If It's Too Loud...

Saturday was a ridiculous day filled with live shows in the Boston area. No matter what I chose, I was going to have some level of FOMO. But, I've been hoping to get back to The Word Barn before they close up their meadow stage for the season, and with a dual bill of Pete Bernhard of The Devil Makes Three and The Huntress and Holder of Hands playing solo, I truly couldn't pass that up.  During the show, MorganEve Swain mentioned that she hates playing solo since it was all her and any mistakes couldn't be covered up. I was personally curious how The Huntress and Holder of Hands songs would work solo seeing that her music is quite noisy. Sure, it's primarily folk but with elements of indie rock and even metal it can get quite loud and discordant. Stripped down to just guitar and vocals her music was at its most bare bones. Swain played a good amount of new songs that were just being played live for the first few times, including last year's "Doctrine." If t...

We've been posting a lot of political music lately, but it's nearly impossible when so many artists we love keep releasing great political music. The latest is Rhode Island's The Huntress and Holder of Hands's new single. "Doctrine" is an intense slow burn of a song. MorganEve Swain's song feels like it's going to explode, but never quite does. It's just filled with a brooding, festering tension and anger throughout. While it does build, there is never quite that indie rock noise explosion you would expect, even though "Doctrine" leans much more heavily on the folk side of music than indie rock, while still having that noise lurking underneath, which is what we truly love about most of The Huntress and Holder of Hands's music. You can listen to "Doctrine" below. The song is available as a standalone single on The Huntress and Holder of Hands's Bandcamp . For more on The Huntress and Holder of Hands, check out the artist...

Somehow it feels like it's been forever that we've been waiting for a full length album from The Huntress and Holder of Hands with just an occasional song here and there to tease us along. Finally, we have news that MorganEve Swain's debut album will be released in September. Along with that news is the first single off Avalon, "Borealis." Judging just by this one song, it has been well worth the wait.  "Borealis" starts off as a quiet, haunting folk song, the kind of sound that has dominated Swain's solo work. About mid-way through, the song switches moods and becomes the kind of upbeat Eastern European influenced folk song Swain and her husband Dave Lamb mastered in Brown Bird. Towards the very end, the track devolves into a metal meets Sonic Youth blast of noise before going back to haunting folk. As anyone that's been reading this blog for a decent amount of time, songs swerving off into unexpected directions is kinda my sweet spot, so ...

Photo by Mikael Kennedy In all the Halloween excitement, I almost missed out on this completely. MorganEve Swain's father used to have a Halloween mixtape (which makes him a super cool dad, in my opinion) that included songs like "Bad Moon Rising" and spooky sounds. It also included a song called "The Werewolf," but no one knew who sang the song. Decades later, MorganEve Swain, aka The Huntress & The Holder of Hands discovers that the song is by Michael Hurley, who I am completely unfamiliar with. This Halloween, she recorded her own version of the song, complete with wolf howls. It's an incredibly creepy and somehow beautiful cover, and I just wish I had been able to listen on Halloween itself. I guess there's always next year. You can get The Huntress & The Holder of Hands' version of "The Werewolf" over on her Patreon page . While you're there, you should also consider donating.

Earlier this week, I was checking out the website for Brown Bird to see if there was any new word from The Huntress, MorganEve Swain's new project. I hadn't heard anything since "Call to Arms" was released in the summer of 2014, and I didn't discover it until this past March . A day or two later, and The Water Street Demos  was released. Now named The Huntress and Holder of Hands (presumably to avoid confusion with the metal band Huntress, which I did when they released an album earlier this year), there are now three songs to check out. "Call to Arms" is represented on here, along with "These Hands," which has the most haunting violin I've ever heard, and mostly instrumental "Etude." All three songs are moody and dark. They're absolutely beautiful and I highly urge you to listen, but this is definitely a departure from the dance worthy songs of Brown Bird.  The Water Street Demos  is being sold to help finance a full ba...

Every time we get a new track from Brown Bird, I have such mixed emotions. I love having these new songs, but there are a finite number left. There is a sense of sadness with every one, and with "Adolescence" it's really apparent. It's a song about loss and aging, with lyrics like "Lay me down on sacramental ground," which is even more powerful since Dave Lamb, the man singing the lyrics, is gone. Listening to the song at work was a bad move last week, as it's not quite acceptable for a man in his late 30s to be tearing up at work to a song. But it's such a touching and powerful song. It has Brown Bird's trademark Eastern European tinged folk, but it also showcases their hard rock influences much more strongly than anything else they've done.  Axis Mundi , the final Brown Bird album, is due out April 28 on Supply and Demand Music. You can listen to "Adolescence" below. For more information, and to pre-order the album, head over ...

With their final album coming out April 25, Brown Bird have released the first single, "Bannerman." As with anything Brown Bird related, it's very bittersweet since, with Dave Lamb's passing, this will be it. It's hard to tell if "Bannerman" is as haunting as it is on it's own, or if this information influences the vibe of the song, but this song will just stick into your brain stem for days after hearing it. It's full of Brown Bird's standard Eastern European infused folk, but with this dark, mysterious vibe caused by an almost swirling guitar. It's this very unique direction that I haven't heard in folk before, giving it just the slightest hint of shoegaze without fuzz, if that's possible. I have heard that Axis Mundi  will reflect some of Dave Lamb and MorganEve Swain's more metal influences. Maybe this darkness is just a preview of that. Axis Mundi  is due out April 25, and is available for preorder through their Bandc...

I have no idea how this one slipped by me, but over the summer MorganEve Swain of Brown Bird released the first song under her new project, The Huntress. "Call to Arms"  is the first song she wrote after losing her husband and band mate, Dave Lamb, to leukemia last year. It was inspired by a friend of theirs who helped her through her grief. Obviously, it's a painfully dark song, with Brown Bird's Eastern European folk sound, and just a peek into their metal influences. It's a beautiful tribute, and inherently a must listen for all Brown Bird fans. Brown Bird's final album, Axis Mundi , will be released April 28. In the past months, MorganEve Swain has toured with Joe Fletcher, and is currently on the road with The Devil Makes Three in Europe. Rhode Island Monthly just came out with a fabulous interview with her. I highly recommend checking it out here . To listen to the debut song from The Huntress, make sure you head over to her Bandcamp page , and also ...

This release is one of the few times as a music writer that words truly escape me. I'm going to use MorganEve Swain's explanation for it: One night in mid-December of Dave's and my first year together, we were snowed in, drinking strong eggnog and dressing up in each other's winter clothes when we decided to take our silliness one step further and write a holiday song. "The Old Church Bell" was the first song we ever co-wrote. We had so much fun with it that that same night we recorded a version of "Silent Night" too, using almost every instrument we had in the house- just having fun with it and each other. Every winter since then, we kept the tradition of recording a few Christmas songs, which we would hand-package and give as gifts to our families. This year, I thought it'd be special and important to make these songs available to our extended family, in an effort to send something fun into the world and keep Dave's cheerful, fun-loving...