Thursday, December 5, 2013

Grass House...a really good one

Hey, sorry missed yesterday...this Dusted in Exile is a bit of a time-suck and I wanted to actually write a review for a change, which I did, but when I finished it, I looked up it was pitch dark and almost 7 o'clock and time for dinner and the news and all that bourgeoisie stuff that so defines my life...anyway, I'm back today.

This is a review I did a week or so ago for Blurt on an artist that I didn't know anything about (I mean before I picked it, obviously, I did some research before writing), which turned out to be such an unexpected pleasure. I'm thinking about making Grass House and EMEFE my picks for "new artists" this year, if anyone asks.

Anyway, here's a bit:


GRASS HOUSE – Sun Full and Drowning (Marshall Teller)

BY JENNIFER KELLY

Grass House sheathes the comfort of weathered Americana in glittery space-rock atmospherics. Modest, monochrome melodies weave through cavernous reverbed spaces, whiskery poetics are murmured as dual guitars vault up and away in rattling blurs. The four piece, native to Yorkshire but now living in London, has drawn comparisons to various baritone indie folk (Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Matt Berninger of the National), but to me, the singer, Liam Palmer, sounds like a younger, less damaged Shane McGowan, muttering bleak abstractions but softening the edges with a Northern burr.

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Oh yeah, and in the way of babysteps towards writing my year-end essay, I did make a Spotify list of my favorites. My Spotify name is "Jennifer Kelly" (yeah, we creative types, always thinking outside the box), so check it out if you like. I didn't put it in any sort of order, so some of the transitions may be pretty rough. It's also missing some of the stuff I loved -- Kelley Stoltz, Purling Hiss, Venom P. Stinger, Dan Melchior's latest -- because they are not on Spotify.

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