Americana Gothic

Americana Gothic

Americana Gothic

ASIN: B0000AQJ36

Track Listings
 
1. Americana Gothic
2. Iowa
3. The Fishing Song
4. I Hear the Hudson Calling
5. Branches of Willow
6. Water of Your Love
7. Junk Barge
8. Americana Gothic #2
9. Wapsipinicon
10. Jerusalem
11. Americana Gothic #3
12. Funeral
13. Suppertime
14. Sparrows
15. One of These Days
16. Americana Gothic #4
17. One Fine Day

Editorial Reviews
Mark Phillips, Americana UK, June 2003
Hailing from Iowa City, the Letterpress Opry are thoroughly engaging- great storytellers, by turns contemplative and energetic...

Product Description
The Letterpress Opry plays Kurt-Weill-loses-a-bet-to-Waylon-Jennings alternative country that veers from darkly funny to severely powerful. Their lead singer, Stacey Webster, has an idiosyncratic, classic country voice. They exist in some righteous corner of the universe that illustrates what might happen if a jam band stopped smoking weed long enough to pay attention to the music and concurrently started listening to a lot of The Band.

Americana Gothic

Americana Gothic,Letterpress Opry,Feral Dachshund Records,A beautiful and rousing journey through a landscape Americana... banjos hidden around corners, pedal steel and Hammond organ weaving drunkenly, stomping bass, swooning drums, guitars like fractured waterways, and fiddles swimming like fish.,Country,Pop
Regard the End
Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • No Anxiety of Influence
  • A really great American band
 Regard the End
Willard Grant Conspiracy
Manufacturer: Kimchee Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Alt-Country & AmericanaAlt-Country & Americana | Country | Styles | Music
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Similar Items:
  1. Everything's Fine
  2. Flying Low
  3. Mojave
  4. There But for the Grace of God
  5. Let It Roll

ASIN: B00018U9UC
Release Date: 2004-02-17

Tracks:

  1. River In The Pines
  2. The Trials Of Harrison Hayes
  3. Beyond The Shore
  4. The Ghost Of The Girl In The Well
  5. Twistification
  6. Another Man Is Gone
  7. Soft Hand
  8. Rosalee
  9. Fare Thee Well
  10. Day Is Passed And Gone
  11. The Suffering Song

Amazon.com

While lead singer and principal songwriter Robert Fisher is obsessed with folk archetypes--the drowned and the damned, murder-ballad ghosts, and gospel sojourners--and liberally taps traditional sources, these dark, forbidding songs aren't merely arcane or gothic. "Sufferings going to come to everyone some day," Fisher chants along with Jess Klein, and we could only wish the song didn't speak to the here and now. Arrangements begin with folk-friendly guitar, mandolin, and violin, only to rise into soundscapes worthy of Lambchop, if not Tricky. The 11 members (not counting seven guests) of this collective love eerie, organic atmospheres but they love melody even more. Slide guitar plays against grand piano, viola moans around melodica, and Fisher's voice--ranging from baritone to middle-of-the-earth--puts the sting, and even some redemption, back into his fatalistic visions. --Roy Kasten

Album Description

Willard Grant Conspiracy, the band fronted by Robert Fisher with as many as 31 rotating members throughout the world, has completed its fifth "official" full-length album, kicking off their relationship with Kimchee Records. Regard The End follows 2000's Everything's Fine and previous albums Mojave (1999), Flying Low (1998), and 3 am Sunday @ Fortune Otto's (1996) with several key differences. Fisher's songwriting has begun its transition into weighty subject matters such as death, hope and faith, as traditional songs meld with new Fisher compositions in such a way that it's impossible to discern which is which. "River In The Pines" from 1865 sits beside "Beyond The Shore," a new composition, and the two are strangely unified. Additionally, the new album marks the departure of guitarist Paul Austin as a full-time member, although he appears on the disc. It was mostly recorded in Slovenia, a place the band happened to be at the moment the album wanted to be born.! Eighteen musicians were enlisted to play on Regard the End, among them Chris Eckmen of The Walkabouts as well as Kristen Hersh (Throwing Muses), Blake Hazard, and Jess Klein, all of whom contribute vocals on the new album. Using a varied palate of acoustic and electric instruments including viola, trumpet, wheezing pump organs, grand pianos, violin, and acoustic and electric guitars, the record unfolds itself to the listener in layers. Its songs of universal emotions are told with a mixture of personal experience and enough storytelling to allow the listener to inhabit them with his or her own experience.

