WORRIED SONGS - Forced Exposure

$28.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 12/13/2024

Prairiewolf make easy listening music for an age of fracture. They almost do it in spite of themselves. No one can seriously question the head music bona fides of the members of this Colorado-based trio. Guitarist Stefan Beck has already assembled a formidable discography of jewel-toned guitar zone-outs under his Golden Brown moniker. And keyboardist and guitarist Jeremy Erwin and bassist Tyler Wilcox have both made their reputations as chroniclers of the vast world of out-music. The appropriately titled Deep Time operates in its own chronology, unspooling at its unhurried pace. All its incongruous period and stylistic references -- the new age pulses, Hawaiian steel, shaggy hippie rambles, lysergic guitar spirals, and orchestral synthesizer flourishes -- float atop the album's own singular temporality. Deep Time makes its own time. From the moment Beck folds his slide guitar, origami-like, into a sound resembling the call of gulls on the tranquil album opener, "Peach Blossom Paradise," there is a sense of departure from everyday life. The shimmering "Lighthouse" has a similar sunbaked nonchalance, like an afternoon passed day-drinking in a seaside bar. That they named their lush, kaleidoscopic downtempo track "The Meander" pretty much says it all. The ranging, propulsive "Saying Yes to Everything" seems like a nod in the direction of Rose City Band's brand of wookie krautrock. And the motorik noir of "Demon Cicadas in the Night" also goes hard. Beck and Erwin's intertwined guitar jam on the eerie album standout "The Cold Curve" evolves into something that sounds like primitive computer music. A genteel bassline from Wilcox on another album highlight, "Revisionist Mystery," sets the stage for a loopy space jazz turn from guest clarinettist Matt Loewen of Rayonism. The title of post-rock cowboy tune "Another Tomorrow" might refer to the alternative future that so many critics heard in the music of Prairiewolf's first album. Or it might simply refer to the persistence of time, however deep.

$30.50 IN STOCK

Dirt Bike Vacation -- for Worried Songs Records -- explores the sonic world of the late amateur guitar player, Charles 'Poppy Bob' Walker, through a captivating set of instrumental songs made in the mid-1980s. Recorded on a single-track, Marantz field recorder, the project is a transportive document of Walker's days spent as a meatpacking employee in Yuma, Arizona and the dailiness of that existence: driving to work, sitting in his backyard, walking around drunkenly, unwinding on the couch with a friend. These sketches, showing an experimental tendency, are surprisingly ahead of their time; some exhibit ad hoc tape delay, while others make use of primitive overdubbing. Not dissimilar to works such as Bruce Langhorne's The Hired Hand soundtrack, Walker's guitar playing is melodic, texturally rich and beautifully sober. On a musical tour from Nashville to Los Angeles, musician-archivist, Cameron Knowler, uncovered these songs from a series of dusty cassette tapes housed at a branch of the Yuma County Library. Originally tipped off by cryptic metadata entries found through an online finding aid, Knowler requested a sound sample and was immediately drawn in by their eerie, yet hopeful nature. Sorting through the index cards associated with these tapes, Knowler was able to gain a detailed sense of most recording's provenance, whereabouts and time: Walker's Datsun pickup truck chugging along boiling hot Interstate 80, the Marine Corps Air Station parking lot, the Eastern Wetlands on the banks of the Colorado River, a fishing trip to Martinez Lake. Trying to reduce the amount of his own subjectivities coloring the work, Cameron constructed titles and track sequences by borrowing information gleaned from Charles' handwritten notes. This proved no small task, as many notecards had to be deciphered and then coupled with their native tapes which needed extensive restoration treatments. The result is a project very much out of the blue, and one that is intensely personal to Knowler, having grown up in the same town under similar circumstances. In their current form, the tracks combine to create a sonic journey that boldly contributes to the traditions of acoustic guitar soli, archival digs and field recordings all the same; most importantly, it is a creative document which shows a day-in-the-life of a man grappling with the human experience under a ubiquitous Yuma sun.

$30.50 IN STOCK

Old Saw, the enigmatic New England collective led by Henry Birdsey (Tongue Depressor), return with their third long-playing record, Dissection Maps.

