InRadio 3.1 Old Friends, May/June 2005

To hear these and other great artists, order now.

Tinariwen
Calabash Music
The first and only group of nomadic Malian rebel-fighters-turned-musicians we've featured, Tinariwen are back on InRadio 13 with their mix electric blues and traditional Touareg sounds. In 200l, Tinariwen were instrumental in the founding of the now-annual Festival in the Desert, an African music celebration from which their original track for InRadio 4 in Nov/Dec 2003 was culled. Since then, Tinariwen's star has only shown brighter. They've been busy touring all over the Western world, and recently recorded their second full-length, Amassakoul, to widespread critical acclaim.


Josh Ritter
Signature Sounds Recordings
Though an American born and bred, singer-songwriter Josh Ritter, another InRadio 4 artist, has also seen his star shine brightest abroad. Ritter emerged as a genuine cult figure in Ireland after touring there with Irish buzz band the Frames. In a 2005 Reader's Poll in Hot Press, the Irish NME, Ritter was voted best international songwriter, ahead of better-known artists like Chris Martin of Coldplay, PJ Harvey and Bob Dylan. Ritter's even got his very own cover band in Cork. Now, with his recent move to from the little Signature Sounds label to the larger V2, Ritter's reputation looks to blossom at home in the U.S. February 2005 saw the release of a new live album, 4 Songs Live, as well as the re-release of his career launching Hello Starling on V2.


Andrew Bird
Grimsey Records
Is it orchestral rock? Chamber pop? Gypsy folk? Andrew Bird's musical influences are buried in his belly, while he wears only his heart on his sleeve. That is to say, Bird's music is uniquely unclassifiable, emotive and literate, and unreasonably good. While many artists break their backs hammering away at a single type of music, Bird swoops between genres with a measuring cup, metering out bits of musical history and inventing his own recipe of eccentric pop.

On his fifth album, The Mysterious Production of Eggs, Bird hatches great song after great song with little obvious relationship to one another. In that way, Bird's songs are like eggs: each labored over and impeccably polished, yet each a self-contained unit conceived in isolation from its brethren.

Live, Bird is just as impressive. Playing violin, electric guitar, and glockenspiel, whistling and singing, he records samples one by one, layering them precariously until they threaten to tumble. "Every night," says Bird, "I am rewriting all my songs for the audience."


Lascivious Biddies
The bubbly glee that ices the Lascivious Biddies' confection of jazz, pop, and cabaret is the most immediately noticeable-and ultimately misleading-aspect of their music. At first listen, the all-female quartet's songs come off like the soundtrack to a film where a country bumpkin visits New York City for the first time, all naiveté and wide-eyed wonderment. But while one of the Biddies is indeed an Idaho native, the four are well-trained musicians and tough, long-time New Yorkers with impressive chops to back up the Christmas cheer. Most of the Biddies play in other musical groups as well; they're featured on the roster of Carnegie Hall's Neighborhood Concert Series, and they've even played the Kennedy Center.

The Biddies second full-length, "Get Lucky" is a mix of originals and eclectic covers, including The Smiths "Ask" in four-part harmony and Leslie Gore's infectious classic, "You Don't Own Me."


Corey Harris
Rounder Records
An achieved intellectual, a roots musician who digs nearer the source than most, Corey Harris is blues player who transcends stereotypes while keeping the spirit of down home acoustic blues alive. Like another of our featured artists, Tinariwen-African musicians who adopted rock aspects into their traditional blues-Harris is interested in the link between the blues as it originated in Africa and the blues as it developed half a world away in America. Harris has studied music in Africa several times, initially while on Watson Fellowship to study Pidgin English in Cameroon.

In the three years since the release of his last studio album, Downhome Sophisticate, Harris has led the life of a musical explorer, traveling and listening all over the world. As the star of Martin Scorsese's segment of the PBS series, The Blues, Harris traveled to Mali to play with Ali Farka Toure, a voyage he repeated for his album of field recordings called Mississippi to Mali. Of his 2005 release, Daily Bread, from which our featured track, "The Peach" is culled, Harris says, "I've often talked about the blueprint of music. With Daily Bread, we went back to the blueprint and put together a new sound."


