• Former Portlander, now New Yorker, RACHEL GRIFFIN is one of 25 artists on a new CD of BRUCE HORNSBY covers, available for free download at salivatecd.com. Throw them a donation for ALS research while you're there.
• AMOS LIBBY (OKBARI) and MATT SCHREIBER (CINDER CONK) have a new project they're calling MALANDRINO, which will focus on folk songs from the "Mezzogiorno," or "Land of the Noonday Sun," which is southern Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia. Says Libby: "These songs tell the story of a culture that has often been voiceless in the face of poverty and alienation with simple but arresting melodies and heart-wrenching lyrics." First gig is June 11 at Blue, in Portland.
• DARIEN BRAHMS has officially started fundraising on Kickstarter for her fifth solo record, which will comprise songs she's written since the excellent Number 4, a time that has featured jaw-reconstruction surgery (ouch!). She's looking to put together $5000 and record at the STUDIO with STEVE DROWN. Deadline for donations is August 2. The disc should be done by spring 2012.
Related:
In an iPod world, Broadway goes vinyl, The good Doctor is in (and out, and in ...), Codeine Velvet Club | Codeine Velvet Club, More 
- In an iPod world, Broadway goes vinyl
Dave Lifrieri, owner of Analog Underground on Broadway, was in the eighth grade listening to Beatles and Led Zeppelin on vinyl when the CD player — and the inevitable avalanche of remasters — made their full arrival.
- The good Doctor is in (and out, and in ...)
Let's just allow that Doctor Astronaut is a digital maestro, an enjoyable and entertaining wordsmith, a progressive barrier crasher.
- Codeine Velvet Club | Codeine Velvet Club
Like a Glaswegian version of Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner’s Last Shadow Puppets , the Codeine Velvet Club project finds Jon Lawler of the Fratellis making retro-’60s supper-club pop with sweeping orchestral arrangements where the fuzzy guitars usually go.
- Freelance Whales | Weathervanes
Puritanical indie types unsettled by how well Owl City’s “Fireflies” fits on the new Radio Disney Jams 12 should comfort themselves with the debut from this suitably fringe-dwelling New York combo.
- Crystal Castles | Crystal Castles (2010)
The battlefield of ’00s electro-tantrum spazz-ravers is littered with the corpses of those who burned too brightly at the outset and, in the process, burned out any interest in a sustained career of noisemaking.
- Avi Buffalo | Avi Buffalo
Look, I get it: the last thing we need right now is yet another band who can be described as “sun-baked,” “reverb-soaked,” or even just “psychedelic.” But Avi Buffalo (I know! An animal name to boot!) are worth your attention for a few reasons.
- Thieves Like Us | Again and Again
When today’s musical magpies look back to the ’80s to steal the sonic shiny items that catch their ears’ fancy, they gravitate toward the Day-Glo sheen of that era’s false promise and anthemic vacuousness. Thieves Like Us, however, are not that breed of pilferer.
- Alex Chilton | Free Again: The ''1970'' Sessions
Post–Box Tops and pre-Big Star, Alex Chilton was an 18-year-old Memphis boy on his way to his dual identity: former #1 pop hitmaker, perpetual underground hero.
- Cardinal | Hymns
After a nearly two-decade silence, chamber-pop duo Cardinal emerge from their near-mythic hibernation with the sleepy-eyed, Beatles-underwater gem "Northern Soul," which crawls out of the speakers as if to say, "Yeah, we've been gone since 1994 — but really, don't mind us!"
- O'Brother | Garden Window
O'Brother's bio for their debut album, Garden Window, reads in part: "Native American tradition believed taking a picture of someone also took a piece of their soul. O'Brother views this album in the same vein. It captures a piece of them at a time in their lives that they will never get back."
- Brite Futures | Dark Past
A few years ago, the cutesy teens in Natalie Portman's Shaved Head slid out of Seattle on the hot pink shoulders of robo-bounce kinda-hit "Me + Ur Daughter" and the cheap intrigue of a ridiculous moniker.
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Topics:
New England Music News
, Music, Bruce Hornsby, Bruce Hornsby, More
, Music, Bruce Hornsby, Bruce Hornsby, CDs, Darien Brahms, Darien Brahms, Amos Libby, Amos Libby, Rachel Griffin, Rachel Griffin, Less
