Bob Boilen, the creator and host of NPR’s All Songs Considered, selected the Dry Spells’ “Too Soon For Flowers” yesterday as his pick for “Album of the Year”. Congratulations to the Dry Spells!
Listen to a stream of the show “Discussion: The Year In Music, 2009” HERE
Purchase the LP + Download at the Endless Nest store HERE
…and check out what other people have been saying recently:
“Lush, eerie, dreamy and haunting, gorgeous vocal harmonies, minimal percussion, equal parts seventies British folk and seventies Laurel Canyon pop, woven into a witchy gothic brew that is totally enchanting. Strings soar, unfurling melancholy melodies, and guitars jangle, but it’s the female vocals that seal the deal, a la Sandy Denny, Jacqui McShee of Pentangle, Bobbie Watson from Comus, Stevie Nicks, you get the idea, bewitching and ethereal, raw and powerful and emotional, and the harmonies, so captivating and otherworldly, wow. The Dry Spells manage to sound so timeless, this record definitely sounds contemporary, but if the lush production was dialed back just a little, this could easily have been some lost seventies psych folk reissue. Absolutely stunning. ” – Aquarius Records
“They balance folk and the kind smoldering 70’s rock balladry that moved Stevie Nicks’ shawl to action, bent strings in Pentangle and Fairport and has more recently been embraced by fellow Frisco-dwellers The Sandwitches. […] The band manages to wring soaring emotion and sadness out with a triumphant and wide-flung delivery rather than adopt the tendency of latter day folk-rock to wrestle with and finally succumb to overwhelming melancholy. A definite rare surprise in a bewilderingly narrowing field of entrancing folk.” – Raven Sings The Blues
Pillars and Tongues will be releasing a full length LP, Lay of Pilgrim Park, and The Cairo Gang will be releasing a 7″ e.p., Holy Clover, this winter on Empy Cellar Records (Holy Clover is released in collaboration with Tin Angel Records). It will be the first – long overdue – vinyl release by either of these artists. Paul Oldham recently finished mastering both records, which will be at the pressing plant next week, and available sometime in January. Until then, you can watch the lo-fi gem above by The American Opry of The Cairo Gang performing “Holy Clover” in New Mexico.
Both bands hail, at least in part, from Chicago and have played with each other across the country. Their music is some of the most thoughtful material we have heard in a long time… so, we are genuinely stoked! Coincidentally, they are both featured on Joan of Arc’s forthcoming release Don’t Mind Control.
The Dry Spells LPs arrived at the Empty Cellar HQ this evening! They are available for sale at our store, and will be distributed by Revolver (official release date November 24th). We will ship all of the pre-sale orders tomorrow. Anybody know how to get rid of a pallet? Perhaps a beach bonfire…
This is just in time for their performance on West Coast Live. Tune in at 10 AM Saturday, November 14th to your local affiliate while chomping your Wheaties for some lovely live tunes by the Dry Spells.
Sonny & the Sunsets will be releasing their debut LP on the Secret Seven (our co-conspirator on The Two Sides of Tim Cohen) and Soft Abuse labels this November 17th. It features an all-star cast including Kelley Stoltz, Tim Cohen, Shayde Sartin, Heidi Alexander, and Thalia Harbour among others! You can pre-order a copy directly from Secret Seven Records at our store HERE. It will ship before the release date.
Check out what people have said so far:
“It sounds like the perfect end-of-summer West Coast twilight campfire kickback record.” — The Catbirdseat
“With their first full length Tomorrow is Alright, Sonny and the Sunsets have created a simply wonderful West Coast pop album.” — The Bay Bridged
“With Sonny there’s no telling whether the joke’s on him or the joke’s on you, tongues are poked firmly in cheek while at the same time being so confessionally honest that it catches you off guard. Johnathan Richman and Brian Wilson clasp hands and stumble down hillsides to laugh in the sun and cry in the shade and somehow main Sunsetter Sonny Smith pulls it all off with the charm and conviction of a wizened soul shaking his head at those young bucks that’ll never listen and hardly learn.” — Raven Sings the Blues
“This songs on this record have essentially blindsided me as I had no prior knowledge of Sonny before hearing this record, and I can’t speak for anyone else but this record might just be coming out at the perfect time. Sonny & the Sunsets play stimulating and practically theatrical piano-driven tunes that would feel at home both modern-day at a cluttered house-show in North California or in the early 60s playing alongside Robert Zimmerman in a Greenwich Village bar.” — Weekly Tape Deck
New San Francisco label Turn Up! records has officially released the debut record by the Sandwitches. It is titled How To Make Ambient Sadcake. We were lucky enough to get a handful copies for our store, and it is also available at Aquarius Records. It is a killer debut… it shreds… but don’t take our word for it… take Kelly Stoltz‘s:
“The Sandwitches came out of nowhere. Well…that’s not quite right of course…but sometimes it happens, when you get three DNA’s together doing their own tunes, you kind of forgot what they were up to before. Or at least that’s what happened when I first wrapped ears around the sounds contained herein. A Holy Communion of Roky Erickson and Stevie Nicks. A lyrical beauty too. Strings bobbing around like loose wires on the headstock, chiming and picking away and baking the ambient sadcake. Tomorrows beat, learned yesterday or some time ago in band from back when. More jazzed up than the Moe Tucker and “Be My Baby”. Boom and crash – loose/tight – on time and free. When the daylight pop appears, upbeat introductions keep you comfortable for a spell, but the hopeful sun has soon gone down and there are now more questions and apologies amid the darkness – and the headline reads “The Carter Family Goes Electric”. But there are no taunts of “Judas!” this time, only “Midas!” = yeah the one with the golden touch. Something cool and beautiful and true is happening here. The Sandwiches are bringing this vision to life. Imagine a 60’s Girl-group is on tour and their van breaks down near a gothic castle high on the hill, Dario Argento invites them in to perform a concert for his tweaked actors in a big dark red room inside and, if the dream is right, it’s the Sandwiches – they’d fit right in with those misfits and speak the same language. I’d like to be there to dance.
Close your eyes and you’ll see what I mean. These are fab, haunting tunes wrapped in tender weird pop. That’s what we got here. A heavy party you want to hang out at.” –Kelley Stoltz
“The three ladies in the band have done time in great San Francisco bands like Brilliant Colors, The Fresh & Onlys, Pillars Of Silence and it is kind of cool how if you did put all three of those bands in a blender the sound of the Sandwitches can really be imagined. So many bands of late seem to be so dialed into such a narrow and small palette of sounds so it’s really refreshing to hear a band who are no one trick pony, but instead cover lots of musical ground but do so with a cohesiveness that is often really tricky to pull off like The Sandwitches do on this debut. In lots of ways the record makes us think of what it would sound like for a band on Woodsist to cover Fleetwood Mac’s amazing record Tusk.
There is also something so honest and sincere about their delivery that you get the feeling they would play these songs with as much conviction and emotion in their living room filled with a few friends as much as they would on stage at a packed venue.” –Aquarius Records
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