young outfit with vaguely nihilistic lyrics sung, possibly ironically, with great emotion, and riffs that made me nod my head but weren’t obnoxious enough to cause consternation. Coulda been Texas is the Reason, or Ash, or any of a dozen others. I would throw it in the rotation, maybe play another song at the top of each hour, and be fully obsessed before my timeslot was over. Anyhow, The Silent Years give me fond memories and have the potential to become an aural obsession that I’d like to tell the world about, or at least those of you who get the signal.