"In a way, the album is a meditation on morality," Fisher says. "The theme is a classic in all art--how you relate to your death is how you define your life. Most of the songs are about grief and loss and coming to terms. It's not a blues record but it has cathartic effects. I write the songs and the band makes them breathe and live. And then the audience brings their own experience to bear in the songs. It doesn't matter whether we play them in Sweden, Germany or Texas-- people seem to find commonality."

Upon its European release Uncut magazine named Regard the End its "Album of the Month" and at year's end gave it "Top 5 Albums of 2003" honors, declaring, "Regard The End is the first Willard Grant album to truly immerse yourself in. In ditching most of their traditional band ethic, they've tapped into the finest folk gothic traditions of death, suffering, misery and hardship and fashioned a paradoxically uplifting, transformative record of extraordinary power."

Customer Reviews:

4 out of 5 stars No Anxiety of Influence.......2005-12-06

I don't sense any of Harold Bloom's 'anxiety of influence', in the work of Willard Grant Conspiracy. Rather, Fisher has used the Nic Cave template to fashion and fathom a body of work of equal conviction and intensity: brooding soundscapes that resonate from some dark longing for the winter solstice to interminably delay its thawing. In some ways, the music over the eight years since I encountered 'Flying Low' can best be heard as a continuum. It's a salve to play them successively. Strangely, this most recent set,'Regard The End' with its prophetically cast title and songlist, suggests an unremitting focus on funereal concerns. Yet it's possibly the most joyous and peaceful of Fisher's works. This isn't to suggest that his music is a downer. There's an intimate warmth to his approach that guarantees engagement. The blend of old-timey material with freshly composed stuff is impeccable. You can't pick which is which. The sound bites from the field, the mimetic employment of mandolin, banjo, and guitar are thrilling, and the voices richly epressive. I confess to finding Fisher's output more expansive and uplifting than Cave's sibilant sound.

5 out of 5 stars A really great American band.......2004-03-06

This is one album that I simply can't get off my CD player. I bought it after hearing a review of it on NPR, simply because I liked the sound of the snippets I heard there. The snippets were not misleading. The Willard Grant Conspiracy really doesn't sound too much like anyone, though at the same time you will sometimes hear echoes of other performers. If pressed to describe what they sound like, I'd say two parts Nick Cave (later, religious Nick Cave), one part Ry Cooder singing songs from the Baptist hymnal, and one part Martin Stephenson, with a measure of Tom Waits, Thin White Rope, and Tindersticks thrown in. The pace is always slow and deliberate, the mood sober, and the themes vaguely moral and religious and tragic. Singer Robert Fisher sounds a lot like Nick Cave and has a similar singing style and range.

The sound of the band is largely acoustic in feel, even when they use electric instruments. Fiddle plays a big role in the sound, as well as subdued keyboards and acoustic guitars. But, again, the resemblance to Nick Cave is palpable: the sound might be subdued, but it is never peaceful. Even behind the most placid melodies and vocals there is an edginess, as if something bad either has happened or is destined to happen.

I don't dislike any of the songs on this album, and I like several of them a lot, so much that I love several without being able to say which I like most. I'd be hard pressed to have to select between the traditional sounding "Another Man is Gone," the eerie "The Ghost of the Girl in the Well," the tragically true "The Suffering Song," "The Trials of Harrison Hayes," or the compelling "River in the Pines."

