Something made a long time ago that bears resemblance to something made today.
Just because something is vintage doesn’t mean it’s not hip with the times! Fashion is very cyclical and referential. Most likely, the styles we are digging today have been influenced by something from the past.
Today’s vintage version is inspired by this style board and American Apparel’s 1980′s infused tie waist collared crop.
Something made a long time ago that bears resemblance to something made today.
Just because something is vintage doesn’t mean it’s not hip with the times! Fashion is very cyclical and referential. Most likely, the styles we are digging today have been influenced by something from the past.
Today’s vintage version is inspired by these lovely retro-inspired colorful strappy kitten heel sandals found at modcloth.com.
By Seychelles. Taken from modcloth.com
Taken from modcloth.com
And, the vintage version:
Grand Abandon’s playful vintage strappy kitten heel wedges in bold primary colors.
S. Carey drenches his latest four-song EP with intoxicating atmospheric buildups and sweetly patient hesitation. Hoyas pours sparsely plucked guitar sequences over a glittering, echoing sonic desert to create a loose complexity fortified by the biding of time. With Hoyas, the Bon Iver drummer and accompanying vocalist, pinnacles on the sonorous by route of the avant-garde.
Hoyas is intonated specs of sand voyaging to a desert; the listener realizes something is happening when the EP reaches its culmination, but it’s almost indecipherable how the music made it to such an emotional peak. Carey employs some of the more extroverted instruments at his climaxes-horns, keys, drums-but it’s not an overt demand on the listener to feel excited. And this may be the wonder of S. Carey’s tinkering. He formulates emotion through a steady build of many parts. This holistic approach to the song-form asserts a refreshed appreciation for the little nuances—they are clearly calculated by a deliberate, impassioned vision. There is a clarity behind the dissonance—Carey layers sheets of discord in such a way they match up perfectly, creating a righteous harmony unmatched by even the polished perfection of cinematic scores. It is infinitely better though, because we aren’t told to feel a certain way before we have felt it for ourselves.
With “Two Angles” Carey utilizes porous beats and mowing electronics to culture the stage for his softly embedded vocals. As the beats drop faster—from a slow rain to a steady downpour—Carey’s vocals proceed in whisps and shaves cutting across each other. Electric guitar shudders in starts and stops, growing more confident with each measured outcry. Just in time, the horns belly up with pestering might and suddenly, with a speech in which they are convincing everyone of their cause—even themselves—delineate the ‘then’ from the ‘now.’ The music has gone through a major character development at its most fundamental part. There are not many people who make music like this—preserving the validity of a song through its ability to create even at is it is being created. In essence, S. Carey has created something that continues to create.
“Avalanche” shackles from the start. A drum whisks and a slight auto-tune filter whittles Carey’s basking cadence. A piano redirects. Vocals rest and wake up on one another. “Inspir” hypnotizes in a repetitive chant. Deeply resounding and articulate voice-in-the-sky prophecies truncate fanned moans, electronic blips, organ, and atmospheric wind tunnels. It’s one of those pay attention songs. Too concise to question, too captivating to walk away from unshaken. If there is any song that will make you a believer, it is this one. “Marfa” is a pretty, reflective closer, as expansive and eerily intoxicating as the namesake’s barren land and star-filled skies.
With Hoyas, S. Carey enters a new electronic territory, more sonically open to possibility and more certain on how to go about it. It’s a slow-burn listen that keeps on blooming, proving that limitations exist only in the mind of the beholder. Tear the plastic off this thing, because it’s breaking rules even as it sits sealed neatly in the socially edible contours of song structure.
Chunky stacked wood heels and heights cut close to the ankle impart a masterful mesh of clean modernity and bold femininity to the everyday boot. BCFootwear, Marais, and Jeffrey Campbell nod to walking on with mashed textures and re-purposed materials fashioned into not-so-basic booties full of nuanced charm. Closet-staples gone quirky-cool. Kick it up a notch:
“Eager Beaver” Booties from bcfootwear.com
“Heeled Chelsea Boot” by Marais bonadrag.com
“Heeled Chelsea Boot” by Marais taken from bonadrag.com
“Cleata” by Jeffrey Campbell taken from jeffreycampbellshoes.com
“Let all things be as they will.
