#greg jamie

[writhe]

does anyone have a digitized version of Underwater Nightmare from o’death? i really wanna listen

[dustedmagazine]

Greg Jamie — Across a Violet Pasture (Orindal)

The songs on Across a Violet Pasture flicker and haunt, a tracery of voice and strummed guitar etching patterns on shifting textures of synth wash, the physical slap and punch of drums subsumed under echoing shimmer.  That should come as no surprise, really, since Greg Jamie has long been steeped in folk’s eeriest, most gothic traditions. He played through the aughts and teens with o’death and as a solo act since then.  His one previous album under his own name, Crazy Town, came out in 2018. 

Jamie is a visual artist and filmmaker, too, so you can make out fleeting imagery and narrative threads amid hovering sonics.  His music has the same unearthly playfulness as Chad Van Gaalen’s song, an artifact, perhaps, of thinking in pictures. 

The spectral quality emerges from plain-spoken instrumentation, like the ghosts that might turn up in old photographs of staid, 19th century burghers.  “Distant Shore,” for instance, makes use of a trebly, diffident strumming, a mandolin perhaps, as it spins out its vocal melody.  There’s nothing especially strange about either element, but the pitch and echo give the sense of a spiritual opening.  The ordinary world lives right next to the fantastical in these songs. 

“I Wanted More” is swathed in electric guitar overtones, its plaintive singing wreathed in auditory uncertainty.  The melody, though, is strong enough to win out, cresting effortlessly over the murk and mystery.  It’s a cut that might remind you of Damien Jurado’s run with Richard Swift, grounded but full of wonder. 

Jamie is centered in folk, never more so than in the droning, plinking, modal “Time Has a Way,” a Brit-folk lament that slants, sometimes towards the Middle East.  “When I Die” has the same trudging, ritual propulsion, a slow march towards epiphany, or, perhaps, oblivion.  “When I die, I die with the flowers,” Jamie sings, poking at the old questions of why we’re here and where we’re going, as folk artists have done forever.  Yet the mystery is fresh and close and present, in music that lets the spiritual into this world and vice versa. 

Jennifer Kelly

[sonicziggy]

"When I Die" by Greg Jamie https://ift.tt/E1yogZr

[antoneoernandez]

My Body Is Fever

[sawdustandgin]

Do you ever feel like you have life figured out? And then you remember that time, money, and ego are all social constructs meant to derail you from finding real meaning from life? Yeah, Greg Jamie too. 

[jimmacnie]

Here's To Death!

I recall a pal once deeming O’Death as “the evil Fleet Foxes.” That’s not exactly true. The harmonizing roots outfit that dropped Outside (Ernest Jenning Record Co.) last year is a bit more barbed than the harmonizing roots outfit that dropped Helplessness Blues (Sub Pop) last year. O’Death doesn’t bevel the corners the way the Foxes do; there’s more idiosyncrasy at work. That kind of thing can be a prime differentiator. Greg Jamie’s voice has more Neil Young warble than the Foxes’ CS&N velveteen. The Foxes sound like a choir; Jamie might be the drunk in the last pew. Okay, I’ll quit the comparisons. The tunes on Outside prove that O’Death have really improved since their debut a few years ago. The music’s architecture is stronger, and the clanging dissonant moments are better positioned. Bet anyone who likes to have their sea shanties bent a bit will enjoy their work