The Daredevil Christopher Wright - "Clouds". Said the Gramophone tries hard not to be one of those music-blogs that recommends ten "awesome!!!!!!!" bands each week. Oh sure, we might post about ten different bands - but what we are posting is wonderful songs. Not every band we write about is at their peak, not every album a song is taken from is marvelous. And so it's with some embarrassment that for the second time this week I say: Here's something pretty great.. The Daredevil Christopher Wright are from Wisconsin and this record was mixed by Bon Iver's Justin Vernon but those are just the things that help lazies write a lede. What's more important is that In Deference to a Broken Back gives life and thrill to a genre I had mostly left for dead. This is folk-rock still fiercely flowering, bloody bleeding, finding new trees to climb. As with the recent albums of Okkervil River, there are gestures toward other sounds - 60s pop, guitar jangle, - but this band subsumes those influences with much greater skill. Compared to Fleet Foxes' melodic narcolepsy, these songs feel muscular & playful. And there's nothing of the Decemberists' emotional distance (let along their studious high-concept shtick). "Clouds" starts with just acoustic guitar and vocal harmony but there's a whole ravine of bassline, flurries of handclap, a boxer's fancy footwork.

The Daredevil Christopher Wright haven't yet made a masterpiece, but I feel like they might have found a map.

[Amble Down will release this album in May. This is the band's MySpace.]

Preak Faeans - "Wintering Out". I heard that this worked in Norway. What you do is you get out your brooms. Everyone gets out their brooms. You paint your brooms bright colours - yellow, red, egg-shell blue. You put on your toques and your mittens. And then all together, up and down the street, you sweep away the snow. You sweep it into the middle of the road, into a big icy snowy pile, and then the sun melts it, and the winter is gone. It becomes summer. Then you can put away your toques, mittens and brooms. You can take a deep summer breath. You can stand on your balcony, put out the flowerboxes, catch the eye of a pretty thing on a bicycle. I heard that this worked in Norway.

[the artist formerly known as Freak Paeans (see prev) is offering his new album, Wintering Out, as a free download for just one month. The album will be released on CD in April - pre-order.]
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Elsewhere:

They are constantly posting new stuff and certainly you should follow the site yourself, but the Hood Internet's Beirut/Ghostface mash-up, "Save Me Concubine", is one of their finest in a long time.

I'm so excited about my friend Abby Mcdonald, once of the musicblog Poptext, who is just about to publish her first book. Sophomore Switch is a young adult novel about two girls who switch places. It is also about celebrity, feminism, happiness and (I assume) boys. I haven't read it yet but I've placed my pre-order and can't wait to while away a day on a Montreal er beach. New Yorkers can go see her at a NY Public Library reading on March 10. Abby's a wonderful writer, with prose that's fun, eminently readable, and at its best shot through with a dazzling, human vivacity. Congratulations, Abby - i hope for all good things.

(photo of striped icebergs - source unknown... I think from the Associated Press or another wire agency.)