Date: March 6th 2010

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Hey dudes,

Not a whole lot rolling thru the doors in the past few weeks, but some good, key titles below, plus some other long lost discoveries and restocks.

Jam on it,
Dan / Tonevendor
http://www.tonevendor.com


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** LES COMPACT DISQUES **

HALA STRANA-Heave the Gambrel Roof CD (Music Fellowship-$12.99)
Steven R. Smith began recording music under the Hala Strana moniker in 2002 as a way to further explore his interest in traditional Eastern European folk music, apart from his solo releases under his own name and collaborative work in Thuja, Mirza, and other Jewelled Antler creations. Heave the Gambrel Roof is Smith's fourth full length album under the Hala Strana name. The album is a return to the shorter, more song-based form of Fielding and Hala Strana and includes reworks of four traditional Albanian tunes as well as seven original tracks.
As with all Hala Strana releases, Heave the Gambrel Roof contains a wide variety of instruments (many built by Smith himself) such as the hurdy gurdy, spike fiddle, gourd guitar, bowed baritone psaltery, bouzouki, xaphoon, and the more common electric guitar, organ, cello, and harmonium. The album includes musical contributions from Loren Chasse (Blithe Sons, Franciscan Hobbies, Of) on one track.

JOANNA NEWSOM-Have One On Me 3xCD BOX (Drag City-$18.99)
Joanna Newsom fans: don't look now, but Joanna's about to let her hair down — and that's a considerable task these days! Of course, to the demure Mme. Newsom, the 125 minutes-worth of songs is nothing more than a new album, entitled Have One On Me. Pundits claim that the record album as it has been known to us for the past half-century is dead or dying. With this in mind, dig Joanna's incredible expanding album. At the end of the forty-four minutes that comprise Have One On Me's first disc, you're just getting started, the space within you just beginning to become filled. It's a record, it's a virtual experience, it's a new friendship — the record album of the future!
Length is tempered with instrumental color throughout Have One On Me, which was arranged by Ryan Francescioni. Ryan's work with brass and woodwind ensembles lends a fresh air to the tunes — and his own string playing, on instruments including acoustic guitar, banjo, Bulgarian tambura mandolin and kaval, matches well with Joanna's harp arrangements. Neal Morgan places percussive strikes thoughout the album with deep spiritual conviction. Joanna's harp is the center, tapping the bones of the song, then cutting wider, in the company of the accompanying
ensemble foliage, making way for her growing voice: cooing, crooning, belting, sounding as like a horn. And Joanna's touch at the piano is as deep and moving as at the harp. Joanna Newsom's songs are rolled with passion, playfulness, history, humor, journal entries — everything she can get in there without sacrificing musicality. This occasionally demands a rewiring of the accepted lines of song structure, but that's a wheel that's been reinflated before. Joanna delights in her role s singer-songwriter; as such she's inclined to curve perspectives, singing not just of herself and her feelings but embodying others', some of whom she knows and some of whom she may know wherefore of they speak.
Listeners, we ask, who is singing, and to whom? There's a diversity of relations here, life measured
through stimulating dialog and a disconcerting directness of inquest. Linearity is also jogged on Have One On Me, upending traditional narrative direction in favor of an allusive rippling effect that ebbs and flows over the course of the three discs. The blessed contractions of time and space that allow for albums to honestly account for the circumference of the world in a day or report of intensities in ten cities, or of a road that goes on forever, allow also for the back-and-forth action of Have One On Me. It is Joanna's winding path that we walk down, but no there's no sprawl to it — instead, an orderly quality, rolling in and out of wild country, extending into infinity.
Through the course of Have One On Me's eighteen songs, Joanna visits ditties, weepies, court dances, rump-bumpers, epics and moments of panavision fantasia upon us. Once you're done digging through this lot, another few years will have passed and it'll be time for another new one. By then, the world'll be ready for the twenty-four hour album, right?

