Tacoma, Washington songwriter Kye Alfred Hillig returns with “Our Remaining Pig,” the second single from his upcoming album The All-Night Costume Company, out March 4, 2026. The track pushes deeper into Hillig’s emotional terrain, pairing alternative-country and indie rock with a writer’s instinct for metaphor, restraint, and uncomfortable honesty. Where the album’s first single reintroduced Hillig’s voice, “Our Remaining Pig” begins to reveal the stakes.
Hillig has spent more than two decades rooted in the Puget Sound music scene, balancing songwriting with the realities of work, community, and long stretches away from the spotlight. Across nine solo albums, he’s developed a reputation for sharp melodies and lyrics that refuse to look away from difficult truths. His songs often sit at the intersection of personal reckoning and shared experience, finding meaning not in resolution, but in saying the hard thing plainly. Fans of The Jayhawks, Neil Young, Uncle Tupelo, Father John Misty, Kevin Morby, MJ Lenderman, and early Wilco will recognize the lineage, even as Hillig’s voice remains distinctly his own.
“Our Remaining Pig” takes its title and emotional core from an image that surfaced during Hillig’s time in art therapy. “I drew a man on his family farm wading across a river toward the final living pig, knowing he had to slaughter it,” Hillig explains. “You can tell he doesn’t want to do this, but sometimes the hard thing is exactly what must be done.” In the song, that image becomes a parallel for a relationship at a breaking point, a moment where avoidance only deepens the damage. “Sometimes couples just need to say the honest and painful thing,” he adds. “No one benefits from avoiding the suffering that comes with growth.”
Musically, the track unfolds with patience and weight, anchored by a vocal performance that carries some of the emotional directness and upward reach associated with early The Killers, paired with a Springsteen-like earnestness in tone and delivery. Fuzzy bass lines hold down the bottom end, giving the song a low, unsettled hum, while keys rise and fall throughout the arrangement, cutting light through the darkness without resolving it. Guitars remain measured and deliberate, letting the tension build rather than explode, until the chorus opens into something big and genuinely emotive, a release that feels hard-won rather than theatrical. The result is a song that feels expansive but grounded, willing to sit with discomfort instead of rushing past it.
Recorded at Ex Ex Studios in Seattle and produced and mixed by Johnny Nails, “Our Remaining Pig” continues to reveal the shape of The All-Night Costume Company. It’s a song about choosing honesty over comfort, about crossing a river you’d rather not enter because staying put is worse. As a second glimpse into the album, it signals a record unafraid of discomfort, and a songwriter willing to sit with it long enough for something true to emerge.
Dorthia Cottrell said that the title of her solo album Death Folk Country is a way to name “the world inside me.” You can guess from the album’s cover, an image of her as a vampire / werewolf / demoness / ghost, that this world is a dark place that hides and holds beauty and mystery.
After a soft instrumental opener, “Death Is the Punishment for Love,” “Harvester” curls into the room like fog that takes feminine shapes around you and threatens / entices you to stay in it forever. “Black Canyon” has Cottrell examining deep places within all of us, whether we want to admit they exist or not. They’ll emerge sooner or later “like a lover come back from the war.” The song is just her voice, an acoustic guitar, soft, rolling cymbals, and organ tones that sound like wind moving through a haunted house that eventually turns into birdsong.
“Family Annihilator” is the longest track on the album at nearly seven minutes. Cottrell sings, her voice echoing, about loss and the strength needed to continue moving forward through (and with) grief. The vocal effect of Cottrell’s voice being both lead and backing vocals (often in slightly different keys) is used throughout the record to great effect, making her sound like her physical and astral self are singing about the same thing from both earthly and cosmic perspectives.
“Effigy at the Gates of Ur” sounds like a lullaby. “Midnight Boy” brings in spaghetti western guitars and might be a love song about a back door man (to use an old blues term) or a love affair with a vampire (“If heaven could see what he’s doing to me, I’d be running like the devil in a cemetery.”). “Hell in My Water” combines violin tones with deep acoustic guitar sounds to create something that feels a bit menacing but you can’t help exploring it.
