Posts Tagged ‘Courtney Marie Andrews’

Today’s Top 5: Life During the Great Pandemic, Vol. I

Posted: March 27, 2020 in 2020, 2020s, Allison Moorer, Bob Dylan, Courtney Marie Andrews, Hannah Cohen, Hayes Carll, Jackson Browne, Top 5
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For the past two weeks, like many others, I’ve led a shuttered existence – just me, Diane and our wooly bully of a boss in the apartment. Although my alarm still sounds at 5:45AM, instead of heading out the door to work within an hour, as is my custom, I bide my time until 7AM, when I telecommute into the office. Once I sign off at 4PM, weather permitting, Diane and I go for a walk – and breathe in the fresh pollen.

In other words, aside from allergies, we’re doing okay.

Tomorrow, Diane and I will do what we did last weekend – take a 30-minute ride into the countryside while E Street Radio provides us a perfect soundtrack. We’ll also tune in, at 8PM ET, to watch Allison Moorer perform on Facebook and then, on Sunday afternoon, attend a Church of Birch revival meeting on StageIt. Last weekend, we watched First Aid Kit on Instagram, which was fun; Courtney Marie Andrews, the Tallest Man on Earth, Sam Evian and Hannah Cohen on YouTube, which was interchangeably entrancing and interminable; and Diane Birch on StageIt, which cheered us up a lot. I also enjoyed Neil Young’s first Fireside Sessions at the Neil Young Archives; it was pre-recorded, edited and – with all respect to the others – the best of the bunch.

Until Wednesday, I hadn’t listened to much music beyond E Street Radio and those online affairs; I just wasn’t in the mood – which I’m sure others can identify with. But that morning I had the hankering to hear Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band’s classic Against the Wind, which I played a few times, and followed it with Jackson Browne’s equally classic Late for the Sky and his under-appreciated Hold Out, Courtney Marie Andrews’ May Your Kindness Remain, and Neil Young’s Trans. Yesterday, I revisited the 10,000 Maniacs’ Our Time in Eden a few times along with Paul McCartney & Wings’ Band on the Run. (“Stuck inside these four walls/never seeing no one…” takes on a new meaning in the context of today.)

This morning, my various newsfeeds were awash in new and recent songs from a host of my favorites; they provided a great distraction from the latest pandemic news and stock-market nosedive.

And, with that, here’s Today’s Top 5: Life During the Great Pandemic, Vol. I.

1) Hayes Carll & Allison Moorer – “That’s the Way Love Goes.” Originally a hit for Lefty Frizzell, this stunningly beautiful song is just that – stunningly beautiful.

2) Bob Dylan – “Murder Most Foul.” The bard of bards has apparently kept this 17-minute opus under wraps for…who knows how long. Whatever, it’s an instant classic – the kind of song that demands repeated listens. 

3) Jackson Browne – “A Little Soon to Say.” We learned on Tuesday that Jackson caught the COVID-19 virus while in New York for a benefit, but that he’s doing okay. Yesterday, he released this song, which though written and recorded, seems an apropos song for this odd time: “But whether everything will be alright/It’s just a little soon to say…”

4) Courtney Marie Andrews – “Are You Alright.” Amongst the upheaval of four non-techies trying to figure out how to livestream, Courtney delivered a spellbinding rendition of this Lucinda Williams song. (It begins at the 24:08 mark if the link doesn’t work as intended.)

5) Hannah Cohen with Sam Evian – “Motion Pictures.” Although Courtney, the Tallest Man on Earth, Sam Evian and Hannah Cohen delivered a bounty of Neil Young covers during their 2 1/2-hour livestream, this was my favorite. It’s possesses a Mazzy Star-like vibe. (It’s at the one hour and 30 minute mark if the link doesn’t work correctly.)

Today’s Top 5: New Music, Vol. MMXX (AKA “Ars Musica”)

Posted: March 7, 2020 in 2020, 2020s, Courtney Marie Andrews, Emma Langford, Hazel English, Jane Willow, Maria McKee, Today's Top 5, Top 5
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From pandemics to politics, and the associated panics therein, there’s much going on in the world that I could comment on. By and large, however, they lead me to this line from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest: “What’s past is prologue.” Everything that was has led to what is; and we, as a collective, are responsible. (As I wrote a few years back, “it’s never us vs. them, as much as we sometimes wish it so. It’s us vs. us.”) Yet, this morning I found myself instead dwelling on matters of art instead. In the celebrity-driven daze that is the Social Media age, it’s become commonplace to confuse artists, who are as flawed as the rest of us, for their fevered imaginings.

Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982) said it best in “Ars Poetic”: “A poem should not mean/but be.” That is, its success rests on the words, rhythms and rhymes therein; it lives and breathes, figuratively speaking, on its own, divorced from its creator. The same is true, I think, for all art. What do we know of Thomas Pynchon? Must we know his life to enjoy and decipher the torrent that is Gravity’s Rainbow? Must we know of the inner demons that haunted Sandy Denny to find meaning in her songs? 

Of course not.

And, with that, here are today’s Top 5: New Music, Vol. MMXX (AKA “Ars Musica).  

1) Courtney Marie Andrews – “If I Told.” CMA announced this week that she has a new album due on June 5th. (You can order it from her site.)

2) Hazel English – “Combat.” Hazel English is an Australian-American indie pop musician based in Oakland whose songs conjure the swaying psychedelia of the mid-‘60s as well as the Paisley Underground. 

3) Emma Langford – “Sowing Acorns.” The second single from the Irish singer-songwriter’s forthcoming sophomore album is, in a word, mesmerizing. (That’s her mom, at about 12 years of age, in the picture.)

4) Maria McKee – “Let Me Forget.” It’s Maria. Need I say more?

5) Jane Willow – “Give It Time.” The Dutch-Irish singer’s latest single is unadorned – just her gorgeous voice and piano. It’s sad and hopeful at the same time.

Today’s Top 5: Sunday, 9/1/19

Posted: September 1, 2019 in 2010s, 2019, Allison Moorer, Courtney Marie Andrews, Crazy Horse, Neil Young, Pono, Roberta Flack, Simon & Garfunkel, Today's Top 5, Top 5
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It’s early Sunday morn as I write, and Roberta Flack is killing me softly with her songs. My trusty Tribit headphones cover my ears, and – though Bluetooth capable – are plugged into my Macbook Pro via an M-Audio Micro DAC. It’s a plug-in sound card that, as the picture shows, is just a tad larger than a thumb drive, and enables me to listen to 24-bit, 192-kHz music files in all their glory without first copying said files to my Pono player. 

A MacBook Pro can output 24/96 through its headphone jack, of course, by switching the settings in the MIDI utility, and the sound quality is quite good for both high-res files and the Neil Young Archives, which streams up to 24/192. But this $100 Micro DAC improves the sound, be it through my headphones or solid Logitech Z623 THX-certified 2.1 computer speakers.

I should mention that, a few summers back, I stopped using the Pono player on a regular basis. It overheated once, then twice, and then a few more times during the summers of ’16 and ’17 while I was out and about, and then, while listening in our den one hot-and-humid afternoon, it didn’t just overheat, but fried the 128g micro-SD card inside. (I made the “mistake” of listening while charging.) By that point, however, I’d already grown tired not just of adding and subtracting files from my micro-SD cards, but of toting two gadgets around.

Around the same time, I decided to give Apple Music a go. While there was a drop-off in quality, there wasn’t a drop-off in what – to me, at least – is the most important factor when it comes to music: emotional quotient. And, truthfully, what I hear via my iPhone or MacBook Pro is better than what I enjoyed via the Realistic stereo system my parents gifted me with for Christmas ’77  and the Realistic cassette deck I installed in my little brown Chevette in ‘85, to say nothing of staticky AM radio. All things are relative, in other words. Sometimes “good enough” is enough.

Yet, when at my desk and in the mood, I often fire up the Vox app and play some of the high-res files I collected from 2014 through early ’17 – or just stream from the NYA site. How to enjoy that music to its fullest? While there are many options, some of which are rather pricey, for me right now it’s the M-Audio Micro DAC. It gets the job done.

And, with that, here’s today’s Top 5: Sunday, 9/1/19. 

1) Roberta Flack – “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” A few years back, Diane and I watched Killing Me Softly: The Roberta Flack Story, a one-hour documentary about Roberta’s ascent to stardom, on (I think) Amazon Prime. For me, it was something of a revelation – I picked up a few of her albums from the Pono Store in the weeks that followed. This, her rendition of the Simon & Garfunkel classic (found on her 1971 Quiet Fire album), is just mesmerizing. 

2) Simon & Garfunkel – “American Tune.” One of Paul Simon’s greatest songs, from his 1973 There Goes Rhymin’ Simon album, was given the Simon & Garfunkel treatment during their now-legendary 1981 Central Park concert. The lyrics are as appropriate now as they were in ‘73: “And I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered/I don’t have a friend who feels at ease/I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered/or driven to its knees/But it’s all right, it’s all right/We’ve lived so well so long/Still, when I think of the road/we’re traveling on/I wonder what went wrong/I can’t help it, I wonder what went wrong.”

