The May Roundup mix below contains a track from every artist we featured during the month (apart from Sharon van Etten and Noah Gundersen, sorry!), so plug your headphones in and enjoy some new music. Click the artists’ names in the tracklisting below to be taken to the post in question.

Tracklisting:

1. No More Sad Songs – Elvis Depressedly
2. Catchyalater – Frog
3. The Day Draws Near – The Washboard Abs
4. Every House is On Fire – Island Eyes
5. Forever – Boosegumps
6. Open Casket Hidden Meaning – Molly Drag
7. The Arp – Aidan Knight
8. Atheist Money – Adam Stafford
9. Lynx – The Tarantula Waltz
10. Milo – Young Jesus
11. Slow Dark Water – Furnsss
12. Aubrey – Debris Slide
13. Foreign Hands – Aisha Badru
14. I Need Never Get Old – Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats
15. Outside the Pale – Samantha Crain
16. Home – The Modern Folk
17. Staggers and Rise – Small Houses
18. Yannina – Jake Houlsby
19. To the Black Horizon – Mark Timmins
20. Heart – Bobby’s Oar
21. Bling – Bells Atlas
22. And You Meant the Sea – Ruth & Trudy
23. Party – Lake Michigan
24. Growing Leaves – Gay Angel
25. On and On – Zee Town and the Dog Boys
26. Travel Map – Hip Hatchet
27. Zoa – Batte Ave.
28. The Bird – Kathryn Joseph
29. …Until They’re Called – Old Earth

May 2015 Roundup from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

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“Something has come over me in the past year. I can’t stop writing, I won’t stop writing.  It’s what I look forward to most in the day. Playing the guitar for hours, singing a little, driving 5 hours, then showing up in your town to show you what I’ve been working on. “

…but but but, unfortunately Quentin is all too aware of how much of a killjoy Real Life can be, with all of its inconvenient details like eating and sleeping and putting gas in the car:

“As you probably can imagine, the cash flow isn’t very steady in the music biz. Some days I’m on top of the world, eating 5$ hamburgers and changing the oil on the car 100 miles before it’s due. On other days, I’m coasting into the gas station on ‘E’ with a half eaten bag of craisens I found under the seat.”

Maybe eating scavenged food while riding on fumes is all part of the adventure, but unfortunately recording albums requires money. Just this February Quentin put out his superb album Still Talk; Second City (so recently we haven’t got around to writing about it yet), so the prospect of another expensive stint in the studio seems a long way off. In other words, while the romantic nomad musician can get by on little, his music cannot, and this is a particular problem for a romantic nomadic musician who is currently unable to stop writing.

So here’s the deal. You pledge on small amount of money in return for a digital download pre-order, and Quentin gets to make a new record and eat something other than craisens. It’s what crowd-funding was invented for! There are also luxury rewards for funders with a bit more cash to burn, from spots on the guest list to private house shows (almost) anywhere in the US, Canada, western Europe and Scandanavia (!). As if to prove his desire to get back into the studio, Quentin even signs off by saying “is there something else you’d want? Let me know, I’ll do it, I don’t even care what it is as long as we can get this album done.” So, if you need a lightbulb changing (almost anywhere in the US, Canada…) or something, make a donation and let him know.

It’s a fair bet that a Small Houses album will be a great album (see our review of Exactly Where You Wanted To Be) You can make your donation on the Small Houses GoFundMe page.

P.S. As if needed to placate us for this most welcome news, Quentin has put out a new song and video to accompany his request. Check out ‘Kinda Here’ below:

(The photo is from a roll of film Jeremy took on tour. You can view the other images here).

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One of the most frustrating things about writing about music is that there just isn’t enough time to cover everything we would like to. In an ideal world I would have the energy to write full album reviews for every LP I enjoy but it just isn’t possible. In an attempt to give more artists a place on the site, and inspired by our (Will’s) Head In The Clouds series, we have decided to add another monthly (hopefully) round-up post to our blogging agenda. These posts, along with various mixes, should allow us to share a lot more of the musicians we like, which is the whole point of this site, after all.

While Will focuses on electronic, experimental and ambient music, Feet on the Ground will be mainly folk/rock music, the earthy organic flipside. With Liam and I doing these alongside Head in the Clouds, hopefully you’ll be getting a minimum of 10-20 new artists each month to sink your teeth into, regardless of how many ‘real’ reviews we manage to get written.

So, without further ado, welcome to Feet on the Ground Volume 1.

Matthew Fowler

Matthew Fowler is a name I have seen on various sites (namely Folk Radio UK and the ever reliable Slowcoustic) but, until now, haven’t given a proper listen. When I finally did, I found an incredibly well put together album that is reminiscent of Damien Rice, Gregory Alan Isakov and Ray Lamontagne. ‘Blankets’ is probably my favourite song from a strong, lyrical bunch. Beginnings is available on a pay-what-you-can basis.

Scriber

Scriber is Joshua Price who is based in Cardiff (which is sort of where I am based too). He (quite) recently released his debut EP, entitled Every Particle. It really is very good. Looking at reviews and articles online, I have come across a multitude of comparisons or influences; Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Thom Yorke and David Lynch just to name a few, and I think that all of these hit the mark to some degree. Listen to the first single, ‘Bethlehem’ below:

Raven Shields

Next up is Raven Shields, of Dear Sister, who released her first solo EP, Matches, earlier this year. She has a great voice (as fans of Dear Sister will testify), sometimes a soulful croon, others delicate and tender. The record’s last song ‘Old Pine’ is my clear favourite, a stark and bare folk song, evoking solitude and seclusion. I think this one will be a mainstay come winter.

