...soundin' like... Songs from longlost cabins given fresh luminescence by the flicker-flame dynamics of a pair of talented banjo ticklers, acoustical twangers and charismatic balladeers.
Detroit voices affecting tall-tale-ish ramblings for river-creek crossings, branch-swinging bravado bards slung through Appalachian-slopes, bolstered by the rich resonance of those buzzy chords, those humming organs, breathy/forceful singing voices like sweeping breezes over burnt corn crops... and up and on and over the next horizon and down through the next supernatural-tinged lucid dream, dazzled with alluring melodies, warmed by honed harmonies. No drums to speak of, yet you can feel your feet rustling up modest dust-clouds, coaxed off the barn's wall and out onto the hay-strewn dancefloor.
Real Americana, ...or, rather, refreshing, rootsy!!...earnest Americana...Lac La Belle transport you back some 50 years or more; classy preservationists (Jennie Knaggs & Nick Shillace) with a stately talent, in voice and on strings and a unique vision/ear for songcraft.
Watch: Lac La Belle -@ the Trinity House, February, 2011
They've got their 2nd full length album ready for release and the party's being hosted this coming Saturday (Aug 4th) at Hamtramck's Popps Packing gallery. You'll hear new/old gut-punching guitar warblings from blues-bolstering Danny Kroha as well as a set of new music from Stephen Nawara (of the Beehive Recording Co.). Expect "outdoor evening of tunes," Knaggs said, featuring songs from Lac La Belle's Bring On The Light, "... along with traditional North American favorites that influence our sound."
More info from Popps PackingLac La Belle
Aug 4th - Bring On The Light
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While you're here...
This is the last time...(well, no, second-to-last-time) that I'll introduce Jamaican Queens with the qualifier of ..."featuring former members of Prussia."
I shouldn't presume how-plugged-in-to (or unaware of) the local music scene's most buzzed indie(/rock/pop) performers and maybe I should just introduce this group as its own entity, a fresh-take, a new (shared) vision (between singer/songwriters Ryan Spencer and Adam Pressley) of murky/dazzling, supernatural-folk - nervy/nuanced rhythms (both human and synthetically-sequenced) under winding harmonies and acoustic guitars ebbing with the flow of synths and electric bass.
So, yes, they're a band. But now, after a summer of half-a-dozen well received shows, they're getting ready to put out their "first" "official" "recording" - a 7" single. ("Kids Get Away" and on the flipside, a cover, or, more so a re-imagining, of My Bloody Valentine's "When You Sleep." That should be out later, maybe around the middle of Autumn.
But the more immediate news is that they're opening for avant-garde punctured-pop dynamo tUnE-yArDs (a.k.a. songwriter/performer Merrill Garbus) this week (Aug 2nd) at the Crofoot. It'll be nice to hear this new post-Prussian (last time) vision backed by that illustrious barn's impressive sound system. Come dig "Kids Get Away." That's the bizness.