"It is not enough to trace the fields. The choreocartographic demands the casting of stone, a grassfire, a carnival; something with which to rupture the horizontality of existence and imagine the vertical. Earth is the eighth morning, folded against the week's work. The field is a line drawing of oblivion. The house is a forest in the shape of a womb. America is a quarry in the image of god." --Aidan Patrick Welby, 2024

$30.50 IN STOCK

Cara Beth Satalino built her adulthood in feral, eccentric Baltimore, Maryland, waiting tables and playing in a band, keeping her schedule flexible just in case an opportunity arose. Though spontaneity seemed inevitable as an artist, she was stuck. Paralyzed by her own assumptions of what a musician's life needed to be, time passed undetectably -- more songs written, more gigs played, tips in pocket on which to survive, undying hopes of "making it" in the music industry. In a moment of frustration, Cara Beth left Baltimore to pursue further schooling. Along with her partner Chester Gwazda -- fellow member of indie band Outer Spaces -- the couple moved to New Jersey only to be met with a chronic illness diagnosis for Cara Beth, a global pandemic, a surprise pregnancy, looming mental-health issues, and the inevitable obligation to quit school. So much upheaval after fifteen years of a predictable lifestyle led to the creation of Little Green, a bold, stripped-back, ten-song distillation of identity out on UK label Worried Songs. Born in upstate New York, the breeding ground for America's rich history of folk and settler traditions, Cara Beth was steeped in acoustic sounds from a young age. Her father, an accomplished instrumentalist, colored her childhood with the vibrations of fiddle, banjo, guitars, and mandolin. Though she had spent much of her indie rock career rarely allowing these influences to show, the unravelling of her life seemed like a perfect time to be honest about her musical framework. As "Warmth of A Golden Sun" opens Little Green with what feels like a folk-rock dirge over Casio drum machine beats -- Cara Beth offers a sonic analogy about her move from weird city life into warm analog intimacy. "Dandelion Weed" plants the listener firmly into her ecosystem of pedal steel and close-microphoned acoustic guitar, but with succinct rock drumming that gives the song's spaciousness a sturdy foundation. Though the influences of Fairport Convention, James Taylor, and Sandy Denny are all opaquely present throughout the record, surprising twists like the Velvet Underground electricity of "Little Green" and the classic '70s country shuffle on "Time", broaden the scope out of upstate New York into the eclectic artist she has become. Sitting above this spacious sonic palette is the obvious allure of Little Green: Cara Beth's voice. Her vocal tones span centuries, from traditional mountain singing to hints of young Dolly Parton and the delivery of Gillian Welch.

$30.50 IN STOCK

2023 restock. "North Carolina based singer/songwriter Rosali Middleman has spent the last decade using her voice and guitar to construct tunes built upon the spectrum between joy and pain -- deeply personal lyrics, profound vocals, and striking, heady guitar synchronizing as a perfect pair to deliver a very welcome and fresh perspective on folk rock and roll music. On this newest collection of tunes, Variable Happiness, under the moniker Edsel Axle, her voice takes a winter hibernation to showcase the prodigious slow burn thump of her solo electric guitar playing. While this musical pivot may be a risk to some, the worlds of wilderness created within the music are easily navigated with clarity. Recorded directly to a four-track cassette rig in the comfort of her own home -- each chord struck exhales from the gear and onto magnetic tape, finding its true north, and throwing sand on the bonfire before it burns the foundation. First thought/best thought improvisations naturally trickling down and turning puddles into expansive streams of sound. The opener, 'Some Answer' seems to not have any question before it. As if it has always just been. A mode of intrinsic acceptance. Middleman confidently reigns in atonal midrange melodies and lets them rest in the bottom of the ocean. Every new movement coming up for air. Reviving consciousness, and letting go once more. The small combo amp on the recordings sounds like it's being overloaded and exploding into a peace sign, before fading into the next tune. The title track, "Variable Happiness" suggests that serenity is found within acceptance. It begins with a warm, simple, and circular groove. Bridging the giant landmasses of Fleetwood Mac's 'Albatross' and Loren Connors. The light boogie has surgical tremolo dirge doing major brain work and re-wiring . . . 'Come Down From That Tree Now' isn't so much a command as it is a peaceful suggestion. A neon glazed layer of arpeggios sits in the background, while Middleman wails fully in the foreground. An amalgamation that sounds like Windy and Carl records being blown apart by firecrackers in a bucket. Through these six honey-soaked, deeply psychedelic, overdriven ohm-style meditations, Variable Happiness showcases the prodigious left-hand melodies, and ball peen hammer attack of Middleman's right hand. Striking with great patience and humility. A true-blue guitar denizen of a heady state. A new benchmark in solo guitar recordings..." --Ryley Walker

