Leap days are in-between spaces, and it’s fitting timing for the release of a new album from Canadian folk artist Jon Bryant. Both lyrically and sonically, Twenty Something explores that liminal space between what is known and comfortable and what is in the hazy beyond.
Continue reading ““Light”: Haunting, hazy folk from Jon Bryant”
He’s shared bills with Josh Ritter, Justin Townes Earle, Rhett Miller, and Joe Pug. His songs are heartsore yet sure-footed, grounded in classic folk but modern in their buoyant rhythms and electric streaks. His name is Anthony D’Amato and his latest album, The Shipwreck From the Shore (New West), feels tailor-made for the season as we wend our way toward an idea of home.
“Good and Ready” gives off a crackling warmth as D’Amato sings sweetly on variations of doom, describing all the ways in which perishing would be preferable to waking up if it ain’t next to you. The album is fleshed out by the contributions of Bon Iver’s Matt McCaughan on drums, Megafaun’s Brad Cook on bass, and Sam Kassirer, of Josh Ritter’s band, on keyboard. (Kassirer also produced the album.)
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There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
This is my day with Vandaveer, a music-making, life-observing, heartstring-bending group that I’ve followed since my first days in D.C. I join them for a jaunt up to New York City — my old hometown, the city of concrete and steel, where dreams are swallowed whole and dreams are set free, where restlessness is the only constant.
Take notes, take photos, repeat to yourself: assemble, testify, preserve. But it’s not possible to be a detached observer. A single show is not a standalone thing but part of an organic whole. It necessarily embraces you. You feel like you’re moving through someone else’s strange, beautiful, ambiguous dream. The present is the past devouring the future.
District Consonance 