Archive for the 'Hope For Agoldensummer' Category

VideOverdose

Oh, man, with the green pollen tides of spring lapping against the bedroom doors of the world (and, no, I have no f-ing clue what that means), it would appear a pool of incessant distraction has overtaken Res. Hacks is somewhere in my ‘hood and I can’t find him, Trixie is doing…uh, things, probably (make your own joke *here*), and I am also doing things, but not the same things I’m normally doing, nor the same things Trixie’s doing. Truth be told, I’m not even trying that hard to find Hacks. He’s a big boy, he can take care of himself. Besides, if he gets too lost in his old stomping grounds, I’m sure the folks at Ed Banger pass out, like, Justice crucifi that can function akin to bat-symbols for deejays-in-distress.

Musically, there’s a lot to sort out around here, and to buy us some time, I thought I’d unload a few vid clips that are due by a minute, but not so overglazed as to be irrelevant, or even late.

The first two come courtesy of our Atlanta friends Criminal Records, from whence Record Store Day originated.

My new favorite band, Judi Chicago, performing “Chick Feeler” in the Crim parking lot on said Record Store Day:

My old favorite band, Hope For Agoldensummer, covering the Aaliyah jam “Are You That Somebody”, inside Criminal on Record Store Day:

And, finally, NOT at record store day (or at least not in America, but possibly in SweNordLand, the magical place of cupcakes, unicorns, rainbows and the best fucking pop music ever, where tap water tastes of raspberries), Lykke Li playing the most stripped version of “I’m Good I’ve Gone” you’ve yet heard, in the back of a cab

Resonator Mag: we’re not lazy, just busy and sober. More music coming soon.





Time will tell…TOMORROW

Wordsmiths Books, in Decatur, GA, has done a phenomenal job pairing literature and music.

Tomorrow (Monday, March 24th), though, they’ve outdone themselves, joining forces for the second time with southern lit-scene blog BabyGotBooks to pair the sweeping, pain-swept landscape of Hillary Jordan’s debut novel Mudbound with the similarly rural, achingly pretty sounds of Athens/Decatur junkyard soul trio Hope For AGoldenSummer.

I’ll leave it to the Wordsmiths blog to extol the virtues of Jordan’s novel, and I daresay that the last time I penned anything about the three ladies in Hope For Agoldensummer, I said nearly all I possibly could:

Together, Page Campbell, Claire Campbell and Deb Davis call themselves a “junkyard soul trio”, but they’re actually so much more. This is music that’s definitively southern, definitely rural, and reminiscent of a folk-art angel singing her heart out. At times, the territory tread by Hope For Agoldensummer is equal parts Cormac McCarthy and Flannery O’Connor with weaponry provided by Nick Cave-the sort of songs that hold knives behind their backs, lingering in sweetness just long enough to unveil the darkness lingering ‘neath. Other times, the songs are southern field gospel revivals, celebrating the sweaty southern pastures of life and love.

Then, though, the song was “4th Night”, an aching back-seat ode to the always-inevitable morning after.


Hope For Agoldensummer: Old Questions

In celebration of tomorrow, though, comes the jaunty, schoolyard-rhyme that is the closing moment to the sweepingly pretty Ariadne Thread album, “Old Questions”. Opening with the sound of a form of pattycake, Page, Claire and Deb pose the questions that make up the song’s title-questions on the nature of tried-and-true love. This song sounds dusty, sounds aged, sounds love-worn and rough around the edges, a little hazy as though the night’s just beginning.

And it’s wonderfully infectious, the perfect cap to the album’s darker moments and the perfect summation of the joy the ladies in Hope For Agoldensummer bring to their voices, their instruments, music itself.

There’s really no excuse to miss BGB Vol II tomorrow night at Wordsmiths, with Hillary Jordan, the Wayne Fishell Experiment and Hope For AGoldensummer.  Stuff gets started at 7:30 P.M. It’s a rare all-ages show, in Decatur, for free, with free drinks and with those gorgeous voices.





After the dreamland fire

It was our friends at Wordsmiths Books that first introduced me to Athens/Decatur, Georgia trio Hope For Agoldensummer, when they made the band’s gorgeously-packaged Ariadne Thread album the first CD stocked by the bookstore.

It’s taken a while, a good couple of months, for this album to begin nestling in my heart, wrapping itself deep and low around those guttural, blood-and-bone places that, when lingered in, makes music become part of the very fiber of being.

That’s the landscape, really, of the Hope For Agoldensummer sound.

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Together, Page Campbell, Claire Campbell and Deb Davis call themselves a “junkyard soul trio”, but they’re actually so much more. This is music that’s definitively southern, definitely rural, and reminiscent of a folk-art angel singing her heart out. At times, the territory tread by Hope For Agoldensummer is equal parts Cormac McCarthy and Flannery O’Connor with weaponry provided by Nick Cave-the sort of songs that hold knives behind their backs, lingering in sweetness just long enough to unveil the darkness lingering ‘neath. Other times, the songs are southern field gospel revivals, celebrating the sweaty southern pastures of life and love.

This song treads the territory of the morning after that is the latter, but only after passing through the darkened terrain of the former.

Hope For Agoldensummer: 4th Night

In my morning, things didn’t feel as they should-in my heart or in my head. It’s possible I guided iTunes to this song, but I have more faith in the fact that it was kinda chosen.

The thing with the soulful vocals, the soft finger-plucked instrumentation-it’s all so damn tangible, so damn human, so present. So much of the redemptive quality of all of Hope ForAgoldensummer’s music comes from that ever-present (even in darkness) humanity, and it’s what I didn’t know I needed this morning when this song found me.

Sometimes you just have to let it all go, let it all break, y’know?