Just Like Waking Up Mix

“I was running through a bad dream, but now I’m waking up…”
-Lady Lamb the Beekeeper

I made this mix to cheer up a gloomy-rain/fog-clouded afternoon. I think it's working. Give it a try.

I like these songs because they achieve grandeur through relative simplicity; they sparkle with that rare ideal that is increasingly lacking in our marketing culture: authenticity.

The Boy Who Spoke Clouds is the moniker for Aussie Adam Casey. His sounds arrive at the hyper resonant acoustic aesthetic through Euro-folk along the lines of England's I Am Kloot (Hear the breathtaking Proof.) and Scotland's Meursault (Gorgeous folk cacaphony in Crank Resolutions.). TBWSC, compared to Steve Reich and envisioned perhaps more as "shamanic-folk" than folk pop or anti-folk, emerges from the largely slowcore electronic pre-chill-wave (:P) label Sun Sea Sky.
BWSC appears to spring from a different vein than Iowa native Laurel Sprengelmeyer of Little Scream, who is, perhaps, influenced more by Iowa's rich folk heritage (i.e. Greg Brown). Or there's Portland's Lady Lamb the Beekeeper. Look to Portland's Black Prairie for indications of some of Lady Lamb's melodic glamorously downplayed sound.
Cotton Jones (from once all-time-most-killer indie label Suicide Squeeze) and The Idaho Falls (California country western) help highlight the pop sweetness in this mix. CJ and IF sometimes realize the orchestration that the other singer-songwriters beautifully insinuate with their more tonal sounds and amped-up reverbs and delays.
I ended the mix with Damn Choir because lead singer Gordon Robertson hails from Ohio but is Scottish by heritage, thus an international folk ambassador of sorts for this collection of songs. Also, Katy Myers' outstanding cello parts in "Stars on Strings" capture the heady effect of the tonal echoes and orchestral insinuations heard in some of the other songs here. Katy also achieves an immediacy with her playing that gives the song room to breathe but prevents it from fluttering away altogether. This immediacy is elusive to many capable musicians and avoided by the capable but less courageous.


Little Scream – The Lamb

The Boy Who Spoke Clouds – Fill This Room

Cotton Jones – Egg On A Sea

The Idaho Falls - Hard Weather

Lady Lamb the Beekeeper – Almond Colored Sheets

The Damn Choir – Stars on Strings