Let my heart beat itself still.”
-Blind Pilot
My Heart Beat Itself Still Playlist
1. The Antlers – Drift Drive
2. Reptar – Water Runs
3. Anais Mitchell – Wait For Me (feat. Justin Vernon)
4. The Flaming Lips – Ashes In The Air (feat. Bon Iver)
5. The Middle East – Blood
6. James Blake – Fall Creek Boys Choir (feat. Justin Vernon)
7. David Bazan – Virginia
8. Nico Muhly – I Drink The Air Before Me: One Day Tells Its Tale To Another
9. Blind Pilot – Just One
10. Samamidon – Red
And The Ten Song Tuesday Bonus Track: Gardens & Villa – Gypsy (Fleetwood Mac Cover)
Sam Amidon opening for Bon Iver! This is great news. Find Sam Amidon’s full tour here. This Ten Song Tuesday features some of the wonderful tracks that Justin Vernon has collaborated on. There are also a few tracks by Samamidon and Nico Muhly, whom Sam Amidon collaborates with on many of his albums. Plus, there are a few more tunes on here that I just can’t get enough of lately.
I don’t know if it’s the breezy California Coast or George’s balmy breath, but lately I’ve been craving layers. Here are some cooler weather picks for winter dreaming on summer days.
Owen Ashworth, the quietly monumental talent behind Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, has brightened our lonesome hearts once again with his new release as Advance Base, A Shut-In’s Prayer. The frontman continues to carry a massive light and accompanying bushel with his new project, but the material feels different–wide-eyed, even. From the head-tossed tambourine fuzz of “Summer Music” to the palpable desperation of “Shut-In River Blues,” Ashworth purposes his signature lo-fi–the perfect marrow grittiness of raw musical exposition and an unencumbered yet hard-wrought perspective–into a complex, emotional carnival of recollected textures. At the core, Ashworth has taken very simple materials–a keyboard and words–and has built a musical village with them. We are listening. Owen Ashworth talks with Grand Abandon.
Taken from advancebasemusic.com
GA: A Shut-In’s Prayer is an interesting title and grabbed me on first take. Even before I knew it was you who was behind Advance Base. Even before listening to the album. I saw the title and was like, “I want to listen to that,” because it’s like this labyrinth idea that you can get very lost in. It seems to be a reference to essentially the most private form of acknowledging that one needs to belong to something bigger than just the self. But then the “prayer” is actually an album, which is actually an extremely public form of connecting to the context in which one resides. What does A Shut-In’s Prayer mean to you?
Owen: Thanks, I like it, too. I didn’t know what to call the album & then I remembered that I’d almost named a Casiotone for the Painfully Alone album A Shut-In’s Christmas. I thought about that title again, & then I read some definitions of “shut-in” on the internet & learned that a shut-in river was an Ozark term for some water that used to be a river but doesn’t go anywhere anymore. I thought that “Shut-In River Blues” would be a good name for the instrumental that ended the album, & then I thought about how the song “New Gospel” is basically about a shut-in person, & that was enough for me. There are some religious themes in “New Gospel” & I guess that was where I got the idea to call the whole thing A Shut-In’s Prayer. I searched the phrase “A Shut-In’s Prayer” on the internet to make sure that no one had beaten me to it, & discovered that it was the title of a bluegrass song. I found a nice recording by East Ohio Grass on YouTube, & as soon as I heard that thing, I felt good & decided that I’d figured out my title. It has a desperate & old-fashioned quality that appealed to me & seemed to suit the lonesome sound of the songs I’d recorded.
GA: I read that you recorded some of the album at the Chicago Public Library. What was that like? Did you go at a specific time of day?
Owen: My friend Ed Crouse played most of the upright piano on the album. It was his idea to record his parts in one of the piano rehearsal rooms at the Harold Washington branch of the Chicago Public Library. Ed & I took the train downtown early one morning & sat outside with coffee until the library opened. I handed over my driver’s license & signed a thing, & we were all set. I brought a digital field recorder & a drum machine to keep time & we recorded tracks for four of the songs on the album within a couple of hours. I thought it worked out great. I think the trick is getting in there really early before some other people start banging out Rodgers & Hammerstein songs in the adjacent rehearsal rooms.