“Take Up Serpents” refers to a verse in the Bible declaring that one filled with the Holy Spirit could handle serpents without fear, and Cottrell seems to wonder if she’d ever be brave enough to seek such faith and strength. “For Alicia” is a lovely track about someone who’s going through pain and only wants someone else to carry that cross for a while. “Eat What I Kill” is just Cottrell’s haunting voice and acoustic guitar, but they’re enough to wallop you as she asks, “Are you saying my name like a curse?” and wonders if she’ll be lost forever after losing love yet again. “Of earthly pleasures, you can have your fill. I only want to eat the things that I kill,” she says. Damn. She’s not playing.
The album is bookended with “Death Is the Reward for Love,” and it’s a send-off of brighter synths and uplifting (yet still spooky) vocal effects to remind us that the amount of grief we have for love lost is equal to the amount of love we had.
It sounds simple to call this record “haunting,” but it is. It gets into you and lingers in your chest.
“What if you could choose your fate like choosing a song on a jukebox? What if your finger slipped and you got the B-side instead? What if you misunderstood the meaning of the dang song to begin with?”
According to frontman and songwriter Ben Schneider, that’s the premise of Lord Huron‘s new album – The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1. The album hosts a stunning array of musicians backing Schneider exploring the idea of choosing one’s fate or just letting it play out and seeing what happens.
On the opener, “Looking Back,” Schneider just wants “nothin’ but a lonesome, quiet place where I can think” or “a noisy, crowded place where I can drink” – depending on the circumstances. It’s a sorrowful tale about loss, either from a breakup or a death. Speaking as a widower, this one hit hard (“Something changed the day you left and I’ll never know just what. I’ll spend my whole life looking up and wondering who I am.”).
“Bag of Bones” is a sharp standout as Schneider sings about how his former lover is better off without him (“I believed you’d never get far without me. How wrong I was in the end.”). The rhythm of the track is undeniable and gets deep into you. “I got everything I want and I’ve got nothing that I need,” he sings on “Nothing I Need.” It’s a tale of an ego trap, of chasing the Alan Watts “golden goodie” that never can be caught and never brings true happiness. The country twang builds into a foot-stomping beat that barely hides the blues lyrics.
“Is There Anybody Out There?” isn’t a cover of the Pink Floyd song of the same name, but rather a song about Schneider and his bandmates Mark Barry, Miguel Briseño, and Tom Renaud seeking fellow humans who might need help along their journey (“We haven’t met, but I wrote this song for you.”). “Who Laughs Last” features actress Kristen Stewart telling a tale of traveling through the American southwest through a series of places that might not be real. “The Comedian” is a tale of a faded star who only wants “to see my name in the lights again,” but knows deep down that time and fame are ephemeral.
“Watch Me Go” is a story of someone walking away from a relationship, friendship, or some other bond that the protagonist no longer wants and won’t miss. It, like all the songs on the album, are mini-stories or characters who might be Schneider or his bandmates or might be fictional. After all, the band has built an entire universe of characters and stories based around their music.
“Fire Eternal” teams up the band with Kazu Makino from Blonde Redhead sharing the vocals on a sultry and quirky tale of fiery passion. “It All Comes Back,” with its simple yet powerful Radiohead-like piano chords, is a story of karma and might be the one that most encapsulates the “What if you could choose your fate?” theme of the album with lyrics like “I can’t be sure, but I’ve seen this before. When you walk through the door, which way will you go?”
“Used to Know” has Schneider begging a former lover to remember what they had together and to run away with it if they ever finds someone like that again. “Digging Up the Past” is a mournful story of someone who can’t (or won’t) move away from something long gone (another dominant theme on the album). The harmonica and slide guitar on it are outstanding. The closing track, “Life Is Strange,” seems perfect for the record. The album is full of weird stories, odd characters, and is about a jukebox in a mythical forest that you can use to determine your fate…but be careful what you wish for as it might not be what you expect.
The whole album isn’t what you expect, but then again it kind of is.
Lonnie Holley is singer, songwriter, artist, educator, and poet…and, surprisingly to me, a trip hop artist. I knew that his new album, Tonky (named after his nickname from growing up in and around honkytonks), would be full of gripping tales from his life and views on the current American landscape. I didn’t expect it to be layered with found sounds, electric beats, and trip hop touches.
