Folky episode today! We start off with the new title for Bonnie Prince Billy, who collaborates with Three Queens in Mourning over in Scotland. Lydia Loveless over in Columbus, OH has a new single and so does Emma Ruth Rundle in LA. We introduce the new project for Daniel Romano, Alias Ensemble. Esther Rose from New Orleans is another new name for us today. Josh Klinghoffer, former guitarist in Red Hot Chilli Peppers has a solo project called Pluralone. Dive in!
The Third Mind – The Dolphins;
Bonnie Prince Billy – Dead Man’s Island;
Lydia Loveless – Love Is Not Enough;
Kim Simpson – Night Swirls In;
Fairport Convention – Time Will Show The Wiser;
Alias Ensemble – A Picture Of Perfume;
Three Queens in Mourning – Tonight’s Decision;
The Akibas – Down Along The Road;
Snowgoose – Hope;
Pluralone – Directrix;
Esther Rose – My Favorite Mistake;
Bob Dylan -Â I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You;
Leigh Gregory – Sweet Fifteen;
Marshall Chapman – Tennessee Blues;
Josefin Öhrn and The Liberation – Caramel Head;
Emma Ruth Rundle – Staying Power;
Fred and Rose – Piedra Y Camino.
Today we have the new music from Alejandro Escovedo who found his new collaborators in Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey. Will Oldham is back together with Trembling Bells, of course using his moniker Bonnie Prince Billy. His friend from many projects, Angel Olsen is also back with some new tunes. In addition to that we introduce Italian singer-songwriter Giulia Millanta, who nowadays lives and creates in Arizona. We also introduce new music from Purling Hiss and Mannequin Pussy (both bands from Philadelphia) and Bob Reuter’s Alley Ghost from St. Louis. We also pay respect to the country music songwriter Curly Putnam who passed away at the age of 85 last week.
Cover albums are a fad of this millennium. They give an artist a chance to show off their interpretive abilities and taste. Will Oldham’s new record is also an exercise in interpretation, but Oldham doesn’t go back to other people’s songs. He goes back three years behind, to his own album Wolfroy Goes To Town.
Every musical outlet out there has a year-end list. Little Lighthouse is not an exception, although the order should be understood conditionally. It does not rely on objective measurements, it simply compiles feeling towards albums that preoccupied my attention through 2014. Number one is Sweet Apple. Yours truly marginally participated in making of that record, and perhaps there’s a strong bias towards it for me. You would be right about that. But this particular record is a fun collection of songs without much pretension. What more can you ask from an LP? OBN IIIs and Liquor Store are great new bands which made ambitiously sounding records that rock. They even bring out a long forgotten idiom of hard rock, back into the modern rock’n’roll dictionary and it made me realize how much that sound is missed in the music world today. Together with some important reissues, these two albums mark the revival of that lost musical genre. Those two records are so rich with sounds and ideas that live performances of these two bands must be stripped down to a skeleton. Outragous Cherry has an astonishing return, with one of their best records ever. First Base and Strungs go back to the basic three chords and short songs – a formula that oh so often works great. Lydia Lunch calls out the ghost of Jeffrey Lee Pierce like no other artist before. Doug Gillard attempted to make a good easy listening record and ended up with a timeless masterpiece which will be remembered well in his opus. Billy Childs makes a loving tribute to Laura Nyro which borders madness and saccharine. Who’d have thought those two “lands” share a border? Kelley Mickwee and Haden Triplets show interesting ways to keep bluegrass alive and it trips my mind how most folks out there think negatively of this wonderful Haden Triplets record. Bonnie Prince Billy takes some old songs and brings in a new life to them with an incredibly focused interpretation… and so on. All the best in 2015, actually 2014 wasn’t that bad musically as it may appear on the surface.
We have a couple of interesting new albums today. Bonnie Prince Billy as a new record called Singer’s Grave a Sea of Tongues and it turns out to be a much more accessible version of his older album Wolfroy Goes to Town from three years ago. John Wesley Coleman III also has a new album which is a much more produced ordeal than his previous record (and I think that’s really a good direction for him). Chuck Prophet is back with Night Surfer LP which appears to be influenced by Ian Hunter’s songwriting style. Talking about Hunter, Mott The Hoople issued an excelled new double live record, recorded in 2013. Venerable bluesman Elvin Bishop also has a new record. In our segment Live in Cleveland, we introduce Cleveland band Shale Satans, who had an acoustic live set at our sponsor 
Several new records today… Kid Congo Powers plays nowadays with The Pink Monkey Birds and they have a new record out called Gorilla Rose. They also have a new single which they split with Hunx and His Punx (which we introduced in our previous epizode). Matt Sweeney and Bonnie Prince Billy also share the new single. Beastie Boys are back with Hot Sauce Committee Part Two which is their first album with vocals in seven years. New names today are Amanda Shires, a singer songwriter from mythical Lubbock TX, but now based in Nashville. Another band debuts at the Little Lighthouse from over in Nashville – Natural Child. We also have Raphael Saadiq for the first time today. The dude is a famous mainstream pop and hip hop producer, but now he has a new retro funky/soul record called Stone Rollin’ which I can really appreciate.