Hush Arbors, Two of Us Riding Nowhere

Today begins coverage of a label known as New Atlantis. They have a very healthy sense of adventure and I'll be taking a look at some of their recent releases.

Up now is singer-songwriter Hush Arbors (aka Keith Wood) and his cassette release Two of Us Riding Nowhere (New Atlantis cas 005). It's Keith running through some of his alt quasi-folkish songs, picking and strumming an acoustic guitar, singing in a personally distinctive high-range falsetto. He is joined quite ably and effectively by acoustic bassist Jason Ajemian, who adds much to the blend with his appealingly fat, woody tone and primal note choice.

It's music that hangs together nicely, where lyrics are unusual and worth listening to, where the acoustic folkie songwriter tradition gets a worthy and worthwhile update.

Dan Melchior und das Menace, "Catbirds and Cardinals," Eccentric Underground Anti-Pop-Rock?

OK, what have we here? It's something rather odd, I must say. Dan Melchior und das Menace have put together on Catbirds and Cardinals (Northern-Spy 011) a rather bizarre album of off-kilter would-be pop-rock. They have hooks, most of the time. They have a retro sort of faux psychedelics-for-the-radio sound. The lyrics are off the wall as much as anything. "Drama Queens on Prozac," for example, as you can gather from the title.

It's very well done but also very low-fi. It sounds like it's playing through an old transistor radio, partially because it was either tracked, mixed or mastered at such a hot level that distortion is a factor.

Other than that, it is very cool stuff.

Lunatic Soul II: Music from Some Unknown Ethnic Group in Space?

Lunatic Soul is a creative enclave with Riverside principal/lead singer Mariusz Duda as the primary driving force. Like Peter Gabriel and Dead Can Dance, Lunatic Soul creates a spacey pulsating ambiance that is like some modern-day ethnic music from a peoples yet unidentified. Or as Mariusz puts it, "trance-like... oriental-alternative" music.

All this can be heard and felt on the new release Lunatic Soul II (K-Scope 161). This is reflective, intelligent post-prog in the manner of the best of such music. Duda's voice is expressive and dead center in a musical way. The instrumental arrangements are modern and vibrant in the best sense. It sounds like the music of the future. Walls-of-sound of distinctive rock reverberance, hand drums and eastern tonalities, poetic lyricism, this is music to live inside, a world unto itself.

Besides that it's a hell of a good listen.

Joanna Newsom's EP with the Ys Street Band

Joanna Newsom made an EP with her Ys Street Band in 2007, the end of the middle of her recording sequence. Her vocal chords had developed a medical condition and her voice was changing, though it sounds great. The CD or download is simply titled Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band EP (Drag City 336).

This is a three-song compilation but it's all good. Her and the band get into a kind of alt folk thing, and it's lovely. Her harp playing is well-healed and stunning, her vocal style and musical outlook are like nobody else out there. Her songs are things of wonder. Now I'm not just saying that. I am not kidding here. The highlight is a 13-minute version of her "Cosmia," which includes some great instrumental parts and a kind of alt-folk jam. Whoever is playing the musical saw (sounds like) adds just the right element. This song in this version is worth the price of the EP.

Wonderful music! A download is around $3. Spring for it.

Kurt Vile Square Shells EP

Kurt Vile does what he does in ways that I find convincing. His EP Square Shells (Matador 936, vinyl or download) seems like a good example. It's a kind of miscellaneous DIY collection of songs, jams and what-have-you he created in the course of making his last album or so. I accidentally came across a review I tried not to read while grabbing the cover art today. It said something about folksy songs and shoe-gaze jams. The jams have a soundscape-y quality but the shoe thing I never do get, since I usually wear sneakers. But for all that there is something about Kurt's music that tickles me. Like lyrics that admit "I wanted everything but I think that I only got most of it." His lyrics are comments on lyrics, his songs (in this case, often folksy sorts of songs) are comments on the kind of songs that people might do these days. And yet it comes across as Kurt Vile in all his Vile-ness.

The EP gives you some more of what makes him interesting. There are no pretensions, no high-density superchops, just a laid back, laconic yet completely in-the-zone artist.

Square Shells may not be the first collection of his music to get. Yet it is another convincing presentation of his wayward prescience.

Gary Lucas: Solo Acoustic Guitar

Anyone who hasn't experienced the solo acoustic guitar work of Gary Lucas, or who would like to immerse the ears in the many facets of that work, would do well to head over to Gary's site and its solo acoustic page (http://garylucas.com/www/soloac/). There you'll find You Tube links to many hours of solo video footage.

Gary has incredible fingerpicking prowess but can use the slide, or combo strum and pick his way through all kinds of material. He's absorbed a wide spectrum of roots music, especially the old country blues styles, and made them his own. There's a version of the Stone's classic "Last Time," Skip James' "I'm So Glad," "Bali Hai," 1930s Chinese pop, and originals drenched in the heritage of the acoustic and its modes and techniques. But he surely extends those techniques and such, transforming them into major stylistic statements about the Lucas way to play.

He gets a sound that is almost uncanny--listen and you'll understand what I mean. He plays a 1940s Gibson and coaxes from it all kinds of tones, and his playing on a very old, all-metal National Steel Resonator almost sounds banjo-like.

Gary Lucas is the consummate artist, surely one of the major acousticians out there today. That is to put his electric work aside for the moment, but we'll return to him and some recent releases in the coming weeks. In the meantime, spend a little time at his site and I think you will be amazed and pleased.