Hog Bucket – ‘Escape’

Described by Phillipe Bronchtein of Hip Hatchet as the ‘track of the summer’, ‘Escape’ by Hog Bucket is a laid back strum-along for warm evenings spent outdoors, the sun going down in a chromatic display that promises everything. A little bit Cave Singers, a little bit Small Houses, this song deserves your attention before the cold returns.

Squanto – ‘Every Night Draws The Same Crowd’

Squanto, who we featured on last year’s list of the best free music, are back with another album, Every Night Draws The Same Crowd (also available on a pay-what-you-can basis). Ben Lovell, than man behind Squanto, said the record was ‘inspired and informed by long aimless walks through familiar neighbourhoods in the dark, trying to pretend that eventually there would be something different behind the houses,’ and I think the title track is a testament to that. Canada seems a hotbed for experimental folk music at the moment, and Squanto is one of the best.

Tyson Motsenbocker

Tyson Motsenbocker makes folky rocky pop music. His new EP, Rivers & Roads, is available to buy here. You can listen to his previous release on Bandcamp and watch some lovely videos here.

P.S. Apologies that the Bandcamp players don’t look quite right, it’s a problem between Bandcamp and Tumblr that can be fixed but only by altering certain blog settings, alterations that make writing posts really annoying. We’ll have to grin and bear it.

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Nathan K. is self-classified (probably with tongue in cheek) as anti-freak folk, but the important thing for you to know is that he is a songwriter. Here he shows that it doesn’t really matter how lo-fi the production is if the writing and execution is right. The songs come of sort of like a series of diary entries, a stream of consciousness that trickles into all sorts of different areas, wandering around the variations of folk music at will.

The album is a fine collection of songs as it is, but it is impossible to ignore the story of the recording process. The description from Bandcamp reads:

“In the middle of a tour, I had to come home early to be with my grandfather who was dying, and at his request, and I sang and played guitar, violin, and banjo for him during the last few weeks of his life. During the nights, when I couldn’t sleep (I slept at the hospital), I recorded on a 4-track recorder to pass the time in the waiting room.”

A second listen with this in mind causes the album to expand and blossom, what at first appeared throw-away words and lines with a pleasing cadence become something incredibly personal, almost ultimately so. The refrain in ‘Ghosts’ is a perfect example of this. First time around it was a nice, poetic phrase, but now it takes on a new quality; a curious mix of sadness and joy, haunting in the sense that it lingers but not completely morose or scary. Its more a nostalgic and poignant amalgamation of fondness and love and regret, something crushing yet life affirming.

And this is what you take away from the record upon understanding how it came into being – a sense of joy. Yes there is sympathy and sadness, but there something else that overides all of this. Knowledge of a life well lived, a pride and appreciation of a person who is responsible for your very being. A line in ‘For Your Own Good’ captures this better than I ever could:

“I was a kid last time I really felt that // the world was a beautiful place // and I guess it’s a beautiful place, but it’s hard to tell.”

You can buy the album on the Nathan K. Bandcamp, or download it on a pay-what-you-can basis.

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Exactly Where you Wanted To Be is an album of recurring themes, where each song is placed precisely amongst it’s fellows. This isn’t a superficial collection of singles that has been thrown together, it is a piece of art that was assembled with care. Quentin’s finger-picking style sounds natural, organic, gloriously free from gimmicks and stylistic gestures. This isn’t to say it is overly simple or lacking in talent, but rather that the sound is faithful to the lyrics, the gentle piano evocative of the nostalgic summers of which he sings, the harmonica yelling into the wind of the freedom of travel. He avoids the temptation to try and score meaningless points from lazy listeners, to resort to the instant but empty gratification that is so often achieved by the musically belletristic tricksters that seem to win over the public for a fortnight before being dropped for the ‘next big thing’. It feels like music crafted for an individual listener as opposed to the faceless masses, a personal record, honest and warm. Of course, for this to work, it has to be backed up with quality songwriting. Luckily, Quentin delivers in spades.    

The overriding theme of the album (at least for me) is that of distance, both spatial or temporal. ‘Oh Hiding Out’ speaks of dreaming of Illinois, of St Louis awaiting his voice. It speaks of driving to the city and of travels to different and exciting places. ‘Our Sweet’ talks of summers and winters and of driving away. The closing track ‘Homes and Photographs’ is packed with nostalgic imagery, a song of promises to be places that he is evidently away from, and of a lot of driving in between. There is a perfect blend of home and travelling, maybe indicating our inherent need for both. The line ’give you something you can keep like a penny laid on a railway, I bought a diamond for your ring’ sums up the whole album, the juxtaposition of the adventure of being away with a vital sentimentality and desire for belonging.

This idea of distance, of time and travel, brings to mind an interesting thought that is often on my mind; the idea of our lives as a journey to (or away from) some ideal destination, some better time. David Foster Wallace, on describing Franz Kafka’s central humour, puts this better than I ever could.

That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home…

To envision us readers coming up and pounding on this door, pounding and pounding, not just wanting admission but needing it, we don’t know what it is but we can feel it, this total desperation to enter, pounding and pushing and kicking, etc. That, finally, the door opens…and it opens outward: we’ve been inside what we wanted all along. 

Whether it is intentional on Quentin’s part or whether he meant something else entirely, the title Exactly Where You Wanted To Be seems to encapsulate this sentiment. The album tells of nostalgic pasts and hopeful futures, but what it really does is illustrate the here and now – life’s long journey – people at the mercy of their hopeful dreams and rose-tinted pasts. It captures the present, exactly where we want to be.

You can get the album from Yer Bird Records from the 26th or pre-order it here. Check out the video by Zachary Gibson for ‘Oh, Hiding Out’ below and have a listen to this great little session from Folkpedia too.

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