Also, if you’re lucky enough to be in Alberta this weekend, you have three chances to see Paul play live; one in Edmonton tonight (Friday 22nd Feb) courtesy of Cabin Songs, with Matthew A. Wilkinson, Jom Comyn and The Royal Iguana Fur (who cover Louie Louie here), then twice in Calgary on Saturday and Sunday (23rd and 24th of Feb). Check   Facebook for more info.

P.S. The slightly bizarre cover art was taken by Warren Humeny, check out a blog of his photography here.

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Nick Everett & Everybody is a three-animal totem pole of folk-turned-fuck it, a ceaselessly adroit rock tapestry read aloud in what must be the land of giants.

Everett has always been one to experiment and I have seen his music referred to as “noise folk” more than once. And so Elsethings is not a folk record quite as you know it. The band are not afraid to distort things a little, to take what could be an entirely respectable (but conventional) folk song and turn it on its head, to make it sound raw and brash and exciting. The first ten seconds of the album set the tone of things to come in this respect. Any expectations of a delicate and pretty folk record are smashed away with a chorus of yelps and the clatter of a drum kit (as an aside, Travis’ brilliant Cabin Songs bio makes a comparison between Adam White’s drumming and Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park – do yourself a favour and read it).

The album continues in this idiosyncratic vein, expanding on its nucleus of orthodox folk music and travelling down some previously untrodden paths. Everett’s vocals are probably the most delicate thing on offer and provide the perfect counterbalance to the record’s noisier elements. Hold On is perhaps the most accessible track on the album, with its almost pop-influenced chorus of “Sometimes its easier to wake up in the morning, drink my coffee and head right back to bed”. Although even this is accompained by the smash of percussion second time around.

You can download the album for however much you like on the band’s Bandcamp page, where you can also buy it on tape for a measly $8 CAD (about £5.15 in the UK). There is a neat little video of the making of the tape cases here. I would also strongly recommend his previous releases; old adventure/love songs (which is a far more conventional acoustic EP – one which Everett himself refers to as “Nick crying in his bedroom”) and rocky top.

N.B. There’s a really good interview with Nick Everett and Tyler Butler from a radio show called Northern Air on CJSR, a campus-based radio station that broadcasts out of Edmonton, Alberta. Listen to the show’s audio here for the interview. I’d also recommend checking out Northern Air on a regular basis, as it plays some really good acts that receive very little attention (at least here in the UK). If anyone knows Kristi then give her a trans-Atlantic pat on the back from us.

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The songs were recorded live on tape on a single afternoon (with Scott Munro, from Chad vanGaalen’s band), and it suits the style perfectly. There’s something about a folk song that deserves to be captured in one go, some personality unique to each telling that can be lessened or eradicated with over-production. There’s an interview with Damien Jurado (from the fantastic Room 125 Productions) where he says that he feels that songs always exist and musicians just wait for them to appear; a near spontaneous discovery of a particular song occurs before he writes it down and records it. There is no critical dissection or agonizing over details, just a set of sounds and words that are allowed to live and breathe in their original form. I don’t mean this to sound as if songwriters stumble upon songs, or as if I’m taking anything from the writing, but there is something within songs (something that may well go deeper than the words) than develops and blooms during the performance. Sure, it may work for some people to write a song then continually change parts of it, maybe recording the deconstructed components separately before building it all up again, but I don’t think it suits the true folk music that Mike Tod is creating. He (at least to my ears) discovers songs as their complete entity and shares them as that, with no tricks. This is basically a long-winded way of saying that there is something admirably true and alive about the songs on this record – as if they were innate objects within Tod and people he met and Californian wilderness itself which he harnessed for us to hear too.

Garden song (inch by inch) by Mike Tod

I guess I should describe the music a bit more to give you idea of what it is like. Anyone who is familiar with his previous releases (such as the excellent ’The Northern Country’ album) will find The California Recordings a lot more restrained and melancholic. The catchy foot-stomping whistle-inducing pace has been replaced with contemplative strumming and a noticeable reduction in tempo. There is great variety in the songs and characters on offer; from the old time tale of ‘The Ballad of the Miner’ and the nostalgia of ‘The Lass and The Lad’, to the hopeful ‘Garden Song’ and the sentimental mixture of love and regret of ‘You’ll Have To Excuse Me’. Across the album you get the feeling that the songs have been collected rather than written, tales foraged from the woods and their inhabitants and recorded with a keen ear and expert hand and large heart. The collection of songs feels organic and real.

You’ll Have To Excuse Me from Dylan Rhys Howard.

The album is available to pre-order now on Bandcamp and will be released by Cabin Songs on 26th January with a show at the Lantern Community Church with Tyler Butler, The Bitterweed Draw and Robbie Banks. More details can be found on the Facebook event page. Mike is touring Western Canada in Jan/Feb (dates here) and I have heard whispers that he plans to tour further afield in the coming year so keep an eye out for him near you.

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Chris Tenz – Glimpses by OLD UGLY

Butterbones – Golden Rivers II by OLD UGLY

Download it for free on Bandcamp and enjoy while wrapping presents or cooking your turkey.

Tomorrow’s post won’t be from Canada, promise.

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At serious risk of repeating ourselves (as most of our pieces of songwriters end up analysing this angle), the secret to a good folk song is in the writing. Here Butler excels. The lyrics are expertly crafted and you get the impression that these are snapshots of much wider stories that we are lucky enough to glimpse, fleeting impressions of continuing feelings and emotions. There is a feeling that the songs are set in a time passed, a simpler period where love is more innocent and romance is just that, which, along with a yearning for a simpler way of life (not exactly Walden but a desire for a modest life that probably speaks to many an office worker on a monday morning) is ideal against the stark guitar and mournal vocals.This removal from the tedious complications of modern living is a clever one, allowing a real sense of intimacy and tragedy that may (rightly or wrongly) appear trite in a modern setting. The track ‘Ben’, which can be heard below, sums up the style perfectly, reading:

“All I want is a piece of land by the water 
when the cold wind comes and dries my nose and mouth. 
I would raise an early home and face to the east 
and bring only my hands and wife and mind.”

Feeling needs to be conveyed through both sound and lyrics, and both of these need to align and sound natural together. Where some artists and bands fall down is their failure to address differences between sound and subject matter. Tyler Butler sounds like a man in situ, a natural writer and musician that needs no banjo or corduoy trousers to signify his root-sy leanings, he relies on affecting strumming and beautifully developed narratives and imagery. This is proper music.

Violence is set for release on Cabin Songs, a folk offshoot of Old Ugly Recording Co., on Oct 22nd. Pre-order a CD or digital copy from Bandcamp or, if you are lucky enough to be in/near Edmonton next Saturday (20th Oct) then why not get yourself down to the Cabin Songs launch/Violence release party at The Rutherford House?

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EDIT – Also check out the video for Morana here.

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