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MP3: The Harlan Twins – White Light from The Harlan Twins (2009)

Over the past two years, The Harlan Twins have gained a reputation among everyone from the hipster set to the aging folk-rock cognoscenti as the best band in Pittsburgh, resulting in scenes like the overflow, sell-out crowd at the unveiling of their self-released debut disc this past summer.

Covering ground from Allmans-esque jams to subdued high-lonesome folk and beyond, the band casts an eye to a century’s worth of Americana influences without letting it contain their creativity or enthusiasm. Be no more surprised to see a banjo or mandolin appear than to be immersed in swirling loops or pummeled by a bone-crushing deconstruction of an ’80s goth classic. James Hart lays down some of the finest guitar leads you’ll see anywhere while he and Carrie Battle trade off tailor-made Appalachian-tinged vocals. Their allegiances here won, it’s time for the Twins to get on the radar of roots-rock enthusiasts everywhere.

The Harlan Twins perform at Golden West Cafe in Baltimore on Fri December 4 and at Cafe Nola in Frederick on Sat December 5.

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MP3: Southeast Engine – Black Gold

What if Ray Davies had come of age attending a black Baptist church in middle America? Well, he might have made an album like From the Forest to the Sea, the latest from Athens, Ohio’s Southeast Engine on Misra Records. Informed by concept albums like Davies’ Kinks klassic Arthur and shaped by his own less-than-conventional religious upbringing, SEE’s Adam Remnant has concocted the most ambitious, and perhaps the most beautiful, of his band’s four albums. The songs track a spiritual search while skipping stylistically from roots to indie-rock to numbers owing a plain debt to the gospel influences of Remnant’s youth.

Recorded primarily live to analog in a 19^th century schoolhouse in rural southern Ohio, Forest/Sea is a warm and intimate sounding record and transfers well to the stage, where only the echoey acoustic piano is missed a bit. The band’s deftness and fervor remains in spades. On disc or in person, Southeast Engine is one of the most capable and inventive bands out there today, and should not be missed in either medium.

Southeast Engine performs at Golden West Café in Baltimore April 17 and at The Red and the Black in D.C. April 18.

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MP3: The Everybodyfields – Aeroplane

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MP3: The Everybodyfields – Everything is okay

I’ve been struggling to write something about The Everybodyfields for a few months now. The first time I saw them, in a nearly empty art gallery in a gritty inner-city neighborhood of Pittsburgh, maybe I didn’t fully believe what I saw and heard. Maybe it seemed outlandish to say that this band whose name I had never so much as read before that night was led by the two best singers I had ever seen in person. In the same band!

Photo By Sandlin Gaither

Maybe it was just a good night for Sam Quinn and Jill Andrews as they delivered spine-tingling off-mic harmonies in the close room before swapping acoustic and bass and doing it again. And again.

The scene couldn’t have been more different the next time I would see them on stage, just a couple months later. Thousands packed the picturesque main street that marks the border between Virgina and Tennessee (the band’s home state) on a beautiful late summer afternoon. Apparently, the ‘Fields had established themselves as heroes of sorts during the previous year’s Bristol Rhythm & Roots Festival. As they set up, an obviously mildly stunned Andrews stopped and observed incredulously, “There are a lot of people out there!” Read the rest…

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MP3: Dreadful Yawns – Expecting Rain

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MP3: Dreadful Yawns – Kill Me Now

Despite the name, The Dreadful Yawns’ five or so years of existence have been anything but boring. This month saw the release of the Cleveland band’s fourth full-length in that span, this one with a completely new lineup with the exception of principal songwriter/vocalist Ben Gmetro.

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Released June 3, Rook is Austin-based Shearwater‘s first proper release on Matador Records, following a reissue of Palo Santo, originally released on Misra Records in 2006. Rook continues the band’s sonic evolution from what resembled field recordings on its early releases to near-art rock topped with Meiburg’s alternately cooing and soaring vocals.

The album is the band’s second minus Will Sheff, who split singer-songwriter duties with Meiburg on four releases prior to Palo Santo while Meiburg’s keyboards and harmonies were a hallmark of Okkervil River, Sheff’s primary vehicle, through 2007. Now fully devoted to Shearwater and the band’s unrivaled creative force, Meiburg took some time on the eve of an Eastern U.S. tour to answer a few questions for Aural States. Shearwater performs at the Black Cat June 15.

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MP3: Shearwater – Rooks

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“That’s the way it is all through the States,” says Duffy Driediger, vocalist/guitarist of Ladyhawk, his irritation only slightly tempered by resignation after playing to an audience of around a dozen at Washington’s DC9 on May 11.

Dutifully, the four-piece had gone in front of the nearly empty room and laid down a rock solid barrage of gritty yet hook-filled numbers from their second full-length on Jagjaguwar, Shots, capped with the anthemic “The Dugout” from their self-titled debut, which the band (and they’re right) seems to hold out as a striking gem inexplicably languishing in the gravel bed of modern rock. A lot like Ladyhawk itself.
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Welcome our newest contributor Lou Takacs out of good ol’ PGH. He took some time to chat with Mark Olson, formerly of the Jayhawks.

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Mark Olson – Clifton Bridge

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Mark Olson – Poor Michael’s Boat

Mark Olson’s singularly mournful voice—markedly unchanged from The Jayhawks’ first widely distributed release Blue Earth in 1989 to last year’s solo masterwork The Salvation Blues (Hacktone)—has always suggested someone far older in spirit than in age. But in forming that cult-legend band that jump-started the still burgeoning roots-rock/No Depression/Americana movement, Olson evinced this quality in his mindset as much as his singing. Read the rest…