Mastria

  We Both Can Fall, by Michellar, touched up by the haunting hand of Gracie Lou, falls about you like a fading quilt in the hush of the midnight, like a soft blanket against the moaning of the storms within us that will not allow us to sleep. It sticks, this song in the soul, with a bare reality that lingers way beyond its notes have faded into sound, and which is tugging at the fibers of our own suppressed suffering. Michellar, born of the throbbing heart of San Francisco as a phoenix in the ruins of forgotten things, in this tender ballad, puts all the pieces of her life together, the delicate petals of love rubbing against the thorns of unrelinquishing hope, and reminding me of all those unspoken wars we all wage in the name of union. The voices are interwoven with weariness and warmth, Gracie Lou weaving in strands like confessions whispered in low lamps, tugging that cosy aching in the chest, as though old wounds are being stitched up again to be healed. The pedal steel moans ...

When you see yourself in the mirror and see someone you have never met staring back at you, it trembles your very soul. Clinton Belcher has been familiar with this terror and in Save Me From Myself he does not just accept it but he goes straight into that terror with no hesitation. You can sense the burden he is carrying with you, even with the first notes. His voice comes in just over a whisper, it is nearly a scream, it seems to be marshaling every bit of strength to finally utter a truth that he has been fleeing. Then everything transforms. The guitars start to throb with injured intensity, and drums come on like a person smashing his way through a barrier that he has made himself. At that point, you no longer listen to a person but a witness to somebody who is completely naked in front of you. The strength of this song is that it does not attempt to conceal the roughness. Belcher is using the gospel fire of Jason Crabb and the outlaw honesty of Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash and m...

Eylsia Nicolas provides us precisely what the world of the holiday music did not know it was lacking: the right to make Christmas whatever you please. Hot, Hot Christmas comes in with a smile and it is full of life and happiness, a song that brings tinsel and palm trees together as they should be. Even in the very first notes it is warm, the sunlight streaming through the clouds warm. The instruments shine and jump brightening the sorrow of a gray winter afternoon. And then there is the voice of Eylsia : self-confident, jokingly, full of character as though she is bending over you to dare you to have a good time, to take off the boots and put in the flip-flops and leave the snow to the sand between the toes. It is not that the sunny twist on tradition is what makes this song stick in your chest, it is the fact the song is so real. It is not a stunt or a new thing. Eylsia has established a setting in which there is no cocoa, but margaritas, no Christmas magic of beaches and oce...

be nice princess stalks in like when you finally realise that a relationship has been straining you silently all this time. Julia Kate opens frailty, almost whispering, like you talk when you are still trying to be polite, yet you do not want to cause any disturbance. Then the beat comes, sharp and without fear and her vocal just has enough metal to make the hurt felt without losing its natural appeal. Those glittering guitars shine like the polish you put on when you are hurting on the inside and you know that you should not show it, and the percussion hits like the dawning realisation that being constant accommodator has taken a lot more than you ever cared to notice. Whenever the chorus explodes it is the complete emotional relief, like closing the door behind you that you have kept open this long and unreasonable time. It is filled with pain, but it is no less than infused with that exhilarating feeling of being able to put yourself first at last. I heard it first when I was cleari...

I lost the needle on Mystic Highway EP by DownTown Mystic and immediately I am brought back to the time when I was driving along a backroad, the windows open, and I am speeding at some terribly forgotten backroad that is now there by feeling alone. Robert Allen does not just create songs he brings back something that is essential and drives it directly into the present. Modern Ways song opens with a bang of a classic rock riffling on time-tested guitar sound, Steve Holley pounding on with percussion that is urgent, and Garry Tallent and Max Weinberg sliding into that inimitable driving beat. It is pure motor ecstasy, that which is the reason to smile and then your thought catches up on why you are smiling. Then Lost and Found is lowered into a more gritty field, more edgy, more weathered, heartland rock through East Coast grit. Guitars are biting, harmonies rolling in like voices known to many and filling the vacated chairs, and you have the sense of Allen driving the curves of a story...

