If you were to ask me who were the most prolific under the radar songwriters lurking in the underground they would have to be Beware Wolves and Bernard Hering.
Hering recently sent us his single Colorado, and it’s another instant classic. Ryan Adams, John Prine, and Springsteen are all fair game to chart this vibe. The writing is melodically delicious but fairly melancholy, as Hering tends to unravel something in his past while charting a plan for recovery. It’s cyclic like the plight of an addict, oddly mesmerizing and seductive in its suffering, as it plays into our instinctual savior complex.
Hering might sound like a man that needs saving, but within his song lies comfort for the rest of us. “Come see me in Colorado.” Sounds like Heaven.
Bernard Hering is featured on our Emerging Folk Playlist.
At its essence Your Touch, the new single from Foreign Air, is a gorgeous effective composition. Whats offered within the performance and companion video for Blue Hour Sessions is something more. It’s sacred, magnificent in fact. This small orchestra illuminates the cinematic vibe impressively. The execution is masterful, beautifully arranged and full of stylistic flash beyond the realm of notes. It’s how they play them and how that affect fuels the singers inspired performance. “Nothing feels real,” he laments in the songs final moments. Maybe cause it’s sonically remarkable, we’d likely feel the same.
Your Touch is featured on our Emerging Folk Playlist.
Hunter James and The Titanic are truly epic on their new single All I Wanna Do Is Try. This is the kind of emotional exhale we desire. Born from the ashes of an emotional breakthrough or maybe the desolate remains of a spirit truly broken, the song makes you feel something. It’s oddly uplifting in how it ironically makes you praise this suffered discovery, as if giving yourself to it is the prerequisite to release.
We all have this frustration buried within us we can’t shake. As eastern philosophy suggests life is suffering. Embrace its warped beauty. Stylistically they blend the writing of Darlingside with the epic appeal of Hozier. It’s all about the vibe. Let it release you.
All I Wanna Do Is Try is featured on our Emerging Folk Playlist.
Vocalist Heidi Lindahl has a haunting vocal delivery. Exotic and sultry only from the perspective that she presents so exclusive, there’s nothing cheap about her style. It’s exquisite, recalling a bygone era when class reigned supreme. She effectively navigates the gorgeous works that make up Grace & Gravity, the album from her project with composer Nils Lassen known as BlackieBlueBird. Their vibe exudes mystique with subtle retro influence.
Those retro flavors bring desert vibes in the same vein as Krauss and Plants Raising Sand on songs like Mesmerized, Oh Susanna and I Can’t Stop Drinking About You. We also hear the gypsy aura of Fleetwood Mac on songs like Mesmerized.
The group has also won appropriate comparisons to artists like Nick Cave. It’s a testament to Lassen’s nostalgic tendencies as a composer, bearing an influence of Phil Specter and Brian Wilson with contemporary orchestrated arrangements. He twists that inspiration with a dark moody compositional aura, one that reflects the alternative movements of the Eighties. Grace & Gravity as a whole is an extraordinary work.
BlackieBluebird are featured on our Emerging Indie Folk Playlist.
The Wild Is Calling 