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Laura Gibson @ Mississippi Video Highlights

Some new-to-the-stage material:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S7HLBTr5Gg

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYnqgx9EQNg

Watch several performances in a video playlist.

Aside from saying it was a special night, we’ll let the videos speak for themselves, and perhaps  add this very visual description from Melophobe (which posted quality pictures and an audio track.)

After a couple amusing stories that passed as jokes, and one too many spells cast on the audience with their magical accordions, xylophones, and melodicas, country princess Laura Gibson graced the stage: golden hair tumbling down over an ivory vintage dress hovering ghost-like over dark brown tights which plunged dramatically into a pair of white, 1970’s nursing shoes.

Before launching into “Hands in Pockets,” Laura joked in a notch above a whisper, “I realize it’s a rainy night and swine flu is on the rampage. I just came from Japan and everyone on the subway has those masks. So, anyone who feels a cough coming on, if you could move to one side of the room, and if you feel healthy, move to the opposite side. Uh, thanks.”

Loch Lomond OPBmusic Studio Session

Listen to the Loch Lomond In-Studio Set Here

It’s gorgeous!  Then buy the CD here (also gorgeous!).  And, definitely do not miss the CD Release show at The Woods, next Tuesday November 10th.

Recording engineer: Steven Kray, with technical assistance from Randy Layton

The Portland sextet makes a second stop by our studios at the end of a busy year, capped off next week by the release of their Night Bats EP. They talk music videos (specifically, this one), Bee Gees covers and the name change that wasn’t, and shed some light on the full-length they’re prepping for a 2010 release, Little Me Will Start a Storm.

Look for three Oregon dates from the band surrounding the Night Bats release: Nov. 9th at the Pendleton Center for the Arts in Pendelton; Nov. 10th at The Woods in Portland; and Nov. 11th at the Univ. of Oregon in Eugene. They then begin a string of dates down the California coast at the Hotel Utah in San Francisco on Nov. 12th. Plus, don’t miss Loch Lomond on an upcoming edition of OPB-TV’s Art Beat, including footage shot during our session.

Hear Loch Lomond’s previous opbmusic session, recorded in January of 2008

Shelley Short Portland CD Release

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Shelley will play from A Cave, A Canoo tonight at Holocene, celebrating the release of the lovely record.  Both Portland Weeklies gushed:

“Sonically, the album’s aesthetic matches its title; a familiar, functional craft (in this case, folk music as opposed to a canoe) is turned just slightly off-kilter to create something strange and enveloping. Short’s songs are models of restraint, sketched by plain acoustic guitar and sparingly colored, but something about her voice and delivery—not to mention her lyrics, which avoid easy sentiment—indicate infinite, potentially treacherous depths beneath the placid surface.

“It was just really nice not to have a time limit,” she says. “Recording at home, I didn’t have the feeling of having to worry about paying by the hour, or when to go in, so it could be in the middle of the night. It added a lot of freedom, which I think was really helpful. I had an end in sight but I wasn’t trying to push it, so when it felt right, then I knew the songs were all finished.”

The album’s songs’ simplicity—along with their rare, menacing beauty—thrusts Short into a naked spotlight, and her ability to transform languid folk music into stark reflection results in a challenging, seductive record that’s not easily forgotten.” – Ned Lannamann

Read more, including an interesting detail about the interlude found sound cardboard record at The Portland Mercury.

Meanwhile Micheal Mannheimer of The Willamette Week had this to say:

A Cave, A Canoo is a fragile and odd collection of experimental folk songs. Like the work of White Hinterland—another Portland folkie who tends to traffic in the esoteric—the record is flush with juxtapositions: Short’s girly, Joanna-Newsom-sings-Patsy-Cline voice is set against a warm bed of accordion, pianos, plucked guitars and, most interestingly, the languid guitar textures of collaborator Alexis Gideon. The record is intentionally sparse and withdrawn, but it’s the moments of color and beauty provided by Gideon’s guitar playing that initially sparkle.

Short writes like a poet, with tiny couplets that sound just as good on your stereo as they look on the page. That accounts for both the intentional misspelling of “canoe” in the album’s title and the way her songs are broad and infinite enough to encompass multiple interpretations. In the lilting “Racehorse,” Short says, “I am tipping forward, windstorm/ This place sounds like a trumpet, brass horn/ Future be what future want to.” If the future of folk music sounds anything like A Cave, A Canoo, then we have nothing to worry about.”