Some bands thrive on internal discord to create amazing music (i.e., Jesus & Mary Chain, Simon & Garfunkel). Others though, like Gainesville’s Savants of Soul have so much love for each other that there’s not only a fluid musical cohesion in the studio but a tight family unity offstage as well.
Make no mistake this is a country album, a no-nonsense, old fashioned honest to god working-man’s country record. And it’s as fine a one as you will hear this year: if not next year as well, and last year for that matter. It doesn’t flirt with other genres, it’s the sort of record about which people say things like (genuine but misappropriated quotes alert) “This is real country and this is what we’ve been yearning for” or Craig Gerdes has “saved us from Luke Bryan, Blake Shelton and all the other sh*tty pop country garbage” or “At last, this young man is true country” or “why oh why don’t they make country like this anymore”. Or… whatever.
Thing is, in truth, they do make records like this, lots of ‘em, every week it seems. You just need to keep your eyes and ears open, oh and don’t forget to check out AUK on a regular basis! A few of these may be familiar to you – remember the bounce we got hearing Sturgill Simpson, Tyler Childers, Cody Jinks, Chris Stapelton, John Moreland, Wheeler Walker, Whitey Morgan, Colter Wall….. for the first time? We might have lost the odd one of these to desperately dull fretwinking electronic Southern krautrock pastiche along the way but we can add Craig Gerdes to this list; somewhere near the very top if it’s being graded. This record is as good as anything that anyone on it produced at the start of their careers.
Crunching guitars usher in ‘I Virgo‘ before it is set free and launched into a stratospheric piercing blend of folk and rock and reverb heavy Cosmic American Music – Phosphorescent is in there, Mercury Rev and Midlake too but it’s a blissful sound that is really all its own. ‘I Virgo‘ is taken from Margaret Chavez’s new album ‘Into An Atmosphere‘ which has been described as a “folk-rock opus” – but it’s more than that.
Michael “Emby” Alexander, lead vocalist and songwriter of the Phoenix-based Emby Alexander, feels it’s may not actually be a coincidence that his experimental indie pop band premiered the single “Up in the Air” when it did.
Released in the midst of all that’s going on in the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the song is the result of Alexander’s attempt at writing something positive—or, he says, at least more obviously so than songs past, which he feels may have had their messages obscured by a more experimental approach.
Los Angeles psych-pop singer/songwriter Cassandra Violet is preparing to release a new single, “Superbloom,” on June 5 — a song typically rooted in local Laurel Canyon-esque folk-pop, though with her own dreamy vibe. READ MORE…