  Seven Cities of Gold is a sense of stumbling into open moorland at the loss of daylight, the breeze blowing stories that were in existence long before draw lines came to be made. The voice of Julie July is crystalline and controlled over the terrain, unhurried yet compelling, and pulls you towards it like distant flame that drags you through the increasing darkness. Her delivery is so legendarily deep as though she is guiding you to a shiny edge that always goes slightly out of reach of your fingertips. Then up comes the whole band: the acoustic guitars shining like silver on a running wave, the electric strings spiralling and flickering like storms surging over distant hills, and those five-part harmonies floating in like messages of lost times. The passages of the guitar are floating along with gracefully gentle restraint--reverberations of old fingerpicking, yet more familiar and less harsh--images of vast wayside and of legends half melted away by the ages. Every twist to the...

Game Over strikes as much as you finally get out of the place of a person that has been sucking you too long. Damien Musto does not rant with anger, he allows the hurt to develop slowly, the manner in which damage comes to light days after the first hit. That construction of whisper to roar is like being in an empty room after everybody has gone and realizing that the performance was not about you at all. The guitar comes in ethereal and haunting, and scampering over the percussion like the clouds in the dark. It has Garden State rock heritage running through it--heartland emotion and broad soundscapes--but Musto puts it through a grinder until it comes out very personal and cutting. Another layer turns out to be another unwanted memory that is to be recalled, something that cannot be ignored no matter how much you would love to. That nakedness is almost too harsh to forget the point when I realized that a relationship was transactional. Musto presents it as though he is doing it to a ...

Fire eye does not come--it goes off. One flash, the crackle of ignition, and then there is explosive percussion, which rips through and Piranha Piranha charge forward as they have found something important and have only a few minutes to share it. The riff is slicing serrated steel and it is thick and merciful and it is driven by a rhythm section that hits like a heart shocking into life. All is dangerously hot, but of crystal clearness--all the strokes of the cymbals and the blows of the bass fall accurately where they burn most. The singer sounds like he is talking into a fire and his voice is torn apart by realization, both warning and exulting. The heat radiates through you can really feel it. This is not measured rock this is three Akron musicians who have seen something huge and have come back changed beyond recognition screaming their message. Guitars scowl and rise, drums have no mercy and every collision of the choruses is the feeling of reality being torn apart again. I have d...

Orphan Lament is like the person is walking into an old church hours after everyone has left and there is only a faint foot-step and a single candle that is still flickering. The baritone of Johann Le Roux comes out heavy and intentional as the smoke of wood in hidden corners, every note filled with something formless and not describable. You do not listen, you feel the ground itself recalling all the sorrows that have ever gone. Fingerpicked guitar of Romuald Ballet-Baz in its response is patient as wind in open highlands, delicate, but persevering and pentatonic phrases surging and descending like breathing life. It is neither hurried nor overloaded--space, deep, holy space, in which the silences do as much to create meaning as the notes. It is minimalism and not the reduction but the revelation. I started listening in anticipation of a faithful interpretation and what I got was more or less communion. It is no homage to appearance, but three Breton musicians, across time and space, ...

Arriving tenderly, as on a sudden of connecting to a quiet evening, intimate, grounding, with a touch of vulnerability, is Stuck in October. The uninhibited nature of Hunter Sheridan vocals develops an immediate intimacy of closeness as though he is sharing something personal right in front of you and as his vocal shunts occasionally when it comes to the worry of losing someone who cannot be replaced. The piano starts softly and relaxed, and slowly as dying daylight, but then drums come with a rhythm that drives the song forward even though it trembles with insecurity. It balances stadium-fit feeling and very intimate self-disclosure, the kind of song that seems to have been birthed during those late hours when the soul is most vulnerable and when nothing that really matters is settled. Every crescando, every stratum of the atmosphere, every movement of dynamics reflects that tension between holding on and giving in to trust. I have gone back to it many more times on grey mornings when...