...Sam Jones' documentary movie I am tyring to break your heart, chronicling the gestation of the last Wilco album, gets it's first UK screenings as part of the London Film Festival next month...

Meanwhile..."Shiny things compares favourably to Wilco at their best...the most complete alternative-Americana album of the year". Easy, Tiger! Saturday's Independent goes ever-so-slightly overboard in catching up with reallyrather's promotion of the new album from Sacramento's Jackpot...

...also just out, Water hymns from everybody's favourite party dudes Noahjohn - more dance anthems & frivolous pop ditties about cars 'n' girls than you can shake a stick at. Or maybe not...

'I cannot recommend highly enough that you go and check them out. [They] are simply awesome' - the Edinburgh Evening News concluding it's review of last week's show in much same vein every other write-up of The Polyphonic Spree live experience (except, of course, this bloke's). And they're all absolutely right. Here they are full flight in Northampton, and someone at last night's Shepherd's Bush Empire show has wasted no time in uploading this snatch of Section 9 - fair brings a lump to throat. Will they be able to come across on 'live' TV? Find out on Later, Nov 8...

Standards never less than maintained. To anyone who's up with Denison Witmer's ouput thus far, no further reassurance will be needed to prompt purchase of new album Philadelphia songs. For the unaware, the good news starts here...

Some keywords: plangent / hopeful / limpid / real / warm

Witmer is a 20-something singer-songwriter from Pennsylvania. His thing, if we can label, is contemporary folk-pop-rock with a faint dusting of any 'alt-' you care to choose. Philadelphia songs is his 3rd full-length release. All three share many qualities but, fundamentally, all are sheer class. The new album combines the clean, lean picking of superb debut Safe away with the mellow full-band sound that characterised Of joy & sorrow, a subtly superior sonic vibrancy taking things onwards and upwards. Much as before, this is emotional music as Witmer pores over his personal relationships, how things have worked out, the interconnectedness of people and places, stuff like that. In lesser hands this might come off as so much self-indulgent, bleeding-heart wimpery, but Witmer's aim is true. There's nothing pretentious or fake here. The tone is often quite sad but never bleak; hope is invariably just a chord change away. Witmer's brilliantly unshowy guitar work is umbued with the same reflective eloquence as his lyrics and the sure-footed arrangements hit the spot time and again.

Impressive opener Sets of keys kind of ecapsulates Witmer's stylistic range: fine acoustic guitar figure under the early verses, keys, bass and percussion flooding in halfway through and a frosting of guitar distortion at the close. Maybe the most obvious 'break-out' track here is chiming, hi-hat heavy 24 turned 25 which, at just 2 minutes, demonstrates (like This and that on the first album) Witmer's admirable concision. Many artists would've taken great tunes like this around the block at least once more, just because..well..that's what you do. Knowing what to leave out is just as fine an art. Leaving Philadelphia, craftily impelled by a half-a-beat delay within the guitar pattern, is the only wholly acoustic number here, it's spareness contrasting with next track Chestnut Hill's luscious full sound, to which this listener can muster no resistance (cf. Forgiven on album no.2).

Just about the only jarring note across Witmer's recordings to date is the club-footed honkytonk rhythm section on OJAS's Stations. Maybe it nagged at Denison too as it's gorgeously redrawn here with gliding slivers of lap steel and choice harmonies from Krista Yutzy-Burkey. She's one of a shifting cast of highly sympathetic players - including instrumental band The Six Parts Seven - who help to colour in Denison's compositions. (As too does the conspicuously lush packaging, Brady Sanders' photographic images of Philadelphia so glossily rendered as to seem freshly lifted from the developing tray.)

You may by now have gathered that DW is a bit of a star round these parts. At the moment it feels like the most exclusive of UK clubs but a quick trip to BurntToastVinyl and you can be in. Do it today; in fact, do it right now!

Still a distinctly cult-ish alt-folk figure, it'll be v. interesting to see how many people Nina Nastasia draws to the Union Chapel on Dec 5...

...while, six days later, the Lyle Lovett's 'special guest' at the Barbican [Beyond Nashville] will be Caitlin Cary. Best of all, she's then doing a free set on the 'club stage' at 11pm.

Catch up with ex-pat countryfried rockers Minibar in interview and extended live session last week at KCRW Los Angeles...

To the Arts Cafe for Unwed Sailor. Great as Johnathan Ford's instrumental indie-rocking trio were, reallyrather has to confess that the most enduring memory of the evening is that of Maude, bass-player with supporting Swiss band Toboggan. A diminuitive Pre-Raphaelite vision in baggy jeans and boots, she held this blog's attention longer than any bass player since..oooh..Hem's Catherine Popper last week, actually. But the interest wasn't entirely superficial since Toboggan's brand of (largely instrumental) ambient 'post-rock' gives the bass a far more involved role than merely rooting the sound. Playing a lot of arpeggiated chords around the top half of the neck, Maude's bass was more in harness with guitarist Valerie than Jeremy the drummer (can't really remember what he looks like - funny that) in producing their attractively unpredictable sound. Calmly deliberate, slightly off-kilter, their's is a distinctly European coolness and they made plenty of friends on the night.
Johnathan Ford is also a striking bass-player, rather too literally so if you're close to the stage as he stands side-on, swinging the guitar neck with abandon. In an all-too-short set Unwed Sailor whipped up some shimmering, thrilling crescendos, kind of how Wheat might sound live if they weren't song-oriented. Cherry-picking their enduring '01 album Faithful anchor, House of hope, Our nights and Golden cities (with slide guitar assists from Tobaggan's Valerie) all shone. Highly melodic instrumental rock with no artsy obtuseness in sight. Recommended...

