Minor miracles of our age No.418:
Feb 17 is most definitely a landmark day in the capital and no, it's nothing to do with it being Day One of the Congestion Charge. Direct from Philadelphia, her-e-e-e's Denison! Yep, as trailed earlier, blog hero Denison Witmer plays a debut acoustic date at the 12 Bar. A dealer in the choicest coffeehouse consolations, he's making the effort and so, really, should you...

Almost a month gone and still to make your first new music purchase of '03? reallyrather may have just the thing. Though there are some promising releases on the horizon, 2002 music will inevitably hang around for quite a while yet, particularly given the slow creep of self-released albums such as ...Current or the tide by an oufit calling itself Narrowcasting. Conflating the handful of reviews this record has so far picked up, '...Current Or the Tide is a fully realized collection of anti-folk songs...melodic rock with a dreamy haze circling around it...a miraculously solid album...seems to fall right into that area that Gram Parsons called "Cosmic American Music."' Given the way this recording apparently came together, 'miraculous' isn't too much of an overstatement. Briefly, American Charles Maynes spends time in Moscow, hooks up with a few musically kindred spirits in his downtime and together they assemble their compositions on a 4-track for total cost of about $100. Totally embarrassing bands spending thousands of pounds on studio time, this ad hoc ensemble evince the same kind of musical and sonic surety as, say, Gingersol did on their first full album.
Where Nothing stops moving had a rootsy undertow, Narrowcasting's music leans folkwards. A fine mesh of acoustic & gnarly electric guitars fleshes out many of the tracks, topped off here and there by some deft, ambient solos. That the only cover in the set, Big Star's Blue moon, seems here to be melodically a bit below par is some indication of the standard maintained. At the heart of the collection are a set of chimey, shimmering pop-rockers - Paris air show, Someday Looking St. and Ostankino - with distinct echoes of the likes of REM and the Vigilantes of Love. There's some whooshing, driving indie-pop in Foreign corresponding, dreamy ambient folk (title track, If and I...) and Without a map has a great little Santo&Johnny-esque guitar solo tapping into the same retro vein Richard Hawley is currently mining. Scratching around for negatives, some of the vocals/lyrics are slightly indistinct and the instrumental A seconding salvo comes over a bit Dave Matthews in places, but only a bit! An unassuming little marvel, ...Current or the tide is pretty well unreservedly recommended. Buy it at CDBaby or better still send your $15 to Charles direct...

Talking of CDBaby, the latest Phoenix New Times has a good feature on this estimable retailer of the great unsigned : "Nobody here drives a Maserati," a staffer states, reassuringly...

Those rumbustious folk-rockers from Denton, Tx. Little Grizzly play a hometown date with Knife in the Water this Tuesday. As if this wasn't tasty enough, opening the show is touted Austin combo Western Keys who're making friends rather quickly it would seem...

From this week's St.Louis Riverfront Times, another update from planet Nadine: 'The band sent approximately 250 copies of the CD [Strange seasons] to labels and is beginning to get some positive feedback. "We're such a dorky band," Adam Reichmann says, laughing. "We're not even susceptible to trends because I don't even know if we're cool enough to know what's going on. Whenever this thing comes out, it's gonna show up the same way."