"Another beautiful solo-guitar excursion from Rosali Middleman, filled with meditative songs that circle and eddy like leaves on the wind or a mountain stream in springtime. Her guitar playing has a raw, elemental power that is simultaneously soothing and invigorating, hypnotic and transportive." --Ripley Johnson (Wooden Shjips/Moon Duo/Rose City Band)

$14.50 IN STOCK

Bob Martin began what would become his final studio album in a beach front condominium in Seabrook, New Hampshire in May 2008. The recordings sat dormant for the next 13 years. This album began when James Endeacott of 1965 Records sent Jerry David DeCicca to Charlottesville, Virginia to meet Martin, hoping to reissue Martin's 1972 debut on RCA Records, Midwest Farm Disaster. DeCicca, who had co-produced the final recordings of folk-funk, Heartworn Highways' songwriter, Larry Jon Wilson, for 1965 Records (and later reissued by Drag City Records) had played the LP for Endeacott several months earlier. Midwest Farm Disaster is that rare album that feels joyful and yet full of sorrow; Martin's Lowell, Massachusetts voice yearning with a backbeat from Nashville session musicians, Norman Putnam and Kenny Buttrey, the later fresh from his "Heart of Gold" session. The reissue never happened, as Martin was already in the process of rescuing his forgotten masterpiece for his own self-release. But Bob and Jerry's breakfast led to Martin's daughter, Tami, hiring DeCicca and engineer, Jake Housh, who also worked on the Wilson album, to capture her father in a similar manner. After Midwest Farm Disaster, a second album for RCA was under contract, but when a record executive there wanted Martin to put his girlfriend's poetry to music, Bob bailed on the deal. Martin continued to tour around with a pickup band until advice from his father resonated, and he left the road to raise a family. Bob worked as an educator, teaching math and computers, and even founded a school in West Virginia that taught traditional art forms in Appalachia like fiddle playing and weaving. Bob returned to the studio in 1982 to record Last Chance Rider for June Appal, a label that focused on music from Appalachia. In the late-90s, Bob returned with two self-released CDs, The River Turns The Wheel and Next to Nothin', that continued capturing stories of people and places. He wrote novels, cared for his family, and taught, and played only the occasional gig. But it's this album, Seabrook, that finds Bob at his most wise and wistful; the histories of Lowell and his own life hanging longest in his voice. New songs about the West Virginia coal mines and living in an extended stay motel sit beside new and more urgent interpretations of late period classics, like "My Father Painted Houses," and, for the first time, one of his oldest songs he didn't record for Midwest Farm Disaster called "Give Me Light", along with "Stay Awhile Sunshine," which he had been singing to his family for decades and features Gary Mallaber on vibraphone. After DeCicca and Housh returned from the beach with Bob, they all agreed to flesh out the songs with other instrumentation to present as a draft for what the new record could be with a little more money and time.

