It’s time for a round-up of some of the things we’ve been enjoying over the last month or so (that could, at a stretch, be described as folk music).
Paddy Neill – Widow’s Town
The debut EP from New Zealand’s Paddy Neill, Widow’s Town is a four-song blend of heartfelt folk and toe-tapping country, more suited to the Great Plains than the middle of the Pacific. You can download the EP via Neill’s Bandcamp page.
She Keeps Bees – Eight Houses
Jessica Larrabee and Andy LaPlant are back with a new She Keeps Bees album, Eight Houses. It may push the folky limits of Feet on the Ground, but the ten tracks of slow, sad music warrant inclusion. Our friend over at Slowcoustic described it as ‘gritty and fragile’ which, although rather paradoxical, is maybe the perfect way to capture the mood of this album. A glass hammer, a steel spider web, Eight Houses is no one thing, and to limit itself to fragile, or gritty or happy or sad, would be limit its ability to depict believable stories and emotions. The narrator is vulnerable, but knows everyone else is too. Eight Houses is out on Future Gods (US) and BB Island (EU) on the 16th September.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/148404728″]
Noah Young – Colorado
Noah Young is a folk artist from Boston. There isn’t all that much information about him on his Bandcamp, so I’ll spare you the details. What I do know is that he has recently released an EP called Colorado and I really like it. Fans of Bright Eyes or Blind Pilot will love this. Listen to the title track in the player. He also has three other releases from the past few years which are well worth checking out.
Kris Ellestad – ‘Surrender’
Next we have a brand new track from Calgary’s Kris Ellestad. ‘Surrender’ is really lovely, a sort of dreamy, ethereal folk song, backed up with Ellestad’s trademark croon. You can download the track for however much you like on the Kris Ellestad Bandcamp page. Also, in case you missed it, Ellestad released a wonderful album of covers earlier this year. Get it for nothing here.
Field Medic – P E G A S U S T H O T Z
Last but not least we have Field Medic, aka Kevin Patrick from San Francisco. He released his latest EP P E G A S U S T H O T Z back in June and it’s really good. My current favourite track is the imaginatively titled ‘i swallowed five silver dollars and was a prince painting flowers for an evening’, which sounds a little bit like Frontier Ruckus and has some pretty despondent lyrics which detail (another) break-up. Listen below and then head over to Bandcamp to buy the EP as a digital download or on cassette.