Zykos
Austin Texas' Zykos are the sole ambassadors of flat-out rock 'n roll on InRadio 13, and "Above the Map" packs a healthy punch. Stretching thick layers of moody atmosphere over a solid framework of anthemic indie rock, "Above the Map" is as propulsive as Zykos' career at the moment.

Zykos are one of those sweet rock bands whose members have been friends since they first picked up their instruments. "Four of the five of us grew up together," says Mike Booher, Zykos' frontman. "I even lived on the same street with [keyboardist] Catherine [Davis] and [bassist] Mike [Roeder]." With their eponymous sophomore release, Zykos have gotten even tighter: "They sound like they could be the next big thing," says AllMusic. "Matured since 2003's Comedy Horn, the group has honed its raw talent into songs that are explosive and exposed (like "Mrs.") or sadly beautiful ("Dark Tan")." Zykos will be touring throughout the U.S. this summer in support of their new album.


Out Hud
Kranky Records
With three of five band members playing in that other white-hot New York City dance band, !!!, its been a busy couple of years for Out Hud. While, like many bands, Out Hud got their feet wet touring locally in a beat-up van, they've since traversed the U.S. and Europe, presumably via more accommodating means. Perhaps the title of their recently released, eagerly anticipated sophomore album, "Let Us Never Speak of It Again," is a reference to those early salad days of slushies and beef jerky in the tour van; with the reviews the album is getting, that chapter of Out Hud history indeed seems all but sealed. (One notably quirky/rabid ode from the British music site milkfactory.co.uk reads: "Out Hud are the new spandex. Out Hud are the new grey. They're the floppy fringe brushed out of your eyes just in time to let the spring sunshine blind you. They're the song humming around your head. They're a lot of fun." What is there left to say?)

Somewhere between the last album and Let Us Never Speak of It Again, Out Hud ditched the drum kit in favor of "lots of machines" and began featuring the vocals of their two female members prominently. The result is an album much more obviously influenced by a house music, a dance-punk party for the head-nodding set.


Bettie Serveert
Hidden Agenda/ Parasol Records
Bettie Serveert is not the name of the frontwoman of this slick Dutch pop band; rather, it translates to "Bettie served," serving as in tennis. Matador Records writes that the name was suggested by, "drummer Berend Dubbe, who had seen a tennis-instruction book by famous Dutch tennis player Bettie Stove. This book, with its blatant undercurrents of eroticism, reached its feverish peak in the photo of Bettie serving, her flimsy up and down, and her entire body thrusting forward in one surging cataclysmal jolt of pure sensual power. A stunning parallel to the band's music. Or that's at least what Berend told me after a night of refreshing beverages at a local bar."

Bettie Serveert formed briefly in1986, only to break-up due to other musical commitments by band members. They reunited in 1991 and released Palomine, an album that made them near-stars-alongside better known like R.E.M. and the DBs-in the jangle pop/college rock movement of the time. They've since released numerous albums, including the well received, 2005 release Attagirl.


Kathleen Edwards
Rounder Records / Maple Music Recordings
Canadian Kathleen Edwards has been blessed with a rapid success afforded few singer-songwriters. She recorded her first EP, Building 55, in 1999, pressing only 500 copies. But the album nonetheless garnered attention, and by fall 2000 she was driving herself around Canada in an old Suburban and booking her own gigs at clubs. Then came her first proper album, Failer. Recorded in the aftermath of a breakup, the title may embody her sour feelings at the end of love, but does not do justice to the music contained therein. In fact, Failer was so successful that Edwards soon found herself on tour with the likes of Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. Since then, Edwards has continued to tour ferociously-she played 200 live dates and 2 years-all the while working on new material. Edward's second album, Back to Me, was released in early 2005.


Happy Apple
Sunnyside
The Peace Between Our Companies is the sixth album from the Minneapolis-based jazz trio Happy Apple. Named after a child's toy from the 60s, the group is just one of many cutting-edge projects the members split their time between, including other noted groups like the Bad Plus and Halloween, Alaska (another former InRadio featured artist).