$28.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Bob Martin began what would become his final studio album in a beach front condominium in Seabrook, New Hampshire in May 2008. The recordings sat dormant for the next 13 years. This album began when James Endeacott of 1965 Records sent Jerry David DeCicca to Charlottesville, Virginia to meet Martin, hoping to reissue Martin's 1972 debut on RCA Records, Midwest Farm Disaster. DeCicca, who had co-produced the final recordings of folk-funk, Heartworn Highways' songwriter, Larry Jon Wilson, for 1965 Records (and later reissued by Drag City Records) had played the LP for Endeacott several months earlier. Midwest Farm Disaster is that rare album that feels joyful and yet full of sorrow; Martin's Lowell, Massachusetts voice yearning with a backbeat from Nashville session musicians, Norman Putnam and Kenny Buttrey, the later fresh from his "Heart of Gold" session. The reissue never happened, as Martin was already in the process of rescuing his forgotten masterpiece for his own self-release. But Bob and Jerry's breakfast led to Martin's daughter, Tami, hiring DeCicca and engineer, Jake Housh, who also worked on the Wilson album, to capture her father in a similar manner. After Midwest Farm Disaster, a second album for RCA was under contract, but when a record executive there wanted Martin to put his girlfriend's poetry to music, Bob bailed on the deal. Martin continued to tour around with a pickup band until advice from his father resonated, and he left the road to raise a family. Bob worked as an educator, teaching math and computers, and even founded a school in West Virginia that taught traditional art forms in Appalachia like fiddle playing and weaving. Bob returned to the studio in 1982 to record Last Chance Rider for June Appal, a label that focused on music from Appalachia. In the late-90s, Bob returned with two self-released CDs, The River Turns The Wheel and Next to Nothin', that continued capturing stories of people and places. He wrote novels, cared for his family, and taught, and played only the occasional gig. But it's this album, Seabrook, that finds Bob at his most wise and wistful; the histories of Lowell and his own life hanging longest in his voice. New songs about the West Virginia coal mines and living in an extended stay motel sit beside new and more urgent interpretations of late period classics, like "My Father Painted Houses," and, for the first time, one of his oldest songs he didn't record for Midwest Farm Disaster called "Give Me Light", along with "Stay Awhile Sunshine," which he had been singing to his family for decades and features Gary Mallaber on vibraphone. After DeCicca and Housh returned from the beach with Bob, they all agreed to flesh out the songs with other instrumentation to present as a draft for what the new record could be with a little more money and time.

$44.50 LOW STOCK LEVEL

Bones for Time signifies a watershed moment in Tongue Depressor's artistic evolution. Over the course of four expansive tracks, Henry Birdsey and Zach Rowden expound upon the formal and technical characteristics that have defined Tongue Depressor's oeuvre up to this point. Oscillating microtonal drones and spectral smears of pedal steel guitar are now augmented by the disembodied presence of tattered tape loops. The days narrow, dragged forth into a voidal expanse. Sometimes, the void looks back.

"empyrean chimes and subterranean drones from out-musick duo Tongue Depressor -- an in-depth exploration of tuned percussion and just intoned drone that comes highly recommended if you're into the work of Tony Conrad, C.C. Hennix, John Cage, Philip Corner and Michael Ranta -- or if you're into church bells, gamelan, or Popol Vuh's earliest meditations. Floored." --Boomkat

$31.50 IN STOCK

Attic Room is Bob Keal's fifth full-length album as Small Sur. In this collection of songs, Keal meditates on the rhythms of domestic life and fatherhood while discovering newfound depths and maturity in his songwriting. Attic Room emerged from hundreds of song fragments that Keal scratched into the margins of life since the release of 2013's Labor. The result is a "bedroom country" record, one that is inescapably intimate while also evoking the wide-open Midwestern landscapes of Keal's childhood. The bulk of Keal's delicate vocals and classical guitar work was recorded in the basement choir room of a chapel on his school's campus, with Matthew O'Connell (Chorusing) engineering and accompanying on grand piano and Telecaster. As a player, engineer, and co-producer, O'Connell helped to craft a cohesive avant-folk album aesthetic, creating tape dub of instrumental tracks and running saxophone takes through a half-broken Echoplex tape delay, all the while creating sounds that Keal would not have encountered otherwise. Small Sur's music has always been spare, intimate, and deeply felt. But with the stripping of the conventional full-band structure, Keal was able to invite in even more community, while still creating a minimalist and personal sound. Attic Room includes Small Sur's Andy Abelow (saxophone) and Will Ryerson (bass), as well as guests like North Carolina fiddler Joseph DeCosimo, pedal steel guitarist Dave Hadley, and singer Cara Beth Satalino of Outer Spaces. Keal trusted Wye Oak and Joyero's Andy Stack, a long-time collaborator, to process his numerous instrumental contributions however he liked.

