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Brendon Shields: Truth and Recession

Scotty Alan: Wreck and the Mess

The Waterboys: Appointment With Mr Yeats

Felice Brothers: Celebration Florida

Blitzen Trapper: American Goldwing

Brendon Shields: Truth and Recession

November 30, 2011 mia

Brendon Shields
Truth and Recession

November 30, 2011
MIA Records

“Can I sing you a song about our future? Maybe your little heart will hurt a little less?”

“It’s a great album – definitely a highlight of the year. Your songs and lyrics are bitter-sweet with great ‘hooks that bind us’, to borrow the Grant Lee Buffalo metaphor.” – Michelle Constant, Business and Arts South Africa

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Purchase Download (MP3)

Truth and Recession is available at Look and Listen stores nationwide and available as a full album or track-by-track download at Amazon MP3, iTunes and miaindiemusic.com. For all availability inquiries contact info@miaindiemusic.com

Brendon’s official website: Brendonshields.com

From the little known South African town of Bethlehem comes a singer-songwriter whose debut record is so strikingly of the times it’ll fast be soundtracking the lives of individuals across the globe.

Titled Truth and Recession, the 13-track record introduces Brendon Shields’ music to a broader public for the first time – close to a year after his songs earned him a publishing deal with Sony/ATV South Africa.

Shield’s exquisitely rendered tales of love and survival have also seen him become the first signing to MIA Records, the Joburg-based distributor of several key international indie labels including Sub Pop, New West Records and Thrill Jockey. This places Shields in the company of the likes of Steve Earle, Fleet Foxes, and Low, his tender, frequently melancholic, vignettes of life lived in “pre- recession shoes” fitting in comfortably with these kind-of artists.

The arrival of Truth and Recession is being preceded by the release of the record’s first single, “Rockstardom” – a bleak yet deeply heartfelt song about hope in impossible times. “But can I you this song about our future/maybe your little heart will heart a little less/and if I promise you I’m going to be a rockstar/Babe this situation is a mess/when rockstardom is the only option left,” Shields sings in his carefully modulated voice that sits atop the simplest of music arrangements.

Scotty Alan: Wreck and the Mess

November 28, 2011 mia

Scotty Alan
Wreck and the Mess

October 4, 2011
Spinout Records

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Scotty Alan used to be a punk-rocker. This underlying edge transfers to his new Americana/Alt-Country release Wreck and the Mess. It’s not necessarily that Alan has mellowed; his music and lyrics with raspy and expressive vocals are still bright with energy, still darkly funny at times. But with this new countrified sound comes a heightened emotionality, and an outlook tested and tempered by experience.

The 15 songs, arranged in narrative sequence, reflect on a relationship gone bad. From wistful nostalgia (“Remember how when I was Your Hero?”) to downright despair (“…you rot from the inside…you’re A Long Ways From Laughing”). From bemused self-deprecation (“Ain’t Much, but I’m all you got”) to narcissistic cynicism (“the next time I fall in love I’m gonna Do It Alone”). As the album progresses the singer catches glimpses of life beyond his own perplexity and loss and captures it in his own consoling dark tenderness of Barn Dance (“Life’s a long row you best call the fiddler/ As you work the dirt in the valleys and hollows/ Where all you may leave your loving wife is a widow”). From questioning his content small town placement in Dusty Hollow (“Ain’t there something worth leaving for?”) to his own lament (“Like roots that seek deep dirt it’s Sinkin’ In”) we arrive at the albums lively closer of romantic rejuvenation (Said I’m looking for Someone To Fight…the world with”).

Dave Alvin: Eleven Eleven

November 10, 2011 mia

Dave Alvin
Eleven Eleven

June 21, 2011
Yep Roc Records

“A lot happens on Eleven Eleven — all of it good.” – Mojo

“Dave Alvin’s latest album may be his best yet, its tales of the flipside of the American Dream set to gritty blues riffs that speak of long months on the road. “ – The Independent UK

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Eleven Eleven, described as the “King of California’s” most driving, electric blues and rock oriented album since 2004’s critically acclaimed Ashgrove, includes 11-tracks, for the first time in his career, written and recorded on the road and during breaks while on tour. The album features a host musicians Alvin had not recorded with since his days in The Blasters, and for the first time ever, sings on record with his brother Phil, the lead singer of The Blasters.

While the backing cast varies with different musicians at sessions separated by weeks of time, the one constant is Alvin’s assured guitar-playing. Whether it’s finger-picking on an acoustic against an accordion on “No Worries Mija” or blazing riffs on electric over a Bo Diddley beat on “Run Conejo Run,” Eleven Eleven casts a consistent gritty, bluesy feel from start to finish. The result is an album with songs rich in vivid stories, taking listeners on a bounty hunt in “Murrietta’s Head,” a tawdry scene of seduction in “Dirty Nightgown” and a true crime recollection in “Johnny Ace is Dead.” Dave’s guitar work punctuates each tale, reinforcing moments of urgency, remorse and reflection.