The opening track, “Seeds,” is the longest at over nine minutes and has Holly telling about how fields he worked as a child until he was exhausted or often beaten so bad he couldn’t sleep. The string instruments strum out growing tension while simple synth chords are like the hums of spectres watching from the other side of the veil. “Life” is a short poem of hope with Holley encouraging us to use small actions to grow big change.
“Protest with Love” is the most punk rock song I’ve heard in a long while, and it’s wrapped in a lush trip hop track. “If you’re gonna protest, protest with love…Let love do its thing,” Holly advises. Loving thy neighbor, heck, just being nice, is one of the most rebellious acts you can do in 2025. In the jazz and post-funk (Is that a thing?)-inspired “The Burden,” Holley tells us all that it’s on us to remember those who came before and how we need to honor them (“The burden is like a spell that’s been cast upon you. Burdens of our ancestors to unravel and clarify in history.”).
“Let those who have ears, let them hear…We might not have it all together, but together we have it all,” Holley preaches in the beginning of “The Stars” — a powerful track about how people brought over on slave ships saw the same stars we now see, but how much have we progressed since then? The included rap by Open Mike Eagle is so slick it might drop you to the floor.
Holley makes sure you’re paying attention on the growling (and slightly funky) “We Were Kings in the Jungle, Slaves in the Field.” “Strength of a Song” has some of Holley’s strongest vocals on the record as he sings about finding hope and power in music. Near-industrial drums make “What’s Going On” sound like a roaring muscle car engine. “I Looked Over My Shoulder” is psychedelic jazz mixed with dark-wave synths.
“Wait a minute…” Holley says at the beginning of “Did I Do Enough?” Good heavens, haven’t we all thought that at some point — especially if you’ve been through a tragedy, or someone close to you has? The song is just Holley’s heartfelt vocals above ambient synths that build to gospel-like grandeur and it’s a stunner. “That’s Not Art, That’s Not Music” has Holley firing back the criticisms aimed at black music and culture upon their detractors.
The album ends with the hopeful “A Change Is Gonna Come,” but Holley asks, “Are we ready for something to happen?” One has to recognize the signs, when to stand up, and when to take flight. We have to be willing to accept change from divisiveness to inclusion. “How can I love God without loving you?” a woman asks not only herself, but also all of us. It’s the main message Holley wants to convey, and one we all must hear.
This is already one of the best albums of the year.
Lonnie Holley unveils the new single, “That’s Not Art, That’s Not Music,” from his new album, Tonky, out March 21st via Jagjaguwar. Following Holley’s “deeply moving, genre defying” (NPR Music) single “Protest With Love,” “That’s Not Art, That’s Not Music” is about Holley’s early experiences in the art world and larger institutions’ apprehension in accepting Black self-taught art as fine art. Holley is once again joined by Jacknife Lee, The Legendary Ingramettes, Kelly Pratt, and Jordan Katz. Budgie also contributes here. Atop atmospheric horns, flute, and marimba, Holley sings: “Gathering our arts / Gathering our music / Incorporating it into song / Us being rejected / They were saying, ‘That’s not good enough’/Not good enough / That’s not art / That’s not music.”
Tonky is a work born out of the delight of finding a sound and pressing it up against another found sound and another until, before a listener knows it, they are awash in a symphony of sound that feels like it stitches together as it is washing over you. The layers of sound found on Tonky are the result of decades of evolving experimentation. Tonky takes its name from a childhood nickname that was affixed to Holley when he lived a portion of his childhood life in a honky tonk. Lonnie Holley’s life of survival and endurance is one that is required – and no doubt still requires – a kind of invention. An invention that is also rich and present in Holley’s songs, which are full and immersive on Tonky.
Portions of this press release are pulled from the Tonky bio written by Hanif Abdurraqib.
I love that Jake Xerxes Fussell starts off his newest album, When I’m Called, with “Andy” – a tribute to Andy Warhol. Fussell’s simple guitar work and vocals (“You can tell Andy Warhol the ghost rider’s on his way.”) make the approach of a mysterious rider who probably brings death seem like the return of a welcome friend.
Fussell has long been a fan of traditional folk music, bluegrass, sea shanties, and field recordings of regional musicians across the country, putting his own spin on tracks that seem both new and ancient at the same time. I mean, “Cuckoo!” was originally written by the people who penned “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and Fussell makes it sound like a modern-day folk track he just wrote.