$27.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Recorded in Austin, Texas in March of 2020, just days before the city and the rest of the world shut down, Ralph White spent two days with producer, Jerry David DeCicca (Will Beeley, Ed Askew) and recording engineer, Don Cento, capturing a raw and wild set of performances. Ralph, having recently converted his van into a mobile living and touring quarters equipped with a wood-burning stove, left Austin, the city where he was born over 70 years ago, and retreated to an Arizona commune where he began building a new house in the desert hills to escape the virus and insanity of daily living. Opener "Lead Man", signals the beginning of a wild and unsettling record, at times dark and foreboding, at others eerie and enigmatic, taking you a step further into Ralph's very own American mystery zone. Ralph takes you on a journey through his myriad of travels: from Dock Boggs to Syd Barrett to William Faulkner to Stella Chiweshe to Blind Uncle Gaspard -- scratching banjo, rasping train whistle hollers, rolling kalimba, rousing accordion, taut shimmers of guitar, caustic fiddle, and lyrics that could have been hidden amongst the dusty inner groove of a lost Harry Smith 78 -- weaving in-and-out of streams of consciousness, time and place. Just a few of the titles: "Lead Man" is a bleak and longing look in the mirror; "Motel 6", plays out a haunting lament set upon roadside America; "The River Daughter", reimagines life on the sandbar, akin to McCarthy's Suttree; "Lonesome Fugitive", acts as a cautionary ode to a life spent looking over one's shoulder. In addition to his solo work, White has recorded or performed with a diverse group of folk and avant-garde musicians: Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Jandek, Jack Rose, Eugene Chadbourne, Michelle Shocked, Sir Richard Bishop, and Michael Hurley. Artwork of Max Kuhn.

"This is what Ralph White really sounds like. It's what time passing really sounds like. It's what a look really feels like. This record is someone touching you all over!" --Bill Callahan

"White was a member of well-loved punk bluegrass outfit Bad Livers, but his solo work is possessed of a much more lonesome spark, exaggerating the implied drone at the heart of the music of Dock Boggs and The Stanley Brothers -- White plays wooden six-string banjo, violin, button accordion and kalimba and his voice has a high, eerie quality to it -- extremely psychedelic." --David Keenan, The Wire

$29.50 IN STOCK

Here's artist Max Kuhn on hearing the new Ralph White recordings for the first time: "I was driving a familiar round trip across the high desert when I first put it on. It immediately spoke to me. In the lyrics there's a familiar geography for me, a familiar emotional landscape for all of us. And maybe it was driving an almost 40-year-old truck on sun baked and cracked asphalt in July, but it's like you can hear his songs coming apart -- the cadence, the rhymes stumbling and defying expectations, consistency but they just keep moving. You have no choice but to go with it. Probably a good lesson for how to live in this era we're in, cracking up but keeping it all running somehow, trying to make something pretty with the time."

Recorded in Austin, Texas in March of 2020, just days before the city and the rest of the world shut down, Ralph White spent two days with producer, Jerry David DeCicca (Will Beeley, Ed Askew) and recording engineer, Don Cento, capturing a raw and wild set of performances. Ralph, having recently converted his van into a mobile living and touring quarters equipped with a wood-burning stove, left Austin, the city where he was born 70 years ago, and retreated to an Arizona commune where he began building a new house in the desert hills to escape the virus and insanity of daily living. Ralph takes you on a journey through his myriad of travels: from Dock Boggs to Syd Barrett to William Faulkner to Stella Chiweshe to Blind Uncle Gaspard -- scratching banjo, rasping train whistle hollers, rolling kalimba, rousing accordion, taut shimmers of guitar, caustic fiddle and lyrics -- that could have been hidden amongst the dusty inner groove of a lost Harry Smith 78 -- weaving in and out of streams of consciousness, time and place. In addition to his solo work, White has recorded or performed with a diverse group of folk and avant-garde musicians: Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Jandek, Jack Rose, Eugene Chadbourne, Michelle Shocked, Sir Richard Bishop, and Michael Hurley.

