Category: Americana

South Rail: Music for wandering souls

“After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own.”

Oscar Wilde’s reflections on music came to mind as I was practicing a Chopin prelude earlier today. What he describes is part of what I love about music — its power to communicate emotions that burst through the confines of mere words, to transmute sorrow into something beautiful to be shared.

South Rail’s music has that power. When I put their self-titled debut EP on, I’m swept away by Lara Supan’s rich, dusky voice, which is captivating both alone and in harmony with Jay Byrd, who plays guitar. South Rail’s sound is part folk, part alt-country — think Neil Young meets Wilco meets Eva Cassidy. I saw South Rail over the weekend at Gypsy Sally’s in Georgetown, and I’m excited both for the future of the band and the new live music venue.

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South Rail typically performs as a trio with Ben Potok on drums, but they were joined by bassist Wes Christenson for the evening. Watching the quartet banter during sound check, it’s clear that these guys love music and love performing together (they met when responding to a Craigslist ad for a band that they didn’t join).

Up-tempo songs like “Everybody Knows It” made me wonder why nobody was dancing (my excuse — knee surgery). But the song that really caught my ear is “Wandering Soul,” which Lara introduced as a song about being on the road and reflecting on the life that you’re missing back at home. The song opens with keyboard and unfolds slowly and deliberately, with Lara’s soulful voice interspersed with plaintive guitar solos. Combined with gentle percussion, “Wandering Soul” evokes the image of a weary traveler, the color of his clothes made indistinguishable by dust, placing one boot in front of the other, following the railroad tracks back home.

This is a song about long winding roads and finding home in a face and an embrace. “I spend my days dreaming of what’s yet to come” — but even in times when we don’t know where to go, a good song can remind us that others share this seemingly lonely road.

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South Rail is about to start recording some new music, and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next for this band. In the meantime, if you live in the DC area, sign up for their mailing list so you can catch one of their local shows.

Vandaveer: Spite

Vandaveer Photo by Sarah Law

Day four of the shutdown. As a reminder that not everything in Washington is dysfunctional, I’m placing this amazing song from D.C.-based Vandaveer on my current playlist. If you like folk/Americana, you need to give them a listen.

Lately, music reviewers have been criticizing bands for unimaginatively riding the Mumford & Sons wave, but that is certainly not the case with this alt-folk duo. There’s an honest rawness in Vandaveer’s sound and storytelling that sets them apart. Take “Spite,” for instance. The song features a primal dance between percussion and guitar, punctuated by strings. I love how the straining, tormented undercurrent in Mark Charles Heidinger’s deep vocals is complemented by the sweet, delicate voice of bandmate Rose Guerin.

In addition to constructing hauntingly beautiful harmonies, Vandaveer pays attention to words and knows the power of allegory. “Spite” is poetry — an unvarnished representation of the (il)logic of a man who “cut out his sleep to spite his dreams, picked all the flowers to spite the bees.”

Hm, does this description fit certain ideologues who closed national parks and Head Start education programs for low-income children (the list of impacts is a long one), all because they couldn’t get their way on a piece of legislation that, as imperfect as it is, makes health care more affordable for more people — a law that was championed by a President this country later reelected, and which was upheld by the Supreme Court? Please, someone send a copy of Schoolhouse Rock’s “How a Bill Becomes Law” to these legislators.

But, I digress. To return to the music — “Spite” is a smart, well-crafted song, and a reminder of what happens when we cede our better selves to the base instincts of vengefulness and vindictiveness: Life becomes a “wretched affair,” in which we “hold our breath to spite the air.” Check out the cool video. As the band says, they “went a little Kafka on this one.”