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Via our friends at Pitchfork: A new video for “Rosary,” a song from Marisa Nadler’s 2009 LP Little Hells.

When reading about the music industry of late, the challenging economy and flagging album sales have made the headlines. But, if you care to look, there are success stories too. Not accepting the industry’s “no” for an answer, fans helped to fund Over the Rhine’s new LP The Long Surrender. It sees release today. Produced by Joe Henry, it shows the Ohioans’ blend of Americana alt-folk and winsome alt-pop hooks to best advantage.

Spinner is sharing a stream of the album this week.

The band is touring in support of the release (dates below).

The Laugh of Recognition from Sneak Attack on Vimeo.

“The King Knows How” Live from Sneak Attack on Vimeo.

Tour Dates
Feb. 20 – NASHVILLE, TN @ 3rd & Lindsley
Feb. 21 – LEXINGTON, KY @ WoodSongs
March 25 – BOSTON, MA The Red Room @ Café 939 (Berklee)
March 26 – NEW YORK, N.Y. @ Highline Ballroom
March 27 – ALEXANDRIA, VA/WASHINGTON, DC @ Birchmere
March 29 – PHILADELPHIA, PA @ World Café Live
April 1 – PITTSBURGH, PA @ Mr. Small’s
April 2 – AKRON, OH @ Musica
April 5 – ANN ARBOR, MI @ The Ark
April 7 – MILWAUKEE, WI @ Turner Hall
April 8 – CHICAGO, IL @ Lincoln Hall
April 9 – MADISON, WI @ Majestic Theater
April 10 – MINNEAPOLIS, MN @ Cedar Cultural Center
•••

Say Hi
Um, Uh Oh
Barsuk CD

Seattle musician Eric Elbogen is back with another LP of material, appearing as his Say Hi project on the Barsuk imprint. Once again, he plays most of the instruments himself, crafting adroit layers of keyboards, guitars, and percussion in arrangements that certainly have the potency of many a full band’s studio renditions.

But unlike some of his earlier songs, this time out the subject matter isn’t quite so light-hearted. The focus is often matters of the heart; in particular, the times when said matters involve unrequited love or desire from afar. Indeed, one can hear flashes of bitterness and regret in the singer-songwriter’s voice. It’s as if Elbogen is channeling early Elvis Costello’s frequent sneers and snarls into a highly distilled version of postmodern indie angst. This is particularly evident in his ballads. Based on the wrenching delivery the singer adopts in the alt-folk song “Bruises to Prove It,” one can certainly believe the title’s claim of Elbogen’s pain.

Still, all hope isn’t lost on Um, Uh Oh. “Devils” mounts a sultry, feisty, mid tempo groove. On the rollicking up tempo number “Take Ya’ Dancin,’” Elbogen drops the ironic stance and instead adopts a jaunty swagger and woos his intended like a rock star.

MP3: Devils

One of our favorite alt-folk singer-songwriters, Sharon van Etten covered REM in her set the other night at the Bowery Ballroom.

If you haven’t heard Sharon’s latest recording, Epic (out now on Ba Da Bing), get thee forthwith to a record seller!

Vetiver covers The Ramones

Dark Dark Dark
Wild Go
Supply and Demand

Dark Dark Dark is a sextet of experimental folk musicians from Minneapolis. Their debut Snow Magic flew under my radar; but Wild Go, the band’s sophomore LP, has been in heavy rotation in these parts.

Despite the band’s name, there’s a play of light and darkness that creates considerable suppleness in their work. In songs like the ballad “Daydreaming,” acoustic folk meets gently articulate pop piano in an ambling yet melodious concoction. Uneasy accordion harmonies complicate matters on “In Your Dreams,” especially when set against doo-wop tinged backing vocals and a soaring cello solo.

The band can summon sunniness too, on the breezy shuffle “Right Path.” Its foreground male vocals sound somewhat laconic, while reverberant backing vocals hint at Sixties-era Spector terrain. Meanwhile, the title track starts as a lilting kind of Parisian cafe music -accordion slides and vocal cooing – but inexorably foregrounds brooding piano harmonies, a dramatic lead vocal, and underpinning strings. Its this type of layered approach that rewards repeated listenings of Wild Go. Dark Dark Dark is anything but monochromatic.

MP3: Daydreaming

Dark Dark Dark from Yours Truly on Vimeo.

Sufjan Stevens
The Age of Adz
Asthmatic Kitty Records

Singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens doesn’t shy away from the weird on Age of Adz, his sixth studio album. At one point in time, Stevens was planning an album dedicated to each of the fifty states. And if the release of this, his first full length in five years (unless you count his principally instrumental BQE project from 2009), effectively dispels the notion that he’s likely to complete that ambitious project, it’s still got enough reference points crammed into it to fete any number of localities.