$27.00 LOW STOCK LEVEL

"The prominent biblical city of Shiloh was first mentioned in the Book of Joshua: And the whole congregation of the children of Israel assembled together at Shiloh, and set up the tabernacle of the congregation there. And the land was subdued before them" (Joshua 18:1) It held a perhaps unsurpassed place of importance for the Israelites until the construction of Solomon's Temple and elevation of Jerusalem as the capital of a united Israel some centuries later. The Shiloh, which is the primary matter of interest here, is not the biblical city, but rather a namesake community in rural Overton County, Tennessee, situated in the Upper Cumberland region of the Appalachian Plateau near the Tennessee/Kentucky border. It isn't a town, but a community made up of a church, two cemeteries, a smattering of houses, some farmland surrounded by forested hills, and a mostly gravel road. The West Fork of the Obey River tumbles through the area at a fairly leisurely pace, and Joseph's father, who was born in the adjacent and slightly easier to access community of Allred, always called Shiloh Road "the River Road" since the road and the river often unfurl through the valley side by side. The instrumental pieces for guitars and banjo on the album at hand mostly depict images and events, both real and imagined, that take place in Shiloh and the broader river valley it's situated in. "I won't go into the details of the inspiration for each tune here," Allred comments, "but I will say that Shiloh is a place where the distinction between past and present isn't always clearly defined. It's a kind of 'mandorla,' a place where the spheres of past and present, dead and living, immanent and transcendent, overlap. It's also a place that has attracted some odd characters over the years, or just people who are weary and trying to find refuge. Though I grew up in a small town about 25 miles away from Shiloh and have lived in Boston since 2016, my dad's side of the family has been in the area for over 200 years, and that valley feels a lot like the place I'll be buried when I die." Gatefold sleeve; art by Jonny Brokenbrow.

"Joseph Allred's recent outpouring of excellent releases has been an impressive enough feat on its own considering how unique they all are in relation to one another and how focused each one is when taken as individual statements. The Rambles & Rags of Shiloh strikes such a deceptively comfortable balance between more familiar folk guitar approaches and Allred's own wholly distinctive techniques that it'd be hard to believe it was the same person playing everything if you were able to ignore how seamlessly it all fits together." --Rob Noyes

"If you don't know Allred already, you will soon." --Byron Coley

$14.50 IN STOCK

Recorded in Austin, Texas in March of 2020, just days before the city and the rest of the world shut down, Ralph White spent two days with producer, Jerry David DeCicca (Will Beeley, Ed Askew) and recording engineer, Don Cento, capturing a raw and wild set of performances. Ralph, having recently converted his van into a mobile living and touring quarters equipped with a wood-burning stove, left Austin, the city where he was born over 70 years ago, and retreated to an Arizona commune where he began building a new house in the desert hills to escape the virus and insanity of daily living. Opener "Lead Man", signals the beginning of a wild and unsettling record, at times dark and foreboding, at others eerie and enigmatic, taking you a step further into Ralph's very own American mystery zone. Ralph takes you on a journey through his myriad of travels: from Dock Boggs to Syd Barrett to William Faulkner to Stella Chiweshe to Blind Uncle Gaspard -- scratching banjo, rasping train whistle hollers, rolling kalimba, rousing accordion, taut shimmers of guitar, caustic fiddle, and lyrics that could have been hidden amongst the dusty inner groove of a lost Harry Smith 78 -- weaving in-and-out of streams of consciousness, time and place. Just a few of the titles: "Lead Man" is a bleak and longing look in the mirror; "Motel 6", plays out a haunting lament set upon roadside America; "The River Daughter", reimagines life on the sandbar, akin to McCarthy's Suttree; "Lonesome Fugitive", acts as a cautionary ode to a life spent looking over one's shoulder. In addition to his solo work, White has recorded or performed with a diverse group of folk and avant-garde musicians: Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Jandek, Jack Rose, Eugene Chadbourne, Michelle Shocked, Sir Richard Bishop, and Michael Hurley. Artwork of Max Kuhn.

"This is what Ralph White really sounds like. It's what time passing really sounds like. It's what a look really feels like. This record is someone touching you all over!" --Bill Callahan

"White was a member of well-loved punk bluegrass outfit Bad Livers, but his solo work is possessed of a much more lonesome spark, exaggerating the implied drone at the heart of the music of Dock Boggs and The Stanley Brothers -- White plays wooden six-string banjo, violin, button accordion and kalimba and his voice has a high, eerie quality to it -- extremely psychedelic." --David Keenan, The Wire