3) Courtney Marie Andrews & Deer Tick – “You’re the One That I Want.” Speaking of duets… and to lighten the mood… there’s this clip of a Grease cover, which I just discovered last night. Trust me when I say, “It’s electrifying!”

4) Courtney Marie Andrews – “Downtown Train.” Speaking of Courtney, she’s part of the forthcoming collection of Tom Waits songs, Come on Up to the House, which also includes Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer, Rosanne Cash, Iris DeMent, Phoebe Bridgers and Patty Griffin, among others.

5) Allison Moorer – “The Rock and the Hill.” One album I’m anticipating is Allison Moorer’s Blood, which will be released alongside her memoir of the same name in late October. If this tasty track is any indication, it’s going to be flat-out great. (If you’re so inclined, head over to Allison’s website and pre-order both it and the book. And then check out her online journal, which is always an interesting read.)

And one bonus…

6) Neil Young & Crazy Horse – “Milky Way.” Another album I’m looking forward to is Colorado, which is also due out in October. It features Neil backed by a reconstituted Crazy Horse (with Nils Lofgren on guitar in place of Frank “Poncho” Sampredo). This, the first single, is both stirring and subdued at once.

Today’s Top 5: New Tracks & Videos

Posted: April 28, 2019 in 2010s, 2019, Bruce Springsteen, Courtney Marie Andrews, Jade Bird, Lucy Rose, Molly Tuttle, Neil Young, Top 5
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Last Saturday, after much hemming and hawing, and having read more about cars in the past two months than during the past two decades, I traded in my 2010 Honda Civic – which had near 112,000 miles on it – and bought a 2018 Mazda3 hatchback. It was one of the last “new” ’18 3s still on the dealer’s lot. (Word to the wise: Last year’s model is always marked down.) It’s a good ride with an excellent Bose sound system that almost makes me yearn for my old commute just so I can listen longer. 

(Note that I wrote “almost.”) 

The tech upgrade has been a bit of a culture shock, however. The Honda included a CD player, AM-FM stereo with buttons, and an aux jack. The Mazda, on the other hand, features a 7-inch LCD screen with AM, FM, SiriusXM, Bluetooth and Apple CarPlay, plus an aux jack but no CD player; and, when you’re driving, everything is controlled by nobs located between the front seats.

I’ve primarily listened to Jade Bird’s and Molly Tuttle’s full-length debuts this week, but carved out time during my shorter commute to explore a bit of SiriusXM, as the car comes with a three-month trial. E Street Radio is, as expected, a joy, but the Outlaw Country and Bluegrass Junction channels sound good, too. (More to come on that, for sure.) 

And, with that, here’s today’s Top 5: New Tracks & Videos

1) Bruce Springsteen – “Hello Sunshine.” I switched on E Street Radio, which is dedicated to all things Springsteen and band, on the ride home Thursday night and was surprised to hear that  Bruce has a new album coming out. And then “Hello Sunshine” played. Wow. Just wow.

2) Neil Young – “Don’t Be Denied.” Neil says he’s saddled up the Horse and that (as of April 22nd) they’ve recorded eight songs for a new album. While we wait for that, there’s this, the first taste of the coming archival release Tuscaloosa, which features 11 tracks from a 1973 concert in Alabama.

3) Courtney Marie Andrews – Tiny Desk Concert. Courtney and band perform a stellar three-song set: “May Your Kindness Remain,” “Rough Around the Edges” and “This House.”

4) Jade Bird – “Side Effects.” Jade and band deliver a driving rendition of this “Springsteen-y” track, one of the highlights from her recent full-length debut.

5) Lucy Rose – “The Confines of This World.” A live rendition of one of the (11) standout tracks from Lucy’s recent No Words Left album. From the Union Chapel in London on April 9th of this year, it’s a mesmerizing performance.

And one bonus…

6) Molly Tuttle – “Helpless.” Molly Tuttle’s full-length debut is a velvety smooth (and addictive) blend of bluegrass, folk and pop, and conjures – for me, at least – Alison Krauss, Shawn Colvin and Kasey Chambers, among others. Here, she ends a show with a rendition of Neil Young’s classic ode to his Canadian home. (For those unfamiliar with Molly, she – like Kasey – began her career in a family band before branching off on her own. Since, she’s twice been named the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Guitarist of the Year.)

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