DOWNLOAD: Agnes Obel – Brother Sparrow
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(Photo: Sofie Amalie Klougart)
“Brother Sparrow,” an ethereal folk song by Agnes Obel, is mostly just the whispering voice of the Danish singer with spare accompaniment by guitar and piano (and, briefly, hushed drums that sound more like footsteps at the songs’ end). Obel, who is quite a sensation in Europe, has a unique gift for melody and tone. Her voice is, at once, powerful and restrained, the perfect way to deliver the stark imagery of lyrics, deeply sad without explicitly mentioning sadness: “Voices in the street,” she sings, “Footsteps the concrete, guess I hear just every sound,” each word expressing some kind of incomprehensible loneliness.
DOWNLOAD: Man Man – Life Fantastic
(Photo: Mike Persico)
Don’t let the name fool you, Man Man's “Life Fantastic” is about as optimistic as a sinking ship (so much so, singer Ryan Kattner eventually rhymes the phrase with “life: so tragic”). The song’s barrelhouse piano is irresistible, a bluesy compliment to Kattner’s whiskey and cigarette stained yelp of a voice. After a huge swelling of noise—which includes a chaotic string section and relentless drum rolls—the song cuts off, just soon enough to make you want to go back to the beginning and listen to it all over again.
DOWNLOAD: The Wilderness of Manitoba – Orono Park
The Wilderness of Manitoba—a band, in fact, from Toronto—makes gentle, quiet folk music without sounding precious. On “Orono Park,” there are restrained banjo fills, bright harmonies, and a structure that works pretty faithfully within traditional themes. The song never quite rises above a whisper. It’s easy for a band that’s mining such familiar territory to sound like a parody, but this five-piece sound too pretty to be anything but a pleasure to listen to.
DOWNLOAD: Lia Ices – Love Is Won (Pink Mountaintops Remix)
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Pink Mountaintops’ treatment of “Love Is Won,” the lead track off of Lia Ices’ 2011 album Grown Unknown, is a unique combination of electronic epic and old timey folk ballad. There are strange lyrics like “when we have animals we’ll start a tribe” and “love is won when we’re bound and still feel free” that seem culled from the tradition of The Old Weird America, but also buzzy synthesizers that would sound at home on David Bowie’s Low. Ices’ voice is warm and breezy, sounding at times eerily like her singer/songwriter forebear Judee Sill. What starts as just voice and piano slowly builds to a crescendo with layers of electronic noise, a subtle electric guitar playing country licks, and heartbeat-like drumming. It maintains the restrained, dramatic performances of Grown Unknown while still adding a bit of bombast.
EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Tim Williams - Tape Your Head (4-Track Version)
While Tim Williams’ music centers itself around a bare, central acoustic progression--the actual song, if you will--the tunes find their heft amongst the mechanical programming and overweight keys that are buttressed all around. His single “Tape Your Head” cracks and bends and smacks its way through industrial punches and echoes, swimming around Williams’ simple hollow-bodied six-string like a dramatic childish patty-cake ritual. His album When Work Is Done (Dovecote), came out last year, but he recorded a special, Guided-By-Voices-inspired lo-fi version of the song just for us, available exclusively to you here at RCRD LBL. Grab the track below and see what this dude can whip up with some small organs and a dulled acoustic, coaxing his song out of its basket like a snake charmer on the streets of New Delhi.
Sounds like: Ryan Adams, Denison Whitmer, Merz
Exclusive Download: Tim Williams - Tape Your Head (4-Track Version)
Stream: Tim Williams - Tape Your Head (Original)
