Tag: folk music

  • Kids playing music

    I’m not quite sure why I decided to give Phoebe Bridgers a whirl yesterday on recommendation by The Guardian. I am not her target audience, so maybe it was was the description of her sound as “folk” that caught my attention.

    Whatever the reason, I ended up watching the official video for her new single and thought, “Huh, not bad.” It reminded me of the late 90s Lilith Faire sounds that were making the rounds on the somewhat progressive radio stations of the time. A nice change of pace from what I’ve been mostly hearing for the two decades or so. I always appreciate a retro feel (good gods, I’m now retro!). A little slicker than I usually like, but most things are slicker in the digital age than I usually prefer. The conceptual official video was also a nice change of pace from the plotless stage (or inside of cheese-grater) videos that most folks do these days.

    Anyway, I was feeling like a potato and doing potato kinds of things, I started watching YouTube videos on the big television. And, because it is YouTube and I watched on video of Phoebe Bridgers, I obviously wanted to watch more of the same.

    A live video came up of a live show performance and I thought I’d see how she sounded live. It’s a potato thing to do when one is potatoing.

    I was expecting live — I was not expecting kids to be her supporting band.

    Kids.

    Like 10-12 year old kids.

    And they knocked that shit out of the park and into the next county.

    I mean, that 10-year-old drummer is banging on those skins like a champ. I absolutely love her energy.

    Give it a whirl. Turn off the sound if the music doesn’t appeal and just be impressed with the ear-to-ear smiles of kids performing live as if they are having the time of their lives. If you really don’t care for it, jump to the end when Jimmy is shaking everyone’s hands. That’s worth a ton right there.

    What a joy to watch kids just being kids and being awesome!

    But I’m weird that way. I’m mostly potato.

  • songlets — may faire

    It was a bit of a surprise when an old song I had written way back when the dinosaurs still roamed the earth came into my head yesterday and wouldn’t get out. Much to my amazement, when I pulled out the guitar, the chord progression and rough playing style came back to me almost instantly.

    For a bit of perspective, the song, “May Faire” has never been performed. So, it’s not like I spent uncountable hours rehearsing the song. I may have toyed around with it whenever I could not come up with something new for a few years, but it was not on the forefront of my thinking.

    (more…)

  • Towards the Within — Ulvetime (Hour of the Wolf)

    Interestingly enough, the YouTube algorithm brought me back full circle on a music listening binge and decided that I probably had enough of that fancy and schmancy post-punk modern stuff in English and decided to point me back at something more along the lines of modern non-English folk with real instruments and minimal production on the overall sound.

    Trigger warning: Song contains Northern European folk sounds that feel old enough to be tribal in essence. May contain ethnic instruments and little to no electronic music to sooth the transition.

    Upon listening, I figured, who am I to argue with such a suggestion? Which brings me to Sonleikr’s Ulvetime. If you look at the song title with crossed eyes and think really hard to the Old Norse language course you started but never finished, you can pick out a translation: ulve (Danish) from ulfr (Old Norse) which obviously means “wolf”. And time (Danish) is equally obvious as “hour”.

    I always knew you were clever.

    (more…)