As I alluded to in a recent review of a film Shotgun Stories here at Into the Hill, southern art — or, to be more precise, art created by artists who call the south home — typically focuses on just that: home. Southerners are people often defined by where they live, and thus their art reflects that.
Jazz, blues, country, southern rock, bluegrass, alt-country, even gospel music, etc., all tend to focus on place and the many things that attend that particular place: Arkansas tobacco fields, Appalachian fog, bar rooms in New Orleans, even churches in Birmingham. The music of Tennessee band The Everybodyfields is a perfect example.
Hailing from the Johnson City/Knoxville areas (up in the smoky mountains of East Tennessee) the Everybodyfields are, without a doubt, one of the best alt-country-ish, folk-ish, bluegrass-ish bands performing today and their newest album Nothing is Okay is one of the best of its kind. Their’s is a soft, melancholy sound, lonesome and mournful. But in a way that lingers and resounds, never dreary, never fully morose. Like a southern folk tale or legend. Or, think autumn, when the leaves are falling from the tress and crunching beneath your feet, when the skies are becoming gray and those northeasterly breezes are riling up the birds and squirrels; think sweater weather. Read the rest of this entry »
Hailing from Atlanta, Last November is one of the new up and coming bands on Myspace and on college radio stations. Their newest and sophomore effort, an album entitled “Over the Top or Under the Weather,” has received play on over 60 commercial radio stations and over one million plays on myspace. Songs from the album, most notably the new single “The Bumper Sticker Song,” have received air time on MTV shows like “Real World” and “Road Rules” and on Oxygen’s “Bad Girls Club.” And its unlikely that this trend is about to change anytime soon. 
Few bands that are currently popular have been quite as polarizing as the British rockers Coldplay. On the one hand, they have sold millions of albums all around the world; however, on the other hand, critics have long claimed that something is missing from each of their three recent popular albums, Parachutes, A Rush of Blood to the Head, and X & Y - something truly substantial and truly transcendent. The knock is, sometimes, that their songs are too sentimental, or that lead singer Chris Martin is trying too hard vocally, or that his lyrics are far from poetic, or even good. That their hit songs are soaring and beautiful pop anthems is a truth rarely overlooked by critics, but a fact that seems to have done little in the way of convincing the harshest of critics to actually take them seriously. That the band has become the global sensation they are has not been lost on the indie hipsters who might otherwise appreciate their considerable, though rarely stretched talents. Indeed, despite their sometimes obvious shortcomings, Martin and Co. are talented musicians and it is no small thing that their canon has heretofore attracted such a wide and varying audience. 
Ambiguoso unassumingly forces its way into the room with opener Only Mystery, smirkingly encouraging the listener to take hold for one of the most fantastic musical rides in indie rock today. It glides in like a hovercraft, nestling down in your backyard to the amazement of all your neighbors (and yourself, secretly). Theses parlour steppers know exactly what they’re doing here, folks. 
The first thirty seconds count. I must be grabbed by something in the music in the first thirty seconds if the song crafter wants to hold my attention. When I popped in Ray Tarantino’s Recusant that happened, but not without a totally unexpected surprise (not all sunrises are good ones). Ray has a quality to his voice that says - hey! I am my own, I am worthy of at least one honest listen, so I gave it to him. But after the 30 second point the album’s title track took a wildly unsuspected turn. Some strange bending of time and space occurred and I suddenly found myself listening to what felt and sounded like Coldplay’s Speed for Sound. Hear me people - I never left Tarantino’s song (listen to it 