$27.00 LOW STOCK LEVEL

Inspired in equal parts by fatherhood, nature, and quietude, Slither, Soar & Disappear was born on Josh Kimbrough's back porch in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, as his young son rested, where the bucolic intimacy of the natural world found its way into his nylon and steel string guitar playing, resulting in this cycle of beautiful compositions. Accompanied by a roster of talented musicians, Josh's guitar work is accompanied and complimented by banjo, flute, strings, mandolin, double bass, and drums, the results bringing to mind a host of artists from Jansch, Drake, and Fahey, to the Penguin Café Orchestra and Mike Hurley. "Fatherhood," Josh reflects, "I was finding, forces one to abandon parts of the self -- a heavy proposition in a society that emphasizes individualism. Cultural critic, farmer, and novelist, Wendell Berry in his book, A Native Hill, muses: 'In order to know the hill, it is necessary to slow the mind down to the hill's pace.' This principle applied to me at the time as I was adapting to a new speed of life and striving to be present as a father. On the deck, as my mind slowed down to take in the chirps and wind gusts, these songs began to blossom." A truly beautiful album emphasizing the splendor of the outside world and the gentle pace of life many have been in over the pandemic. Originally released digitally on Tompkins Square, Worried Songs gives these songs the vinyl treatment.

$26.50 IN STOCK

"As soon as we heard the opening line of the near-11 minute cosmic-country road epic, 'West Texas Trilogy', 'I can smell gasoline and tacos...' we knew we had to release this one" Jerry David DeCicca's fourth solo album, The Unlikely Optimist and His Domestic Adventures, is an anti-Hallmark ode to positivity set in the Texas Hill Country where he lives. Dark gray in one corner, silly in another, humorous but always human, it features Augie Meyers (Sir Douglas Quintet) on Vox Continental and squeezebox, Ralph White (Bad Livers) on violin and kalimaba, Frank "The Wild Jalapeno" Rodarte (Doug Sahm) on tenor sax, and JDD's buddies, electric guitarist Don Cento (Sarah Jaffee), bassist Canaan Faulkner (Black Swans, Will Beeley), drummer Jovan Karcic (Scrawl), and his partner, Eve Searls, on backing and duet vocals. Some of the songs: "I See Horizons" is a mediation that peaks over the next ledge; "Coffee Black" is a wake-up call to mellowing out; "Texas Toad" finds joy in the little creatures among us; "West Texas Trilogy" is a road song that trances and traces poverty, nature, memory and music along the border to Big Bend; "Quiet Life" just sits on the front porch. DeCicca's day-job is as a provider of vocational rehabilitation services (which means he works with individuals with disabilities to obtain and maintain competitive and integrated employment in their communities), as well as recording, producing and compiling music for lost legends of country music like Will Beeley, Elyse Weinerg and Bob Martin, working for labels such as Numero Group and Tompkins Square. "My whole life, I've struggled with anxiety and depression. But through music, people who love me, and meaningful work, I've gathered enough light to keep getting out of bed. And, in my own way, I've gradually become a happier person, despite the garbage world that maybe we've always lived in. This is a record about self-reflection and gratitude, but not in a cheesy way." Considering this one was recorded pre-pandemic, it has almost become the perfect pandemic record -- an ode to the simple pleasures of life, reflecting on our role on this wild sphere, and holding on tight to the ones you love. Housed in the beautiful artwork of Jeb Loy Nichols.

$26.50 IN STOCK

The Time To Come is the first release from Worried Songs and the striking debut from twenty-one-year-old Chicago resident Eli Winter, noted as one of the Guardian's "artists to watch in 2020". These masterfully composed instrumental pieces for six-string, twelve-string, and electric solo guitar showcase the raw talent of this young guitar powerhouse. In The Time To Come, Winter remembers the dead, considers the dynamic nature of memory, and attempts to chronicle the nearly inexpressible difficulty of processing loss. Winter began recording sessions in Houston immediately after Hurricane Harvey, and this album's turbulent emotional landscape is in some ways a response to the devastation of the storm. The record revolves around its title track, a meditation on the passing of a close friend. In the days after her death, Winter wrote a long piece for guitar in which every part would feel essential. "I wanted to conjure her through the music," Winter says. "This song is the closest thing I have to a memory of her." He calls it aspirational: "How can you maintain hope in the face of grief?" The Time To Come is rich, warm and evocative, marking an ambitious debut from a young guitarist. Originally released on a tiny-run of now long-gone cassette tapes, The Time To Come finally sees the light of day on vinyl, housed in the bucolic American folk art of Albert Gray. "His debut album is really sublime." --Laura Snapes, The Guardian "Eli Winter is one of the brightest new lights in the world of guitar music today." --Record Crates United "Eli Winter's The Time To Come is a remarkably assured debut ... Every moment is earned, every note rings out with warmth and wonder. Beautiful stuff." --Tyler Wilcox, Aquarium Drunkard

