Bear Country – Bloody Gorgeous
If you like your gentle Americana sparkling with handclaps and drenched in some of the loveliest, most soulful vocals you’ll hear this side of, erm, Shane Macg… no, er, Tom W… no, er right. The most soulful vocals you’d ever be shocked to hear at a site so dedicated to miserable old grumblers as Song, by Toad.
It sways and spins, dancing blissfully around, like a combination of The Cowboy Junkies and early Rilo Kiley and the summery sound is at times old-fashioned at times sunny and at times wistfully melancholic. Not in a depressed way you understand, just in the manner of a winsome sigh escaping the lips of a beautiful girl who, sad as she might be, knows as well as you and I that all her best days are yet before her and for all the sky may be cloudy now, it won’t last for long. Maybe not even until sundown.
Up Up Away is from their previous album, Our Roots Need Water and embodies the happy clappy side of things, whereas Coolie Trade, the title track from their forthcoming Spring release, is one of the loveliest songs I’ve heard in ages. There’s such soul in the country and such warmth in the sadness that if your heart has cockles, this will warm them from the inside out. I can’t wait for the album, and I’m pretty sure we’ll be hearing more from this lot soon enough.
Bear Country – Coolie Trade
Bear Country – Up Up Away
myspace | label site | hype
lovely stuff
ahem
Tipped, I did, you the nod — hmmm?
Pushing for months, these we have been.
BC are a damn fine band indeed & I see them being a cause for blog frenzy when their LP surfaces.
DC
Oh it was you was it! I was rifling through my old emails trying to figure out where on Earth they’d come from. I hadn’t counted on MI5.
[Snigger!]
With you on the ‘early Rilo Kiley’ comment. Lurvely!
Cheeky cunt. Yes, the word of use this month.
I posted a mention of these in a blog of yours some while back & you said you’d check ‘em out forthwith. Meguesses you shot off a ‘how do’ & gots an email in reply?
DC
I think you should pretty much consider them to be a part of your life from hereon in…
mwah ha ha…
Ah well maybe not just you then, because someone certainly emailed me some mp3 and I am pretty sure it was unsolicited. Maybe I just ripped them from their MySpace, but I don’t think so.
I must learn to be at least minimally organised one of these days.
Fab songs, and I like the girl’s titties.
But my main purpose in being here is to drive up this month’s “cunts” tally. So…here’s to you, my fine feathered cunts.
Now how about the rest of you cunts? Our cunt count can’t accumulate without your continued support.
Mentok I thought it would be unprofessional [Toad dissolves into unexplained fit of coughing] to mention it, but seeing as you’ve brought it up I must agree: a very fine looking young lady indeed.
You vulgar beast.
With a voice like that she could look like Thom Yorke and I’d still feel a stirring in my naughties.
Mmm… Thom Yorke.
No matter where you stand in a room, his lazy eye will follow.
Proper lovely! I really like these two tunes and am going to check them out further. Far too poor to spontaneously be buying albums at the moment, but will definitely add them to some list or other!
Well I might be tempted to wait for the new one – Coolie Trade – which isn’t out for a while, so you have time to save up.
I bumped into Thom Yorke on the corner of Hanover Street and Rose Street last year during the festival – literally collided with the fella.
He’s about three-foot-six! And he does have the obligatory famous person stature of tiny body + massive head. He seemed very polite, though.
Actually, I’m surprised he can’t see round corners.
Anywho… Bear Country – aren’t they lovely?
Lovelier than Thom fucking Yorke that’s for bloody sure. I’ve ordered their previous album and will report back with my findings as soon as there are any.
Something of Natalie Merchant about the lovely lady’s voice.
Which is by no means a bad thing in my book.
Spot on Dylan.