...as is another new release on their label BurntToastVinyl. Just when it was beginning to look like Pedro the Lion was cruising unopposed to the reallyrather year's best title, Denison Witmer steps up to the plate with Philadelphia songs. So, can this album of 31 minutes and nine tracks, one of which appeared on his previous album, really be a contender? Watch this space...

So, whilst Nina Nastasia succeeded in matching her recorded sound at the Spitz [see previous post], this blog is happy to report that fellow New York outfit Hem surpassed theirs last Friday in Leicester, in one aspect particularly. Talking recently about their debut collection Rabbit songs with a friend who also has the album, reallyrather commented on how low down in the mix the vocal harmonies are. "Harmonies?," he replied, further making my point, "I thought it was just the woman singer". While it's completely understandable, when you discover a voice like Sally Ellyson's, to be keen not to want to distract from it, the live show proved they lose nothing but gain plenty when the other voices are faded up. This was evident right from the off, a warmly reverential version of The Tennessee waltz seeing Sally joined by one of the group's two principal vocal foils, guitarist Steve Curtis; he also featured to great effect on Jackson, one of the 5 songs covered on new EP I'm talking with my mouth. The sleevenotes to this confirm that Hem are now officially a six-piece with the post-Rabbit songs addition of drummer Mark Brotter and striking bass-player Catherine Popper. Wielding an electric upright bass and a soupcon of attitude, Popper was the group's other harmony provider, particularly helping make the sweetly rolling Stupid mouth shut one of the night's highlights. But any such selection would be fairly invidious as the whole thing was a joy more or less from beginning to end. Over a set of at least an hour-and-a-half, the eight-piece ensemble - guitar, mandolin, lap steel, piano, violin, bass and drums all wrapping themselves round the unwaveringly classy centrepiece of Sally Ellyson's voice - brought just about the band's entire recorded output to life with an unfussy warmth. Spot-on instrumental solos were injected into the familiar arrangements here and there, the band seemingly have good old time whilst never losing the easy grace that has quickly become their hallmark. And the fine musicality was overlain with rampant self-effacement. Several new songs were also trialed (Dance with me now darling?) and all augured extremely well for the second album. Do yourself (and all your friends & family) a favour and be sure to catch them when they're back over to promote it...

93 Feet East hosts Apples in Stereo plus Great Lakes on Nov 6. Neither of whom feature in the latest edition of fine UK music mag Comes with a smile (and accompanying cd), but Richard Buckner, Guided By Voices, The Handsome Family, Ben Kweller, Norfolk & Western, Sarah Harmer and a load of others do...

'There is no denying that [she] has one of the most distinctive, hauntingly beautiful voices most of us will ever hear, but even that can't hide the fact that we could just as easily be listening to the album at home, since the band creates absolutely no atmosphere or chemistry' - dotmusic on the apparently underwhelming experience of Hope Sandoval live in London. It's not unreasonable to hope that an act might take their recorded sound further in concert, of course, but reallyrather travelled across town last Tuesday night merely in the hope that Nina Nastasia could get anywhere close to replicating the vibe that haunts her latest album The blackened air. (These two artists aren't actually too far apart in the great scheme of things, inhabiting the various interconnecting 'folk-pop' branches of the Tree of Rock. But where Sandoval might be the elusive, vaguely exotic creature stalking the lusher reaches, Nastasia would be more starkly visible, silhouetted up on a lightening-charred bough.) Happily, this blog can report that she pretty much pulled it off. The venue can make a difference, of course; 'atmosphere' is rather easier to generate in the relatively intimate confines of The Spitz than traditional fixed-seat auditorium of the Bloomsbury Threatre (ample leg room or no ample leg room). Resembling perhaps an off-duty nun, Ms Nastasia and her 4-piece band took the stage before a coolly reverent crowd, her (mostly) acoustic guitar supported by cello, accordian, viola and fizzling electric guitar. Between them this ensemble conjured up the creaky, wheezing rhythms captured by on disc by Steve Albini, Nastasia's low-key but assertive voice and guitar easily holding the attentions of a packed room. At one point, as the cellist plucked an intro, the hush was particularly conspicuous, a respect unfortunately all too rare in stand-up rock venues of this sort. Most of The blackened air's highlights were featured (ie pretty much the whole album), the band encoring with In the graveyard and the lovely Little angel. Presuming most of the other songs were taken from Dogs, her hard-to-find debut, reallyrather has already pre-spent this Christmas' anticipated record token - Dogs gets re-released here in January...

Meanwhile...
..Spoon will play the same venue on Nov 29 ... bit of a collector's item at the Golden Lion, Camden this Sunday where Canada's Hayden is scheduled for a free showcase ... Saddle Creek offer up a couple of rather promising sample tracks from Rilo Kiley's upcoming The execution of all things ... and Jackpot have had all their gear stolen in Austin: “A lot of the stuff had sentimental value, guitars and amps that we’d had since we were teenagers, our first instruments we’d bought that weren’t Christmas presents. It sucks, but we have a record that just came out, and we have to tour.”