The Tiny
Gravity & Grace ••••½
The Tiny Music
We bipeds are frequently given to falling down flights of stairs and knocking into balusters, finding ourselves at the bottom with a muddled perspective and a throbbing head. But with their third album Gravity & Grace, The Tiny navigate the art of locomotion in a startlingly balanced manner. Cellist Leo Svensson and bassist Johann Barthling rise and descend the steps of instrumental range, while Ellekari Larsson sings in a voice that sounds tickled by a feather. The lyrics are pronounced in that sterling, silvery way that doesn’t come easily to native English speakers – Larsson, a wispy Swede, allows each word a space shot through with sonorous vocals and the precociousness of someone fingering a foreign language. Eleven songs, all a tad enchanted and fluid, fall upon the listener’s ears like autumn rain as Larsson’s voice vibrates lightly, creating ripples of sound.
Filed under: album, mp3, review | Tags: 2009, a sunny day in glasgow, dalia wolfson, music
A Sunny Day In Glasgow
Ashes Grammar •••½
Mis Ojos Discos
The folks down at the Duodecimal Society may have one thing right – baker’s dozens are surely a standard measure, musically speaking (although, in this case, Toklas brownies are probably the goods served in this album’s domain). Ashes Grammar, the second full-length album from Philadelphia-based collective A Sunny Day In Glasgow, docks in at an impressive 22 tracks but can be easily compressed. Even Ben Daniels, a co-founding member, admits that originally the tracklist contained 13 songs; longer songs that some intense editing broke up further. The band itself accommodates all this output with eight members – Daniels, his two twin sisters Robin and Lauren, Josh Meakim, Annie Frederickson, Bryce Hickey, Mich White and the fantastically named Beverly Science – and some electronic software that splices, polishes, trims and cross-links their music together.
Filed under: album, review, video | Tags: 2009, dalia wolfson, george pringle, music
George Pringle
Salon Des Refusés ••••
Deth To Fals Metal
Georgina Pringle started off her musical career by dropping hints – a single here, an EP there, frequently paired with handmade artwork – trickling forth from a champagne flute of gin and tonic, squeezed out of the nauseous recollection of her experiences and unstoppered nostalgia. Like a mixed drink poured into a strange glass, her music causes lifted eyebrows, glinting eyes, intrigued minds, dancing hands and, eventually, intoxication. Having abandoned guitar and other hefty instruments for a GarageBand application on her Mac, Pringle totes her instrumental accompaniment in the form of an iPod that she plugs in at performances. Once the rhythm starts, she speak-sings lyrics into the microphone, her Oxford accent glazing over words that pour out in a gush of journal-style entries. On Salon Des Refusés (‘exhibition of rejects’), her self-released debut album, Pringle delivers on the promise of the past few years with a dozen stories of desperation, drinking and dried-up desire.
UUVVWWZ
UUVVWWZ ••••
Saddle Creek
Yes’m, the band name UUVVWWZ is, at first, quite the shocker – when surveying it with a quick eye and little time, the string of letters brings to mind a union subcommittee searching for a title in the dregs of alphabet soup. But this musical group didn’t aim to produce some wind-up abbreviation. Rather, the name was chosen for its rhythmic purposes and satisfying appearance on the surface of a brown paper bag. For clarification, the band provides a pronunciation guide, “double you double vee double double you zee”, and a convenient, abbreviated double unit, in the form of two Us bending towards each other like a magician’s oversized silver rings. The Nebraska-based band consists of four talented young musicians spinning themselves into something extraordinary: Jim Schroeder slapping and strumming the guitar, Tom Ambroz playing on drums, Dustin Wilbourn stroking the bass and Teal Gardner weaving them together with her vocals.