“Leaving Here, Don’t Know Where I’m Going” is a song to which everyone can relate, which seems to be a special knack Fussell has with his singing and playing. “Feeling Day” could fit right into a mostly empty pub on a Sunday night (probably because it’s Fussell’s version of a field recording in Scotland from 1971). The title track is a wonderful track showcasing Fussell’s guitar work while Anna Jacobson‘s horns provide a soft, beautiful backdrop.
James Elkington‘s string arrangements on “One Morning in May” make the song feel like a happy bird drifting on a wind current. “Gone to Hilo” is a song of heartbreak with Robin Holcomb on backing vocals and continues a theme of travel (sometimes for pleasure, other times for necessity, and other times because it’s the only option left in an already bad situation) throughout the album.
“Who Killed Poor Robin?” is a tale of death in the animal kingdom, and an allegory of how we’re remembered after we’re gone. The album closes with its final traveling song – “Going to Georgia,” as Fussell sings about earning love and how difficult that can be when one is wounded.
The album’s cover features a young man riding on a horse while he looks back to what he’s leaving behind, so much so that his head is turned backwards. He’s leaving, but doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t want to fully acknowledge that the only way is forward. We’re all traveling. Jake Xerxes Fussell reminds us that we’re all on the same road, really, moving toward “the stars in the sky,” as he sings in the final track. We just need to turn our heads around from a past long gone and that never truly existed. We need to go when we’re called. This doesn’t mean When I’m Called is a depressing album about death. It’s, like all of Fussell’s work, ultimately uplifting and listening to it is an opportunity to be present while you ride ahead.
Tim Heidecker announces his new album, Slipping Away, out October 18th via Bloodshot Records, and releases its lead single/video “Well’s Running Dry.” After the breakthroughs of 2020’s wistfully lush Fear of Death, and 2022’s High School, whose tales of nostalgia were never quite as distant as they seemed, the multi-hyphenate comedian and songwriter Heidecker has reached a new peak with Slipping Away, his warmest and fullest record to date. While all of his albums are concept records to some degree, this one tells a story on a larger scale, offering an imagistic framework that allows for some of his brightest melodies, heaviest themes (the feeling of before the fall and after), and most direct and vulnerable lyrics.
While on his first combined comedy and music tour in 2022, and his first time performing his own material with a full band every night, Heidecker noticed a recurring response to his lyrics among his devoted fanbase. “Especially people my age, maybe a little younger,” he recalls, “They would come up to me and say, ‘That is how I feel. And it’s nice to know you feel that way, too.’” Where his celebrated work in film and television is often an act of complex, surrealist worldbuilding, the increasingly tender and expertly crafted singer-songwriter material Heidecker releases under his own name is built to encourage these person-to-person connections.
Working with The Very Good Band — Eliana Athayde on bass, vocals and additional production; Josh Adams on drums; Vic Berger on keys; and Connor “Catfish” Gallaher on guitar and pedal steel; alongside a contribution from Tim’s daughter Amelia — Heidecker wrote a series of songs that tap into universal anxieties, familiar settings, and, occasionally, a blast of apocalyptic unease. If he were to perform them solo acoustic, they might sound like folk songs, with their instantly hummable melodies, singalong choruses, and unexpected ability to zoom out far beyond their initial premises. Even the simple act of making music, as portrayed in the cleverly constructed writer’s block anthem “Well’s Running Dry,” can lead to an earnest reflection on insecurity and aging. “As soon as I wrote that, I worried that it’s not cool to talk about,” Heidecker says. “But a second later, I thought—well that’s challenging and exciting. Let’s push past that.”
Slipping Away is crafted like a killer live set, building in emotional impact and intensity. Heidecker refers to the album as a true group project, a euphoric experience that helped turn his songs into living, breathing things. “My favorite records are the ones that were just recorded in a room with a band playing,” he says, citing classic-rock landmarks from Bob Dylan, The Beatles, and The Band. “And that’s what we did.” Across the album, Heidecker and Athayde often take the roles of duet partners, occasionally assuming a Gram-and-Emmylou dynamic with her quavering, empathetic harmony.