I like this band so much that I definitely am going to try and catch them when they next hit Chicago. Anyone liking any of the artists I compared them to above will definitely enjoy this stuffy. It is just first rate music.
Femme Noir
Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
  • A music fan writes
  • American Gothic
 Femme Noir
Kevin Orton
Manufacturer: Self
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Similar Items:
  1. Idle Hands
  2. Pictures From Life's Other Side
  3. Always Say Please and Thank You
  4. Beyond

ASIN: B0001GDGHM
Release Date: 2003-11-04

Tracks:

  1. Charlotte Grey
  2. Pure Shanghai
  3. Lady From Bristol
  4. Sad Eyes
  5. Kennesaw Avenue
  6. Sweet Evangeline
  7. Who Set The Moon
  8. Pretty As A Stone
  9. Dark Troubled Angel
  10. Gates Of Hell
  11. Burying The Tiger

Album Description

Gothic Americana/Country Noir. Faulkneresque tales venturing on the dark side of romance. Tradional acoustic & electric guitar laced with dulcimer, tuba, saw & strings. Special guests include Violent Femmes' Gordon Gano on violin.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars A music fan writes.......2004-04-09

If you like precise detail interspersed with saucy turns of phrase, sudden insights, and hilarious non sequiturs...a nice original casserole, a fresh one, try "Femme Noir."

Orton laughs, snarls, hisses, near-whispers and sings full out to suit his narratives fluid as life. His persona is youthful, haunted before its time.

Orton's style is to blend striking images with twists on cliche, or rather the truth belied by the cliche. Here a nostalgic nod, there a phrase that jars you to the strangeness of this American landscape: deserted fairgrounds, unlighted country roads, sawdust-floored barrooms, vandalized cemeteries and overstayed debutante balls.

Salient Ortonisms such as "even the Bible has its share of lies"; "this may be hell but the rent is cheap"; "without a Roosevelt to dream on"; and "the pinheads are giggling" demonstrate the sheer amusing lyricalness of this album. They are all evocative; they are all true; they produce twinges of pleasure.

What are the influences behind these lyrics? I hear Dashiell Hammett and the dialogue of hardboiled detective movies; William Faulkner and other Southern chroniclers; American poets, decadents and regionalists. This homage is not derivative, it has the depth of authenticity, yet Orton is a pop artist in his assimilation.

The melodies accomodate the sinuous lyrical lines, racing through Pure Shanghai, Strolling Down Kennesaw Avenue, skipping past The Gates of Hell, touring the cul-de-sac auto-da-fe of Burying the Tiger. In each track, the fit is individually tailored. In other words, though I can hear that Orton is a literary fellow, he grooves.

Of intriguing imagery and dulcet tunes, there is plenty; this album rewards repeated listening. The world of Kevin Orton is bottomless, like a dream, and like a symbolic dream seems to be born of inner necessity.

5 out of 5 stars American Gothic.......2004-03-16

After spending a stretch with Kevin Orton on Femme Noir, you might be tempted to label many of his cuts as ballads. 'Til you realize they're peopled with folks who would beat the living hell out of the characters in most tunes: women snatching aliases off gravestones, dragon ladies, and the pistols that witness everything. Orton knows there's beauty and humor to be found in the seamier of climes, and works this to good effect, flavoring FN with evocative instrumentation (organ, saw, scratchy phonograph) thoughout. Sweet Evangeline opens with a Schraderesque stroll through the red light district but quickly betrays itself as an aching valentine; the rake on Gates of Hell damns himself to a hootenanny beat; and the calm of Who Set The Moon burns you black at its close. As Orton and his crew lope off after Burying the Tiger, you can only hope they do their next bit of time in some ramshackle studio laying down their next bit of romance and mayhem.
Row
Average customer rating: Not rated
    		Row
    Believers
    Manufacturer: Baptism By Fire
    ProductGroup: Music
    Binding: Audio CD

