It struck me this afternoon that I’d not written about a local artist yet. Sure, my first post was about the middle east but they’re a band that hardly need a nudge towards success. They are all over it despite a complete disregard for self promotion. They may well have seen success much earlier than they did and probably wouldn’t have had to break up to blow up if they’d given even the slightest thought to marketing their music. Anyway, this isn’t about the middle east even though they’ve just done a live set full of new tracks for KCRW while at SXSW (segway be my name).
This is about Luke Webb. Luke is from the [Blue] Mountains and is like the Middle East in that he rules but didn’t strike while the iron is hot. His album has been out for about 6 months now though it took him a solid three years to get it written and recorded.
“If he’s so great, how come I’ve never heard of him?”
Good question. You haven’t heard of him because you’ve been sitting way too tight waiting for the next Shins album to come out. Far out, you love those guys a lot. I guess he’s had some small level of exposure. He’s played blackstump festival years ago and he recently won the Telstra National Songwriter’s competition. I bet you feel like an idiot now, getting all up in my face with your questions. Luke writes songs that can safely be called folk. Or country, maybe. I’m not sure. More clearcut country folk than alternative country/folk though. He writes pretty, simple, easy to listen to songs and he’s a stand up guy so if you want to get his new record it’s available from his myspace
Listen to Luke Webb’s Keep This Fire:
http://sites.google.com/site/sounddoct/player.swf
New Slang was a song by The Shins that was made famous in the film Garden State in this scene. Anyway, that’s the original version as sung by The Shins. There exists on youtube a cover of this song that may well be better than the original. Spliced in with it is a little bit of Coldplay’s Don’t Panic so make sure you watch until the end. They get some amazing sound, especially for a one take recording. Here it is:
I liked the first Tunng album. I mean, I bought the Tunng album and I listened to it a little bit. I guess I liked it the way I like lawn bowls; you’ll play it for a birthday party or at a bible study social and it’s heaps more fun barefoot on grass but once every few months is enough. You’ll tell your friends how much you enjoyed it but inside you know it was kind of boring. Maybe I’m being too hard on them. It was a pretty good album. Itunes tells me I gave it about 6 plays through. The single bullets though, well, that got a solid 19 listens.
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The Tallest Man on Earth can do no wrong. When once I would have said it was impossible for an acoustic song at sunset to come off as anything but horribly contrived I now know better. Swedish Kristian Matsson sings simple, acoustic (and ocassionally banjo) centric folk songs laced with lyrical genius. I guess he’s a little bit like Dylan but a more accessible Dylan.
The Wild Hunt is the title of Tallest Man’s second album and it’s due out on April 13. If I had actually heard it then I could give you a better assessment but I haven’t so this will be all guesswork. It’s the single best album to have come out ever, including all albums, since always and I say this without the use of hyperbole. And even if that’s not a true judgement, it’s still a blazing good record. Like Shallow Grave there’s not a song on their that isn’t a quality 3 minutes unto itself. As they say it’s ‘all killer, no filler’
Funnily enough I’m not going to stream a song from the album itself but a B-side that was released on the King of Spain single (the first single from the Wild Hunt). It’s called Where I Thought I Met The Angels. It’s would be the gentlest song by the TMOE were it not for the Daytrotter Session he recorded (which is also excellent).
The Tallest Man On Earth – Where I Thought I Met The Angels:
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If the Middle East aren’t already on your radar then heaven knows where you’ve been the past five years. They’ve got an ever tightening strangehold on the Australian folk scene and with an impending full-length release in 2010 it’s probably a case of the up and up. Anyway, this isn’t just a ‘heads up’ for an artists that’s been ‘making waves’ for ‘ages’. I write this to bring to light a new song they’ve released as part of a special edition release of ‘The Recordings of the Middle East’ on itunes. If it sounds familiar it’s probably because they’ve been playing it live for the past year or so. I had thought it would surface on the forthcoming released yet here I stand, dead wrong but pleased.
The song can be downloaded here