Heidecker describes working with the band on Slipping Away as a personal breakthrough in his career. “Having been doing quote-unquote ‘entertainment’ for 20 years now in different forms, it was a revitalizing experience to be out of my comfort zone a little bit. It was a learning opportunity.” After working with indie luminaries like Mac DeMarco, Weyes Blood, and Father John Misty, Heidecker is in a rarefied field of artists who refuse to grow complacent, and creative leaps like Slipping Away exemplify his devotion to the craft. Quoting Paul McCartney, Heidecker ascribes to the idea that “work begets inspiration” and each new project helps lead to the one just beyond it. “People ask me a lot about the difference between making music and comedy,” he says. “I finally got to a point where I was like, ‘Let’s stop thinking about these things as genres.’ It comes out in different formats but hopefully it all becomes one big thing that I’m making. I think it’s fairly united.”
This August and September, Tim Heidecker & The Very Good Band will support Waxahatchee with Snail Mail on a run of east coast dates, including a co-headlining show with Snail Mail at SummerStage in New York. A full list of shows can be found below, and tickets can be purchased here.
Slipping Away Tracklist 1. Well’s Running Dry 2. Trippin’ (Slippin’) 3. Like I Do 4. Dad Of The Year 5. Bottom of the 8th 6. Something Somewhere 7. Bows and Arrows 8. Hey, Would You Call My Mom For Me? 9. I Went Into Town 10. Bells Are Ringing
Tim Heidecker & The Very Good Band Tour Dates Sun. Aug. 11 – Carnation, WA @ THING Tue. Aug. 27 – New York, NY @ Central Park Summerstage ∞ Thu. Aug. 29 – South Deerfield, MA @ Tree House Summer Stage % Fri. Aug. 30 – Portland, ME @ State Theater % Sat. Aug. 31 – Accord, NY @ Arrowood Farms % Sun. Sept. 1 – Asbury Park, NJ @ Stone Pony Summerstage % Wed. Sept. 4 – Charlottesville, VA @ Ting Pavillion % Thu. Sept. 5 – Raleigh, NC @ Hopscotch Music Festival Fri. Sept. 6 – Vienna, VA @ Filene Center – Wolf Trap % Sat. Sept 7 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Fillmore ^
∞ w/ Snail Mail & Fenne Lily % w/ Waxahatchee & Snail Mail ^ w/ Waxahatchee & Gladie
Bizhiki — a made-in-Wisconsin collaboration between Dylan Bizhikiins Jennings, Joe Rainey Sr., and multi-instrumentalist S. Carey (Bon Iver) — shares the new single/video, “Unbound,” from their new album Unbound, out July 19th via Jagjaguwar. Following lead single “Gigawaabamin (Come Through)” featuring Mike Sullivan, the title track of the album is exemplary of Bizhiki’s unique cultural and musical intersection.
The song begins with an electronically modified hand drum accentuated by a plaintive piano chord, leading into a somber warning sung by Carey: “Be calm when she speaks/she speaks the truth, unbound.” The words were pulled by Carey from Rainey’s notebook, right in the studio. “I wrote those lines around a string of tornadoes and hurricanes — this wrath of mother nature that was hitting everybody,” Rainey says. “There was so much relief needed for people who were displaced, so many people out there hurting.” Carey’s warning is joined to an urgent topline sung by Bizhikiins Jennings, as arresting as it is beautiful.
The video for “Unbound” was directed by Finn Ryan and features dancer Indaanis Demain alongside the group. “Gichigami and Anishinaabeg have long been intertwined in a relationship rooted in reciprocity and respect, which continues to this day,” Ryan explains. “On her shores we continue to sing and make offerings, carrying out ancient responsibilities tied to culture and place. Be calm when she speaks, she speaks the truth out loud.”
Bizhiki has also announced their album release show at the Parkway Theater in Minneapolis, MN on Wednesday, July 24th, and will be joined by special guest Dosh. Tickets are on-sale now and are available here.
Unbound opens with a single, trembling chord that rises and descends before meeting a warm, beguiling voice, a voice singing in a tradition that’s been heard in Northern Wisconsin river country for millennia. The music that follows is a soulful dialogue between the ancient tradition of powwow singing and a contemporary musical palette. Unbound sees the powwow style entwined with synthesized voice modulation, and hand drumming accented with electronic samples and beats. The harmonies and resonances on this album are equal parts cultural and musical.
