She's gone (for Anna) - Darrin Hacquard

Rusty's waltz wednesday presents: She's gone (for Anna), by Darrin Hacquard

We're back! Let's get serious:

Today I'm going to share a song off my favorite album of 2015, Darren Hacquard's Signs and Wonders. I know that last week I hinted that I was going to mostly highlight songs from our pop culture, but in a sense this album is like...my pop culture right now, and I'd like to share it with you.

Darrin Hacquard:

I met Darrin last August at a weeklong old-time music party in west virginia. He seemed like a colourful character, so I later contributed to his crowd-funded album, not really knowing what to expect.

When I got the digital download for Signs and Wonders I was floored. I would call it an alt-country album, and it retains so much of what's great about country music - especially storytelling - and eschews a lot of that new nashville nonsense like the cheesy harmonies and instrumentation. The sound on this album ranges from sweet to psychedelic, always with a good helping of grit, and the texture of something that - wisely - was not overproduced.

In the interest of full disclosure, the artist isn't aware of my writing this, and I bought the album myself. That said, I would be thrilled if some more people listened to (and bought) Signs and Wonders, because I do think it's great, original, music.

The song:

There are actually three waltzes on this album. I've chosen the first, which starts off the album.

I like the way this one starts out - Darrin's voice, alone, followed by the rhythm section's bass and drums kicking in. The lyrical storytelling here is great: the song is a story about a rough and tumble character "born on the thirteenth of june - it was a friday night" who had "run-ins with the law - a real backseat driver". There's a slow-motion banjo solo, an electric guitar solo, and some accordeon (I think?) and synth/or organ providing backing.

Have a listen yourself. You can check out the other songs by pressing the universal symbol for "computer: play next track": >>>

That's all for this week - tune in next time, I have lots of good songs in store!

Wilco - Side with the Seeds

Rusty's waltz wednesday presents: Side with the seeds, by Wilco

Wilco:

side with the seeds comes off of one of my favorite Wilco albums. Briefly the band is from Chicago, headed by jeff tweedy. To my ear their songs are roots/Americana, but they do wonderful things with the sound space to create weird, exciting, eery, or all of the above sounds to - in their words - not have every track sound like a folk song.

A great addition to the band when they recorded sky blue sky was jazz guitarist Nels Cline. I didn't know much about Nels, but his playing on this album is mind blowing if only for the breadth of styles that he can play. I'm not one to kvell over an electric guitarist, but Cline plays a style that's at once messy, but so refined.

I saw them play in Montreal when they were touring this album; it was probably the best concert I'd ever been to.

The song:

This song might be in 6/8, but either way - like I said in my selection criteria post: if I can count some threes in there, it's a waltz goddamnit.

I haven't given the words a close listen and probably won't. All's I care about is that they don't get in the way of me enjoying the song as a whole. Typically, Tweedy's voice has this raspy-yet-vulnerable tone that immediately hooked me on to wilco some years ago.

The melody rounds out into a bridge part at the two minute mark, where Nels takes the first of his two solos, but shows restraint. We then get another verse, and then it's Nels' turn again, and he brings out the slaymaker.

This recording is live, but sounds as good or better than the studio version. I don't want to turn this into a morality play, but <preaching> there's a lot to be said for the organic process of making music that's lost when much of the performance comes from canned sounds </preaching>. ENJOY!

Retroactive second post: 19/11/2014 - Friends

rsty's waltz wednesday presents: Beach Boys' Friends.

What to say... Genius Brian Wilson probably wrote every note on this, harmonies and weird musical breaks and bridges included. It bears the signature sound of his "pet sounds" era, among which my favorite is the barritone sax.

The break that starts at about 0:50 until the beginning of the second verse some twenty seconds later is my fave part. (‪#‎waltzwednesday‬)


This was my second - or third? - waltz wednesday post from facebook. I'll wait until zuckerberg et al. get a search function for my wall, and then we will know the answer.