Psychedlia meets funk in The Flaming Lips; A Pink Floyd cover from Ambulance LTD; Japan's imaginative Yoshida Brothers; Classic railroad songs from Furry Lewis; The way we try from Birdie Busch; An ode to a forgotten time by Peter Mulvey; The remarkable voice of Tom Brosseau; Brilliant ramblings from Kimya Dawson.
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The Flaming Lips, Furry Lewis, Tom Brosseau
The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
The Flaming Lips are Oklahoma's most famous art rockers and have been making music that both challenges and inspires for nearly a quarter century. Their latest CD is a mix of multi-layered psychedlia and spacey rock.
Fearless
Ambulance LTD is a New York rock group. On their new EP they offer a few new tracks and one beautifully constructed cover of Pink Floyd's "Fearless," a song that originally appeared on the 1971 LP Meddle.
Overland Blues
The Yoshida Brothers are from Japan and play the ancient Tsugaru-shamisen. It's an instrument similar to three-stringed banjo. Wearing traditional Japanese clothing, the brothers sport dyed, spiked hair and play with the spirit of Jimi Hendrix, while incorporating jazz-like improvisation and pop-rock sensibilities.
Kassie Jones
Known for its exhaustive and inspired collections of hard-to-find music, the Smithsonian Folkways label compiles classic railroad songs for its latest collection. The work songs and ballads inspired crews as they laid tracks from coast to coast. Furry Lewis is one of several artists featured on these vintage recordings.
The Cup
Birdie Busch is a singer-songwriter from Philadelphia. She says, "I made the executive decision that something would gather itself in song and started telling my life's experiences through words and melodies, rhythms and rhyme."
Abilene (The Eisenhower Waltz)
Peter Mulvey is a contemporary folk singer originally from Wisconsin. On his ninth album, Mulvey offers subtle but effective twists on traditional folk themes with clever rhyming schemes and surprising melodies.
The Young and the Free
If you didn't know better, you'd swear the voice on Tom Brosseau's self-titled album was a woman's. But the lonesome, lilting call belongs entirely to the North Dakota native. Brosseau writes songs of lost love that shimmer, drawing on influences like Nick Drake, Cole Porter, and Woody Guthrie.
12/26
Kimya Dawson is a Seattle singer-songwriter and one of the leading voices in the so-called anti-folk movement. Her music is both sweet and brash, funny and poignant. Her ideas come so quickly, she doesn't sing them as much as babble them like stream of consciousness.