#sacred spirits

[allbumcovers]

[blue-orpheus]

“Coma” Sacred Spirits Some Stay (2012)

[thetan1]

[brokencircles]

#TBT‬ - One of my personal favorite records we’ve ever released, Sacred Spirits “Some Stay”. We put it out 3 years ago and it existed in one form or another for a year before that. It’s perfect fuzzed-out psychedelic indie rock that’s raw with emotion and heartbreak.

Through the weekend you can grab the vinyl LP for $6 or a download on Bandcamp for $5. Stream the entire LP at the two links below or on Spotify/Rdio/Apple Music.

Buy Vinyl Buy Bandcamp

The band is playing a show tomorrow in Cincinnati, OH with Leggy and Sweet Lil at Northside Tavern and it’s free. Maybe you’ll even get to hear new music from them in 2016...

[diaper-koala]

I love this song.

[themovinglip]

Some Stay

Sacred Spirits debut album dropped this week and already it's getting decent hype. In truth, I haven't listened to all of the songs or any in the sequence of the album. I'll try and post a review at some point later. But in any case let it be noted that on Monday, January the 10th I, Taylor Cowan, slotted the album as having "Best of the Year" potential. That's an entire day before those suckers at CityBeat said the exact same thing. Thence, it's probably before anybody will or did. The proof is on the social network. Harumph.  It's an exciting, anticipatory feeling knowing that this is the band's first album, the first to be released by this label--a local one with a hell of a lot of smarts. This is literally an idealistic label, founded on the principals written in The Recording Angel. Kudos to Cameron Cochran and The Recording Label (what a great name, really though) for releasing it the only way you can in this day and age, for free. No one pays for records any more. There is no reason whatsoever to distribute music other than for free, because people will get it if they want it. Even if your sole goal is to make money--nobody makes money off record sales anymore. And yet you see kids out there peddling their unsigned band's merchandise, records etc. That to me is just buffoonery, not to mention greed. What would you say you're in this for? Here's to Sacred Spirits. Long may "Some Stay" reign over 2011.

[themovinglip]

Due Cause

This week: a look into the music of the Middle West's vast and tired soul.

Two artists, one song each-- if you haven't heard, hear.

SACRED SPIRITS

COMA

Immediately, there is a gospel urgency. With an organ and the barren strumming of strings, Kufeldt's lesser known master-work begins with a simple premise, the opening lyric,

"The farther I get/ The more confused I get."

The problem is fleshed out into sheer intensity.

The song carries with it the constant, haphazard momentum of any emotionally-charged Springsteen ballad.

Don't take the piece beyond its word though. You might miss what is simply and impossibly about the inherent failures of communication.

"And if I'm not talking/ It don't mean I'm not speaking"

The frustration, which builds with the vamp-like rhythm into a howl, stems not from the speaker's anger to the spoken-to, but almost with his own admitted futility.

"And if I'm not crying/ It don't mean I'm not breathing."

Coma contains with it all the frustration, the condensed air and the suppression of a muffled scream.

"I'm going to sleep girl," he croons eventually. And we can believe it. But not let ourselves fall from that hanging drip of emotion.

Maniacally bending call-response guitars and an amount of whammy reserved only for the SS, beckon us into dream.

OWEN PALLET

KEEP THE DOG QUIET

Pallett, formerly Final Fantasy, might seem for a moment like a delightful antiquity. "Keep the Dog Quiet" from his album, fittingly titled "Heartland," is suburban paralysis distilled in a song.

The incessant, plucked strings incant a sort of Modernist dreamworld where the violinist seems to carouse in a tuxedo among Ezra Pound, Neo-Gothic spires and old-wooden varnishes-- a swirl of dead-leaves kicked up all about him.

The shamelessly swung backbeat doesn't help.

From its inception, Pallett grounds us steadily in the ontology of the song,

"My body is a cage/This union is a cage about a cage, about a cage..."

From the broken pieces of the song's "narrative mess" the singer attempts only to explain what was "once consequential."

At the peril of becoming too ritualistic, we realize at our own behest "When will you silence your hounds?" can quickly disarm to the titular struggle of the song; a skinny white boy standing outside of an ex's house in the fall.

What's incredible is to watch him produce the notes, line-by-line with a delay pedal. While the start is more gradual, the end-result is just as triumphant I think you'll agree.