Wednesday, September 7th, 2005

Cool Water

So while everyone will surely be all excited to see Sufjan Stevens at Trinty-St Paul’s this coming Saturday evening, the wise will be those who show up early enough to catch tour opener Laura Veirs and her band The Tortured Souls. The Seattle-based singer-songwriter just released her fifth album Year Of Meteors, her first second for Nonesuch. It builds on the stark, literate country/folk structures of her earlier work, but fills it out with subtle electronic flourishes and electrified band arrangements. The songs still maintain a wintery beauty though, mainly thanks to Veirs’ pure, guarded voice. Pop hooks are present, though subtle. These are not songs that reveal themselves immediately – you have to gain their trust first and coax them out, but it’s worth the effort.

Seattle Weekly conducted a quick Q&A with Laura about her inspiration on the new record while Spin made her the artist/band of the day last month. Stereogum has declared his love of Year Of Meteors and Metacritic agrees. You can stream the album in its entirety here or check out the video for first single “Galaxies”.

Video: Laura Veirs – “Galaxies” (.mov)

Cloak & Dagger has a special Feist feature right now where they get Ms Feist to offer up some insight into how she wrote the original songs on Let It Die. Click on “Features” off the homepage to find it – and note the other fine songwriters in their archives, including Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam. The Metro Times also has a short Feist profile, Metromix has an interview. Don’t forget Feist is playing the Danforth Music Hall on October 17 and 18. Not sold out yet, but it will be.

It looks like Magnet is using Carl Newman’s yearbook photo for their upcoming New Pornographers cover…

And speaking of Ms Feist AND Mr Newman, thanks to Soaring With Eagles for the tip that this month’s Air Canada in-flight magazine En Route is running a music feature, and has pieces with Carl Newman interviewing Ron Sexsmith (link) and Jann Arden interviewing Feist (link). I am not going to read these interviews yet because I am flying Air Canada to Europe next week and don’t want to use up those precious 10 minutes worth of reading material.

Billboard says that Nellie McKay’s Pretty Little Head has had its October 18 release date bumped all the way until January.

This guy needs to get beat up. By an indie-yuppie. Via Largehearted Boy.

np – Wilco / Being There

By : Frank Yang at 9:10 am
Category: Uncategorized
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  1. 9/7/05 10:15 am

     suckingalemon says:

    that guy is wearing a touque.

    its the first week in september.

    cheers

  2. 9/7/05 1:28 pm

     Adam D. Miller says:

    I hate to have to correct you, Frank, but Year Of Meteors is actually Laura’s second album for Nonesuch, the first being last year’s wonderful Carbon Glacier. Haven’t heard the new one yet, but Carbon Glacier is highly recommended to all. Also, Billboard reported that Nellie McKay’s new one won’t be out until January 2006. So we have a while to wait.

  3. 9/7/05 1:47 pm

     Frank says:

    thanks for the correction – I saw the Bella Union catalog number on her website but didn’t notice the Nonesuch note. And the Nellie thing was a typo on my part.

  4. 9/7/05 11:05 pm

     say no to seats near lavatory says:

    THE FLIGHT TO EUROPE IS SO LONG.

  5. 9/7/05 11:43 pm

     Duarte says:

    the en route articles were probably written by Alan Cross. Make sure you listen to his radio show during the flight. He does a very good job.

    Flight to Europe long? I have a 7 hr flight to ENgland then a 19 hour flight to Perth, Australia. ON the way back its 22 hours from PErth to england and 8 houts home to Toronto. THAT’S a L O N G flight.

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