GA: In your interview with Low Times you talk about when you first started making music and how you kept it a secret from everyone and felt embarrassed about it. Can you talk more about this?
Owen: I don’t feel embarrassed about my music exactly. I just feel embarrassed talking about it when there are so many other things to talk about. I don’t think that most people I encounter day to day really want to hear about some dumb songs I recorded. Unless somebody asks me about my music, I’d just rather talk to them about other things. My music is important to me & I’m proud of it, but it’s also personal, & it’s also my job, & those are two good reasons to not lead a conversation with, “I decided to put a tambourine on that song I wrote about my aunt.”
GA: You talk about familial ties and relationships forged during youth on the album. About growing apart and remembering those who knew you from the beginning. Why do you think this theme runs so strongly?
Owen: Having a baby inspired a lot of the family themes on the album. Most of the songs were written & recorded while my wife was pregnant, & during that time, we were having a lot of conversations with our parents about their lives when they were having kids, & about our childhoods & their childhoods & just all kinds of family stuff. There was a lot of nostalgia going on, while we were feeling very anxious & excited about our near future. “Goldfish In A Robin’s Nest” is probably the least literal song on the album, but it’s about waiting to have a kid.
GA: You write very specifically about setting. Whether it is in a deserted town on Christmas, near a kitchen with a boombox, in the pantry against the pancake mix, in a taxi cab, or next to neon lights, your music always takes place somewhere visceral and real. What informs this?
Owen: Environment tends to be the first thing I consider when I’m writing a song. There needs to be a place before anything can happen there. I just try to describe that place enough so the listener can imagine him or herself there. I think having that sense of location helps make the characters & actions more relatable.
GA: Your music has a very charming and endearingly unrefined lo-fi quality to it. The listener can hear imperfections, they can hear when your voice cracks from sing to speech, they can hear a soft fuzz sometime, sometime the music sounds far away. Why is it important to you to make your music this way?
Owen: I think in the same way that the places that I sing about in the lyrics are important, it’s also important to give some sense of the space where the music came from. All of those incidental noises & non-musical elements are to give the recordings a context & physicality.
GA: You’ve called your music perversely different than the moniker for Casiotone For The Painfully Alone. What about Advance Base? What nudged you into the direction of becoming Advance Base? How do you think you have changed as a musician? How do you think you have remained the same? Do you think change and the vitality of music are interrelated?
Owen: I don’t remember saying that exactly, but I think I probably meant that over the 13 years that I made music as Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, I perverted the initial intentions of the project. I started CFTPA with the idea that I’d only write torch songs, using only battery-powered keyboards, & only in the key of C. I loosened those restrictions after the first few albums, until I realized that the name just wasn’t relevant anymore. I didn’t start Advance Base with any kind of aesthetic designs. I think the new album sounds like a logical next step from the final CFTPA album, but I don’t know what that means for the next one. Everything I write winds up sounding like me, but my tastes & abilities have changed over the years, & I expect they’ll continue to change.
GA: In your interview of Mark Kozelek, he calls you a lyrical genius. It’s not quite the same as hearing this from Mark Kozelek, but I think you are too. How do you choose your words? Why are words important to music?
Owen: That is incredibly generous of you. I work really hard at my lyrics. I don’t think anyone is every going to put on my records because they think I’m a great singer. I try to make the words as interesting as I can muster to compensate for my lack of natural ability as a vocalist.
GA: What’s a lyric from Advance Base that reflects you as a lyricist? From Casiotone? Why?
Owen: I don’t think I have a good answer for this.
GA: The closing song on the A Shut-In’s Prayer, “Shut-In River Blues”, is poignant. And completely wordless. What inspired the placement of this instrumental track? What do you think the music is “saying” here?
Owen: “Shut-In River Blues” was the first piece of music that I recorded post-Casiotone. It owes a lot to the John Fahey tune “Sligo River Blues” in the sense that I basically stole the whole thing. I tried a few times to write words for it before deciding that I preferred it as an instrumental. I put it at the end of the record because I liked the way it echoed the piano melody of the first song on the album, only in a different key. I thought it gave the album a nice, cyclical feel.