    GeneralGeneral | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music
    Alt-Country & AmericanaAlt-Country & Americana | Country | Styles | Music
    GeneralGeneral | Country | Styles | Music
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    Pop RockPop Rock | Pop | Styles | Music
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    Similar Items:
    1. Crashyertown
    2. All the Roadrunning

    ASIN: B000068D5Q
    Release Date: 2002-01-11

    Tracks:

    1. The Believers
    2. Ain't Life Grand?
    3. Sugar Coated Kisses
    4. Family Album
    5. Row
    6. The Treme
    7. Dear John
    8. Pour Down
    9. Daddy's Gone
    10. Birds of a Feather
    11. White Trash Queen
    12. Shiny Penny
    13. 90 Days
    14. Chasing Rainbows
    15. Goodnight

    Album Description

    A really good record can have a combination of factors going for it: gifted musicians, great songwriting and a talented producer. In THE BELIEVERS case, their debut album 'ROW' has all of these things working for it, and a rare,intangible force as well...fate. 'ROW' is a unique blend of country-folk and bluegrass with an underlying old timey feel likening it to Gram Parsons/Gillian Welch. The harmonies of Craig Aspen and Cynthia Frazzini seem to blend into one angelic voice. Coupled with their songwriting skills, THE BELIEVERS have given us an album of monumental stature while capturing the ear of college radio. These timeless songs with world class accompaniment provide the perfect backdrop for 15 tales of love, dysfunction and redemption. Once you have heard 'ROW' you too will be a believer!
    New Sickness
    Average customer rating: Not rated
      		New Sickness
      Dave Hudson
      Manufacturer: Rhyolite Records
      ProductGroup: Music
      Binding: Audio CD

      GeneralGeneral | Folk | Styles | Music
      ASIN: B000CAF4S6
      Release Date: 2001-05-08
      Americana Gothic
      Average customer rating: Not rated
        		Americana Gothic
        Letterpress Opry
        Manufacturer: Feral Dachshund Records
        ProductGroup: Music
        Binding: Audio CD

        Alt-Country & AmericanaAlt-Country & Americana | Country | Styles | Music
        GeneralGeneral | Country | Styles | Music
        Roots RockRoots Rock | Rock | Styles | Music
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        Alt-Country & AmericanaAlt-Country & Americana | Country | Indie Music | Stores | Music
        Pop RockPop Rock | Pop | Indie Music | Stores | Music
        ASIN: B0000AQJ36
        Release Date: 2003-02-15

        Tracks:

        1. Americana Gothic
        2. Iowa
        3. The Fishing Song
        4. I Hear the Hudson Calling
        5. Branches of Willow
        6. Water of Your Love
        7. Junk Barge
        8. Americana Gothic #2
        9. Wapsipinicon
        10. Jerusalem
        11. Americana Gothic #3
        12. Funeral
        13. Suppertime
        14. Sparrows
        15. One of These Days
        16. Americana Gothic #4
        17. One Fine Day

        Product Description

        The Letterpress Opry plays Kurt-Weill-loses-a-bet-to-Waylon-Jennings alternative country that veers from darkly funny to severely powerful. Their lead singer, Stacey Webster, has an idiosyncratic, classic country voice. They exist in some righteous corner of the universe that illustrates what might happen if a jam band stopped smoking weed long enough to pay attention to the music and concurrently started listening to a lot of The Band.

        Album Review:

        1. Anitra's Edges
        2. Be Careful What You Wish For
        3. Best Foot Forward
        4. Bluegrass Legends
        5. Carter Family Favorites [Import]
        6. Child of God
        7. Christmas Star [Import]
        8. Classic Country #1 Love Songs
        9. Complete Recordings of the Father of Western Swing 1932-37 [Box set]
        10. Country Divas [Enhanced] [Karaoke]

        Album Review

        Album Review