Erie, PA songwriter Roger Harvey, a.k.a. Dandelion Snow, has done enough travelling around the country to know what road music sounds like. Extended stays in Pittsburgh, Portland and New York City have had this man literally criss crossing the nation for the past few years, and his latest release, June’s The Grand Scheme of Things, plays up the rootless troubadour persona something fierce. The title track is lavishly draped in magic hour sunlight, dripping with world weary bits of wisdom tinged with the romantic yearnings for another place and time. Luckily, Mr. Harvey takes a pause from his road warrior ways to make a stop at Garfield Artworks this Friday, August 7th.
Meeting of Important People “Quit Music” EP Release Show @ Thunderbird Cafe, 7/24
Meeting of Important People’s 2009 self-titled debut release was a sketchbook of small details and stolen moments, stitched together as lyrically impressionistic vignettes and set against too many perfectly cultivated harmonies to count. The high points (“Mother’s Pay More” and “I Know Every Street”) offered glimpses of a dreamworld populated by desperate youth and blood thirsty babes, detailing the lost nights and lost loves that never existed.
While that wistful album resembled something like a book of poetry, the group’s current effort, the seven song Quit Music EP available for download here, comes closer to a collection of short stories with each song possessing slivers of plot, drama and the fragile soul of small town life. Lead singer/songwriter Josh Verbanets provides his characters with rousing backgrounds of British Invasion pop, bristling with moments of AM radio melody and world beating power chords. Slowly, I could not shake the comparison to The Kinks and their small town/countryside opus The Village Green Preservation Society. Tracks after the jump.
Fang Island @ The Amphitheater at Station Square, 7/20 (Opening for The Flaming Lips)
While The Flaming Lips’ upcoming show at the Amphitheater at Station Square has the Pittsburgh music scene buzzing with excitement and possibility (it’s their first appearance in the area in seven years), the opening act the native Oklahomans slotted for their summer tour has quietly defined the sound of 2010′s hottest months.
With their self-titled debut album released in late March, Fang Island have crafted what is almost certainly the greatest pure guitar record of the year. Combining the pummeling, dueling axe theatrics of vintage Journey and the unabashedly life affirming harmonies of Andrew W.K., the Brooklyn by way of Rhode Island group truly live up to their self-described aesthetic of “everyone high-fiving everyone.” Tracks after the jump. Continue reading