Wooden Shjips: West

November 10, 2011 mia

Wooden Shjips
West

September 13, 2011
Thrill Jockey

“They’re one of only a tiny handful of bands currently using retrospective influences from the past to create something relevant and unique for the present and beyond.” – Drowned in Sound

“Wooden Shjips shoot straight into that barely circulating heart of rhythm and blues and reopen a vein of noise that it is difficult not to pump along with.” – PopMatters

Wooden Shjips, as it is today, started in 2006. The band self released a 10″ and 7″ that year and started playing shows shortly thereafter. Prior to 2006, Wooden Shjips was an experiment in primitive and minimalist rock. After it imploded, Ripley Johnson, guitar and vocals, assembled the current lineup of Dusty Jermier on bass, Nash Whalen on organ, and Omar Ahsanuddin on drums. West marks the first time the band recorded in a proper studio, as well as the first time with an engineer (Phil Manley). All previous recordings, either self-released, for Holy Mountain, or Mexican Summer were done more piecemeal in the band’s rehearsal studio. West was recorded and mixed in six days at Lucky Cat Studios in San Francisco. It was mastered by Sonic Boom at Blanker Unisinn, Brooklyn, with additional mastering by Heba Kadry at the Lodge in New York.

The over riding theme for the album (as indicated by the title) is the American West, and all of the mythology, romanticism, and idealism that it embodies. The band members grew up on the East Coast, so for a long time the history and literature of the West was an abstraction and a fascination for them. Part of the allure of the West, which is part of the myth, is the concept of Manifest Destiny, the vastness, and the possibilities for reinvention, which is not to say that is what each song is specifically about, but it was very much an undercurrent during the songwriting of the album. The artwork also touches on the same theme by using an iconic structure that is both a gateway in a literal and metaphorical sense.

Tom Russell: Mesabi

November 10, 2011 mia

Tom Russell
Mesabi

September 6, 2011
Proper Records

“With Telecasters and drums driving, and Valenzuela’s mariachi trumpet singing above it, it’s a cracking way to close an album that defines what Americana is.” – All Music Guide

“An epic study of sand and celluloid.” – Uncut

A thread runs through its songs, a zigzagging but determinedly solid line that connects the perilous bordertown of Juarez, Mexico to the real and faux glitz of L.A. and the bleak iron range of Minnesota, the Mesabi of the album’s title. The broad landscapes created by Tom Russell for Mesabi are inhabited by characters we all know, Bob Dylan, James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor, and some we may not: the now-obscure, once well-known singer Cliff ‘Ukulele Ike’ Edwards, the tragic Disney child star Jimmy Driscoll and the character actor Sterling Hayden. It’s a logical progression from Russell’s last album, 2009′s Blood and Candle Smoke, yet it’s like no other album Russell has made in his nearly four decades as a recording artist.
Co-produced by Russell and keyboardist Barry Walsh, and recorded in several different studios in Tucson, Texas, Nashville and Los Angeles, Mesabi is the 26th album from an artist whose songs have been recorded by such icons as Johnny Cash, Dave Van Ronk, Jerry Jeff Walker, Doug Sahm and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, among others. No less than Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the legendary poet, has said that he shares ‘a great affinity with Tom Russell’s songs, for he is writing out of the wounded heart of America.’

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the best in indie music

Tags

Labels

Brendon Shields Truth and Recession

Scotty Alan Wreck and the Mess

Dave Alvin Eleven Eleven

Wooden Shjips West

Tom Russell Mesabi

Featured Albums

The Waterboys Appointment With Mr Yeats

Felice Brothers Celebration Florida

Dawes Nothing Is Wrong

Shabbaz Palaces Black Up

Blitzen Trapper American Goldwing

Drive-by Truckers Ugly Buildings, Whores, and Politicians - Greatest Hits 1998-2009

John Hiatt Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns

Fleet Foxes Helplessness Blues

Steve Earle I’ll Never Get Out of this World Alive

Buddy Miller Majestic Silver Strings

Winter's Bone Soundtrack

Low C’Mon

J Mascis Several Shades of Why

The Head and the Heart The Head and the Heart

Moondogies Tidelands

Brendon Shields
Truth and Recession

Scotty Alan
Wreck and the Mess

Dave Alvin
Eleven Eleven

Wooden Shjips
West

Tom Russell
Mesabi