Despite Age of Adz’s wide ranging mashed-up melange of styles, from funk to orchestral pop to kraut rock to synth pop to alt-folk, the record has gained a wide audience.  It’s even hit #7 on the Billboard Pop charts, which is at least somewhat unusual for a pop songwriter these days, particular one with an indie pedigree. But when you add in long songs – several are around eight minutes in duration and the album’s closer clocks if at 25 minutes long – possessing complicated arrangements rife with synth bends and florid flute trilling, featuring sideways harmonic changes, seemingly endless repeating choruses, and peppered with profanity (a rarity on Sufjan songs past), you find an unlikely candidate for mass consumption. Add to that its idiosyncratic artwork by schizophrenic Royal Robertson, and this is truly an unusual chart-topper for 2010.

But as far as I’m concerned, the record-buying public is onto something. This is a diverting endeavor and a heady musical concoction that rewards repeated listening. And if lots of people want to dig in and aren’t afraid if their pop seems off-kilter, I’m happy to see Sufjan’s work shared with a wider audience.

The 1900s
Return of the Century
Parasol

On Cold and Kind, their 2007 debut, the 1900s explored the plight of those left behind after the Rapture. Return of the Century, the band’s latest Parasol LP (out this week), is similarly imaginative in its choice of setting. The songs are populated by characters from an underground world where “people’s minds are held in thrall in the name of spiritual advancement.”

If all of this sounds a little too highfalutin in sketch form, or if concept albums in general leave you cold, fear not. The story is a loose framework for a collection of compelling songs. The band has pared down a bit to a sextet, and Return of the Century’s arrangements are correspondingly tauter, leaning more towards folk/pop rather than the orchestral ambitions of some of 1900s previous endeavors. There are moments when the rock guitars come to the fore, as on “Zerkalo’s” incendiary solos and the psych-tinged breaks found on “Babies.”

“Babies”

But mostly we’re treated to vocals front and center, and when the harmonizing is felicitous, as it is on “Bmore” and “Amulet,” folk-inflected melodies craft a beguiling ambience.

The 1900s – Amulet from The 1900s / M/\ZES on Vimeo.

Tour Dates:

Fri. Nov. 5 - Chicago, IL @ Reckless Records (Wicker Park in-store – 5:30 PM)

Tue. Nov. 9 - Cincinnati, OH @ The Comet

Wed. Nov. 10 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Brillobox

Thu. Nov. 11 – New York, NY @ Mercury Lounge (early show – 6:30 PM)

Fri. Nov. 12 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s w/ Buried Beds, Tunng

Sat. Nov. 13 - Brooklyn, NY @ The Rock Shop

Sun. Nov. 14 – Cambridge, MA @ Middle East (upstairs)

Fri. Dec. 3 - Chicago, IL @ The Empty Bottle

Antony and the Johnsons
Swanlights
Secretly Canadian

Swanlights, Antony Hegarty’s fourth Secretly Canadian LP, is his most musically adventurous recording to date. That said, he doesn’t lose sight of any of the focal points of his previous releases. Antony and the Johnsons still craft music that has one foot in the pop singer-songwriter domain (“The Spirit Was Gone”) and the other in a wondrous kingdom devoted to the post-folk aesthetic (“Everything is New”).

But there are forays into still more adventurous terrain here. His duet with Björk on “Fletta” could seem, at first blush, like an overt attempt to add some star power to proceedings. But it’s hardly a marketing ploy. Placed on the back half of the album, it serves as a meeting place for two famously stylized vocalists: a high wire prospect to say the least. But Antony and Björk, while remaining distinct entities on the track (how could they not?), come together as a felicitous pairing, singing dovetailed phrases and stacked harmonies that are both effusive and elegant. Correspondingly, the piano-only arrangement channels a bit of the character of Vespertine’s post-classical ambience.

Elsewhere, Hegarty and company explore other classical reference points too. “Ghost” is rife with minimal piano ostinatos and awash with string section underpinnings, all buoying a sumptuously soaring vocal. The chamber orchestra returns for “Salt Silver Oxygen,” creating a pastoral ambience that accompanies Antony’s elfin double-tracked vocals.

But Swanlights isn’t all longhair charts for strings. On the single-worthy “Thank you for Your Love,” Antony is backed up by a horn section, supply singing a modern day version of blue-eyed soul. If the song presents itself as a comfortable echo of Antony’s previous work, it’s a most welcome reminder of his uncanny ability to thoroughly inhabit a warmly embracing hook with affecting earnestness. That quality is most welcome in the often jaded terrain of today’s indie pop.

Antony and the Johnsons appear live on 10/30 in New York City at Alice Tully Hall