Many of the songs on this album go back to when the spirit of the Bizhiki was forged, nearly a decade ago, on the banks of Wisconsin’s Chippewa River at Eaux Claires festival in 2015, and came together over the course of years in between several projects from Bizhiki members, including two solo album releases. Both Joe Rainey’s Niineta and S. Carey’s Break Me Open were released in 2022, and the artists have been busy touring their projects. Bizhikiins Jennings has also been committed to a robust schedule of speaking and teaching engagements —he’s in the final stage of his pursuit of a PhD at UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies — in addition to his singing in powwow groups, both locally and internationally.
Bizhiki: Unbound is the recipient of an inaugural Wisconsin Special Projects Grant from Ruth Foundation for the Arts. The project is one of ten selected from a pool of over 80 applicants; selections were made by a national panel of jurors. Project collaborators will develop and tour a multidisciplinary music and video performance, engaging audiences throughout Wisconsin about contemporary Ojibwe culture at live shows in 2024 and 2025. The project will make great efforts to both support revitalization within Tribal communities and enhance understanding in non-Tribal communities.
Numero Group announce Margo Guryan’sWords and Music, a 3xLP box set compiling the work of the late singer and songwriter, out June 7th, and unveils the set’s first offering, the inquisitive and trippy “Moon Ride,” which is her first known recording (1956). Witness to revolutions in jazz and pop, Guryan earned her place in the songwriting pantheon and then some. That she was largely unknown for decades is not the stuff of crushed dreams, but a result of her own choices and priorities. From humble beginnings to the peaks of her 1968 baroque pop masterpiece Take a Picture and the collected Demosto the recent viral ubiquity of “Why Do I Cry,”Words and Music captures the entirety of Guryan’s career, including 16 previously unreleased recordings and a 32-page booklet telling her whole story. The box set is produced by her stepson Jonathan Rosner,friend and historian Geoffrey Weiss, and Numero Group’s Douglas Mcgowan,Rob Sevier,and Ken Shipley.All of the tracks have been remastered by Jessica Thompson.
Guryan released just one album in her heyday: 1968’s Take A Picture. But, as she was disinterested in performing, touring, and promoting the work, the album went barely noticed at the time. Nevertheless, by the 1990s, the recordhad become a highly sought after cult favorite. Then, a new generation of listeners came to learn about her work when Take A Picture was reissued in 2000, followed shortly by the collected Demos, an incredible compilation of unearthed alternate takes and new-to-the-public songs that Margo supervised herself. Guryan’s life in the intervening years remained filled with music; she became a music teacher, kept writing songs, and cultivated friendships with a growing circle of acolytes.
Born in 1937 in New York City, Guryan began learning piano at age six before eventually enrolling at Boston University to study music. She spent much of her early career immersed in the jazz world, including working for Impulse! founder Creed Taylor, writing for jazz artists, and attending Lenox School of Jazz in Western Massachusetts, where she worked in an ensemble alongside fellow students Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry. Her peers were, at that very moment, exploding the consciousness of jazz. Margo, a then-recent graduate in composition, had once been told that the highest mode of education is perception. So she mostly lingered and listened. It was at Lenox where Margo became friends with her teacher, Max Roach, who in 1961 even asked Margo to pen the liner notes for his first Impulse! album.
Her early tunes were recorded by bebop pioneer Dizzy Gillespie, bossa nova icon Astrud Gilberto, the famed South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba, and folk hero Harry Belafonte. Jazz singers Anita O’Day and Carmen McRae all released takes on her material, as did pop singer Claudine Longetand folk-rock icon Mama Cass Elliot. “Sunday Morning,” Margo’s biggest hit, was first popularized by soft-rockers Spanky & Our Gang, followed by recordings from torch singer Julie London and country royalty Glen Campbell and Bobbie Gentry. In 1967, Billboard called Margo “one of the most sought-after writing talents in the music business.”
