Water Music – ‘Wayward’ (mp3)

Matthew Barker first dropped us a line about his other project, The Gypsy Curse, with NY born wife Beth. They’ve put out a great melodic country/folk record which they recorded over four days in a little log cabin in Sweden which you can hear over here. I did do some link surfing to his other project Water Music, and I was immediately taken by this track when I heard it.

If you’re Conor Oberst/Bright Eyes inclined, or sway towards a bit of alt-country and drawn out tales about life on the road, you’ll enjoy this. This is mega lo-fi, but all that distortion seems to stand stoic against Barker’s fragile vocals. A warning though, this is epic sad-time music. Not feeling suitably emo or probably just hormonal today, but the record feels like the post-breakup companion you need to console with greasy food, several wines and a few bouts of weeping your life story to. Enough about that though, there are a lot of good things to say about Mountains. Spend a little time with this release. Beautiful, honest music worth it’s weight.

Hear Mountains in full at Water Music’s soundcloud.

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I, A Man – ‘The Scenic Route’

Stuff that lands in my inbox can be put into a few squares – hype bands, school bands, post break-up lead vocalists trying to make it solo, femme fatales donning peter pan collars or other feathery nonsense around their necks, DJs (everyone), MIDI chompers (everyone). Then there are bands like these guys, who make familiar things sound almost better than the originals.  But after listening to this track…are these guys Motor Ace or what? Not going to slip away all work of their accord (go over and enjoy the awesome drumming on previous EP Fiften Thirty Three here) but I hope they’ll appreciate the comparison. Perhaps that’s just some melancholy on my part pining for consecutive years from 2002 to 2005, but those were good years for Australian music. Anyway, all that melodic ambience and tangled up rhythm guitar catches me easily – so this track is top notch (by association) for me.

The guys are heading out on the road next month. Be sure to get along to one of their shows below:

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