SCOUT NIBLETT-The Calcination of... CD (Drag City-$13.99)
"Drag City rolls up on the Scout Niblett scene just in time for the grand calcination. What luck, to arrive in time for such good timing! Her new record is her most tightly coiled long-player yet, a heavy handful of songs that are reaching for the ripe and the light. People come to Emma Louise 'Scout' Niblett for the joy of a scalding hot bath of sound amidst stark, bluesy emoting -- and she won't let 'em down this time. But something has shifted. Having made herself a record or two's worth of celebration ballads and moody freakouts, she seems to be hearing that call from within to feel for other things. Yelling at the kids around the way only ever gets you so far. And so, it's time to holler inward. The Calcination of Scout Niblett finds our girl in phase transition, exchanging elements for the betterment of her organism. Stripping down. Surrendering. Taking the bull by the wheel and driving to another place. Take the picture on the cover. It's the first album photo where Sc
out's acknowledging the camera, a new relationship giving sign of a greater awareness of herself and a desire to confront -- a new confrontation, a more sober and realistic conversation. Throughout The Calcination of Scout Niblett we see Scout in deep focus. The lens has dollied in and stuck there. The sweat conjured in performance permeates the screen; darkness is all around her, overwhelming the picture. She's in an empty space and her voice snaps against the walls, behind weird shadows we can't make out. And cutting through, we might believe that we're hearing an inner monologue or two. The songs string together, almost as one, her guitar growls and bites, and the black velvet of space hovers. Just when the tension in the room and the filament of guitar can't glow any brighter, suddenly a band erupts, accompaniment to her vision -- and then back down to Scout and guitar. All the better for the boys to not get too burned. Well, burned just enough. Well-done, even! The Calcination of Scout Niblett is an intense devotional, a determined spirit journey and a collection of great slow-dance songs."


** YE OLDE TYME VINYL **

-- The following few titles are described in the CD section above --

JOANNA NEWSOM-Have One On Me 3xLP BOX (Drag City-$25.99)
SCOUT NIBLETT-The Calcination of... LP (Drag City-$14.99)


FOUR TET-There is Love in You 2xLP (Domino-$20.99)
There Is Love In You is Four Tet's first full-length album in over four years and is his fifth album to date.

MAJOR STARS-Return to Form LP (Drag City-$14.99)
"When you've got a love for music, there's no time to spare. The band called Major Stars all got other gigs that take them from place to place without room to converse much. That's okay, because they're about playing music, not small talkin'! So what's been going on around the practice space then? Major Stars have a new one that might lay it on you all at once like a plank of solid stone, and they're calling it Return to Form. Starting with a mid-fight schoolyard threat like 'Better Stay Down' (what, no exclamation point?), Major Stars do definitely seem to be returning to somewhere on this new new album, maybe even perhaps somewhere adolescent where the rock and roll was never better? But really, titling the whole damn thing Return to Form has some humor in it. Mirror/Messenger wasn't out of form; all Major Stars records have been a part of a vision and even if some shit said he or she (probably he) didn't like it, that doesn't really call for a response title on the next al
bum. We read it like this: it's you who's returning to form! Major Stars atomized you to fucking bits on the last record and only now are you returning to a fully formed entity. And here Major Stars are to blow you to pieces again. You're fucked up. Return to Form's got eight pieces, all heavy rocks, a few of them come with power jams. There's also a few just under three minutes, but distinguished by riffage that lifts 'em up. The guitars trio of Wayne Rogers, Kate Village and Tom Leonard is into their third full album as such, allowing them to have fused into a wall of distorto with a myriad of identities but singular purpose. Behind their ubiquitous combination signal, the drums trample with pummelous authority. Still, they can't help but sound a bit crushed by the din, glorious din. This is Major Stars' signature rock of the easties -- more likened to the sounds of Motorpsycho than any of that psych-rock these days! Again, this is organic growth, home territory. Could it be that the space you know is better than the space you don't know? Major Stars got answer, and it's Return to Form."

SHE & HIM-In the Sun 7" (Merge-$5.99)
"In The Sun," featuring guest vocals by Tilly and the Wall, is the first single from Volume Two. This seven-inch vinyl release features the B-side "I Can Hear Music," originally performed by The Beach Boys.

SHOUT OUT LOUDS-Work LP (Merge-$16.99)
Work is the third full-length from Sweden's Shout Out Louds. Produced by Phil Ek (Fleet Foxes, The Shins), Work strips away all of the bells and whistles of previous efforts to showcase the band doing what they do best, writing and playing pop music that is "nostalgic and angst-ridden, but ultimately life-affirming. Shout Out Louds have found a winning formula." (Amazon.com)


** RESTOCKS **

A SUNNY DAY IN GLASGOW-Scribble Mural Comic Journal 180g LP
BRITTLE STARS-s/t 10"
MATT BARTRAM-Arundel CD
MATT BARTRAM-Left to Memory CD
PANDA RIOT-She Dares All Things CD

And a lot more re-stocks on the website!

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