Rosner, her stepson, says, “I was introduced to Margo as a very little boy. She became my step-mom when I was three to be exact. From the moment I stepped foot into the apartment on 16th street in NYC where my dad [David Rosner] and Margo lived, I saw Margo in action – writing songs, the songs that would become the “Demos” – and playing Bach – rinse and repeat. At first, this was on a Wurlitzer, and then on a Blüthner. I was there to watch “The Hum” and “Timothy Gone” take shape, and she’d play me (on record and on the pianos) songs she’d written earlier. I loved them, and they were part of my life as a young person. But this music was almost like a family secret never to see the light of day – until it finally did. It’s hard to express how wonderful it is – and was to Margo – to see people embrace these songs – sing and play these songs and celebrate her body of work.”
The story of Margo Guryan is one of a woman who dug deep from an early age and was never afraid to change. With her keen feel for tone, phrasings, tension, presence, and lyrics that cut, her name today is synonymous with sophisticated songcraft and inimitable 1960s cool.Her ingenuity and technique set her in the tradition of chamber-pop icons like Brian Wilson and Burt Bacharach while the bittersweet candor in her depictions of womanhood suggest a middleground between Carole King’s pop-factory and singer-songwriter eras. But the understated rigor of Margo’s artistic voice is all her own.
There will also be a limited-edition variant of the box set that comes with a bonus 10″ of Margo’s Chopsticks Variations. This will be the first-ever vinyl pressing of that release.
Words and Music Tracklist: Side A 1. If I Lose (1956) 2. You Promised (1957) 3. The Wise Man Knows (1956) 4. The Morning Aer (1958) 5. Moon Ride (1956) 6. More Understanding Than a Man (1957) 7. More Understanding Than a Man (Instrumental) (1957) 8. There I Was (1957)
Side B 1. Kiss and Tell (1966) 2. Half-Way In Love (1966) 3. Goodbye July (1966) 4. Four Letter Words (1966) 5. Hurry on Home (1966) 6. I Ought to Stay Away From You (1966) 7. I Love (1967) 8. Under My Umbrella (1968) 9. I Don’t Intend to Spend Christmas Without You (1967)
Side C 1. Sunday Morning (1967) 2. Thoughts (1968) 3. Love Songs (1967) 4. Don’t Go Away (1967) 5. Take a Picture (1968) 6. Sun (1968) 7. What Can I Give You (1968) 8. Come to Me Slowly (1968)
Side D 1. The 8:17 Northbound Success Merry-Go-Round (1968) 2. Something’s Wrong with the Morning (1970) 3. Think of Rain (1967) 4. Can You Tell (1968) 5. Someone I Know (1968) 6. Love (1968)
Side E 1. Why Do I Cry (1968) 2. Spanky and Our Gang (1968) 3. Most of My Life (1971) 4. It’s Alright Now (1971) 5. Timothy Gone (1972) 6. The Hum (1974) 7. Please Believe Me (1974) 8. Yes I Am (1974)
Side F 1. I Think A lot About You (1972) 2. Iʼ’d Like to See the Bad Guys Win (1973) 3. Values (1974) 4. California Shake (1975) 5. Hold Me Dancin’ (1978) 6. Shine (1975) 7. Goodbye July (1966, recorded 2001)
Alessandro Stefana (“Asso”), the Italian composer, musician, and producer who has contributed to album’s by PJ Harvey, Mike Patton, and Calexico, amongst others, releases his self-titled sophomore album on May 17 via Ipecac Recordings.
A preview of the nine-song collection arrives with today’s release of the song, “The House” (ipecac.lnk.to/asso).
Throughout the album, Asso performs an eclectic array of instruments (ukelin, Marxophone, organ, pedal steel and baritone guitars, and more) and in varying genres, borrowing from rootsy folk and primitive blues to soundtracks, psychedelia, desert ballads and ambient explorations. Asso merges the past and present courtesy of the Smithsonian Folkways archives, adding Appalachian folk icon Roscoe Holcomb‘s vocals to freshly re-imagined versions of the revered singer/banjo player’s songs.
“It is a powerful and moving testimony to a bygone era,” Asso says of his addition of Holcomb’s vocals. “I have always been fascinated by the idea of mixing folk, a music so intimately linked to the land, with something that goes beyond the boundaries of the genre.”
Asso’s debut solo release, Poste e Telegrafi (2013), was dubbed “one of the most striking works you’ll hear from a young composer all year” by Pitchfork, and AllMusic who deemed it “an impressive debut.”