Says AllMusic.com of their most recent record: "Their clever and melodic small-combo improvisations have been termed "jazz punk," but Happy Apple has a grasp of the entire history of jazz, and the trio's elegant free-bop compositions are full of haunting melodies, delightful flashes of humor, and intelligent, coherent construction."


Dirty Dozen Brass Band
Ropeadope
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band dates all the way back to 1977, when the Dirty Dozen Social and Pleasure Club in New Orleans began showcasing traditional brass band music. Says DDBB of its origins: "It was a joining of two proud, but antiquated, traditions at the time: social and pleasure clubs dated back over a century to a time when black southerners could rarely afford life insurance, and the clubs would provide proper funeral arrangements. Brass bands, early predecessors of jazz as we know it, would often follow the funeral procession playing somber dirges, then once the family of the deceased was out of earshot, burst into jubilant dance tunes as casual onlookers danced in the streets."

Nearly 30 years later, only four members of the original line-up remain, but the DDBB has become something of an institution. The DDBB find themselves touring nearly constantly in the U.S. and in over 30 countries on 5 continents (they recently returned from a two-week tour of Japan and Guam). They've played with the likes of David Bowie, Elvis Costello, and Modest Mouse, Dizzy Gillespie and Branford Marsalis. The city of New Orleans even has an official Dirty Dozen Brass Band Day. How many musical groups can claim such an honor?


Redbird
Redbird is not a group per se, but rather a loose association of three accomplished songwriters who found affinity playing together. In early 2003, Kris Delmhorst, Jeffrey Foucault and Peter Mulvey did a series of shows on the same bill in England. They began playing together informally during the downtime between shows, and those jam sessions progressed until an joint album became the next logical step.

Delmhorst is a native of Brooklyn, while Foucault and Mulvey both grew up in Wisconsin. Each have released solo albums and continue to play and record in that capacity. Redbird's self-titled release may be the only one the trio ever makes together, but there is no denying their power as a group. "The trio has chosen wisely and sequenced beautifully a set of tunes that is transcendent," says No Depression magazine. "The originals are carefully crafted and delicate...standard[s] are given new lyrical poignancy and musical vitality."


Warsaw Village Band
World Village Records
Beneath the traditional Polish music sounds on our featured track from the Warsaw Village Band, "In the Forest," you'll hear the more modern sound of a DJ scratching records. This unlikely pairing is symbolic of the aesthetic of the WVB: "hardcore folk" or "bio techno," in their own lexicon. Against the inward flow of Western pop music and new world music sounds in Poland, the WVB are connecting tradition with new ideas in order to keep Polish music alive at home and appealing to music fans abroad.

The WVB followed up their well-received album, People's Spring (which won them the Best Newcomer trophy at the 2004 BBC Awards from World Music) with 2005's Uprooting. The album retains the WVB's signature sound, which infuses folk dances, ballads and traditionals with a punk aesthetic that betrays the youth of the six group members. With all the musicians between 16 and 25 years old, there is no reason not to expect more great things from the WVB in the years to come.


Shearwater
Misra Records
"Shearwater's third mixes country and pop, sadness and beauty, into one singularly enthralling whole," according to Mojo for Music. And Other Music writes, "Shearwater's narrative style is certainly influenced by folk but rounded out by chamber pop and Americana sensibilities. Everybody Makes Mistakes will fit nicely on the same shelf as your Low, Neutral Milk Hotel and Will Oldham albums. Very beautiful."


Shipping News
The Shipping News came to be in a manner different from most rock bands. The two founding members, bassist Jason Noble and guitarist Jeff Mueller, began working together while writing music for the popular NPR program This American Life. A highly literate bunch (they're named after an E. Annie Proulx novel) and politically outspoken to boot (check out their site at http://www.southern.com for a healthy Bush Administration tirade), the headiness of the three fellows is evident in the complicated arrangements of their deliberate math rock. Flies the Fields is the third record from the Shipping News.