$26.50 NOT IN STOCK

Joseph Allred, or occasionally known as his alter-perspective, Blind Faulkner, is a Tennessee-born multi-instrumentalist, now residing in Massachusetts, who has received critical acclaim for his seemingly endless slew of wonderful records, most of which showcase his talent for all things stringed. Here, Worried Songs presents the initially private-pressed masterwork, The True Light, taking its name from the Gospel of John, a haunting lament for solo-harp guitar. Recorded shortly after receiving the instrument, The True Light documents his exploration of the harp guitar. The five songs found on The True Light bleed like a river, flowing from one to the next in waves of immense beauty, melancholia and yearning, reflecting on spirituality and belonging in its many forms. Strong Basho vibes on this one, yet, as always, Joseph expands and transcends on the ghosts of primitive-past, forging his own path. In short, this is the real deal. "If you don't know Allred already, you will soon." --Byron Coley "Each time I've seen Joseph Allred play a concert, I've choked up. Whether working in improvisation or composition, for harmonium, stringed instruments or voice, their music reveals a deep knowledge of diverse musical idioms secular and religious, with the sort of quiet force that comes from the acquisition of this knowledge, and their performances are striking and brave, simultaneously unadorned and rich as to suggest collaborations with realms beyond our own. The True Light retains these qualities: like Basho or Rose, it's uncompromising; like sacred musics, stately; like the music of so many American masters, it plows ahead on its terms and gives and gives." --Eli Winter "... fierce, raw and deeply moving." --Pop Matters "... standing on the shoulders of American folk music traditions, he generates a tension not far removed from the melodramas of the German new wave director. Folk music, not for the coffee shop singalong, but for a lonesome trek through a wilderness increasingly invaded by a brutal modern world." --Spectrum Culture

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2021 restock. Worried Songs's third release is the debut solo LP from Matthew J Rolin. Originally released on the inimitable Feeding Tube records in 2019 and very quickly out-of-print, this pressing for UK and Europe will continue to showcase Matthew as one of the most creative, versatile, and powerful proponents honing their craft in the canon of the American primitive (and beyond) today. Cutting his chops in a haze of punk, noise, and psychedelic projects and bands in and out of Illinois and Ohio, that misspent youth can still be heard in these nine achingly beautiful compositions of solo concert steel string guitar. This is true outsider music, easily transcending the tired list of American-primitive masters -- it is ragged and rustic, tired and angry, beautiful and hopeful music for these often-hopeless times. Very few copies of this LP made it to Europe last time so quit goofing around. New LPs from this Ohio powerhouse (alongside the recently released and totally incredible duo record with Jen Powers on dulcimer) are incoming so get swatting up and quick. "While the rainy spirit and homespun quality of Rolin's music separates him from more academic fingerstyle contemporaries, he can't quite be classified with other unplugged noise dudes, either. There are echoes of Bill Orcutt's shattered blues in the dizzy rumble of 'Rivets' and a stripped-down reading of Ryley Walker's freefalling astral pop on 'Neverendingness,' but Rolin's songs never ramp up or even attempt to launch. Instead, they trudge steadily forward. A soft argument between hope and defeat runs through the album, and Rolin presents it with the calm resolve of someone who's probably sat alone with an acoustic guitar as the first of five acts at a basement gig. Unconcerned with virtuosic technique or reincarnating the ghosts of past guitar heroes, Rolin's overcast instrumentals convey the reality of his own encounters with folk blues." --Fred Thomas, Pitchfork "Rolin's talents as a solo player are immediately clear from the first note he plays. If you get a chance to see him don't pass it up. Nor should you pass up this chance to score his first long player while it's hot off the presses." --Byron Coley