Category: Albums

Anna Tivel’s fourth studio album ‘Small Believer’ is a collection of patchwork stories drawn from conversations with strangers, on the road, in restaurants, bars, and rest stops. Produced by guitar mastermind Austin Nevins (Josh Ritter, Anais Mitchell), the songs float on a raft of electric guitar, pump organ, and sparse bass and drums.

‘Small Believer’ is spacious and honest, a lyric-driven exploration of the things that move within us. Tivel takes great care with every syllable and every story, chipping away until what remains is blindingly true and deeply affecting.

The record is available now cd and digital formats.

Limited edition gold vinyl, hand-numbered to 100 and classic black vinyl will be available in November 2017 (pre-order now and receive the digital download).

 

 

 

Small Believer is Anna Tivel’s 3rd full-length solo release. It’ finds the Portland-based songwriter hitting yet another high mark, with masterful production from Austin Nevins. The songs on Small Believer were written while Tivel was touring, but also in-between shifts at the odd waitressing job, or driving Meals on Wheels in her spare time. She has an extraordinarily keen eye for recasting the images she sees into song, so that a homeless man drawing comfort each day while sitting and watching a building go up, brick by brick, becomes the song “Riverside Hotel.” A chance conversation with a neighbor, also a waitress, who makes an empty promise becomes “Last Cigarette.” Each image or moment that burned itself into Tivel’s memories becomes a launching pad for a larger story that she spins into song.
Listen to the singles “Illinois” and “Dark Chandelier“.

The record is available for pre-order in all formats,including limited edition gold vinyl (limited to 100 hand numbered copies), black vinyl, cd, and digitally.

Paste Magazine included “Blurred Harmony” among the 5 Best Albums of June 2017, calling it “smart, lucid songwriting”. The latest album by The Parson Red Heads was produced and recorded by guitarist Sam Fowles, and is available now from the Fluff and Gravy Store, Bandcamp, or your favorite digital/retail outlet.

Blurred Harmony is the 4th studio full-length album from indie psych-folk stalwarts, The Parson Red Heads. It is the overdriven jangle of Teenage Fanclub and Big Star power-pop, the skewed psychedelics of the Paisley Underground, the bittersweet energy of New Zealand’s “Dunedin Sound” movement, and the muted twang of Cosmic Americana, all crammed into 44 minutes. It was released on June 9 via Fluff and Gravy Records (US) and You Are The Cosmos (Europe).

As the band’s frontman, Evan Way puts it, “This record is more a true part of us than any record we have made before – we put ourselves into it, made ourselves fully responsible for it. Even the themes of the songs are more personal than ever – it’s an album dealing with everything that has come before. It’s an album about nostalgia, about time, change, about the hilarious, wonderful, bittersweet, sometimes sad, always incredible experience of living. Sometimes it is about regret, or the possibility of regret. These are big topics, and to us, it is a big album, yet somehow still intimate and honest.”

Paste Magazine gave the record a rating of 8.9/10, calling the band “scholars of the back-porch jangle-pop”. The record is characterized by “smart, lucid songwriting… a fantastic soundtrack to the psychoses of your summery, sunny days.”

Blurred Harmony is the 4th studio full-length album from indie psych-folk stalwarts, The Parson Red Heads. It is the overdriven jangle of Teenage Fanclub and Big Star power-pop, the skewed psychedelics of the Paisley Underground, the bittersweet energy of New Zealand’s “Dunedin Sound” movement, and the muted twang of Cosmic Americana, all crammed into 44 minutes. It was released on June 9 via Fluff and Gravy Records (US) and You Are The Cosmos (Europe).

As the band’s frontman, Evan Way puts it, “This record is more a true part of us than any record we have made before – we put ourselves into it, made ourselves fully responsible for it. Even the themes of the songs are more personal than ever – it’s an album dealing with everything that has come before. It’s an album about nostalgia, about time, change, about the hilarious, wonderful, bittersweet, sometimes sad, always incredible experience of living. Sometimes it is about regret, or the possibility of regret. These are big topics, and to us, it is a big album, yet somehow still intimate and honest.”

Paste Magazine gave the record a rating of 8.9/10, calling the band “scholars of the back-porch jangle-pop”. The record is characterized by “smart, lucid songwriting… a fantastic soundtrack to the psychoses of your summery, sunny days.”

Check it out on Spotify (below) and purchase it here on Limited edition clear vinyl with blue “smoke”, black vinyl, cd, or digitally.

“Blurred Harmony” received a review of 8.9 today from Paste Magazine. The album, which will be officially released TOMORROW (6/9) is the 4th from the psych-jangle-pop band, The Parson Red Heads.

The review describes a few of the tracks:

“Opener “Please Come Save Me” flutters in a Fleetwood Mac groove, with guitarist/vocalist Evan Way and Fowles’ warbling leads orbiting Neil Young rhythmic jitters thanks to the steady thrum of drummer Brette Marie Way. The song blossoms purposefully, allowing for the Red Heads’ Americana tentacles to slither and coil around a cosmic jam that finally breaks after a minute-and-a-half with Way singing dreamily, “Days like this I remember things that I tried to forget.” As the tune chugs along, Way confronts his past with a nose toward the future in the determined line, “The future cannot tell me I’m wrong or make me sigh.” It’s heady stuff from the band, who are equally as ballyhooed for their exploratory affinities for late ‘60s psych as they are for their anthemic songcraft.”

“Sunday Song” floats on a plume of smoky leads and an easy-does-it beat, again slowly evolving from a long, trippy intro into a David Gilmour flashback that flexes and contracts at all the right moments. “Time is a Wheel” seeps feel-good harmonies and breezy, jangly rock that despite its relative non-flashiness most dutifully typifies the Red Heads’ satisfying stranglehold on stoney, county fair power-pop.

If it’s possible for the record to get any more space-y, that can be found in its final three tracks. The psychotropic “Out of Range” is a stunted trip replete with one of the album’s more intoxicating harmonic verses, with Way and Fowles singing, “Sorry I fell out of range/The part that was so strange/is I was always there.” The song is over just as it’s about to lead you into a spiraling tailspin to the benevolent foot of the Overmind, when the aptly titled “In a Dream” clears the aural cobwebs with a delightful Chris Bell homage. The song’s potent drive clears yet another trippy path to the album-ending sound collage “Nostalgia on the Lakefronts.” This is the cosmic broadcast from the band’s internal, time-fearing transmissions, and is a bizarre but fitting way to close the book on Blurred Harmony.

You can Pre-Order the record now at the Fluff and Gravy Store, Bandcamp, or your favorite digital/retail outlet.

Check out the new single “Make A Life“, from Nick Jaina. It’s the lead track from the digital album, Brutal Lives, which will be released on September 16.

Brutal Lives (Fluff and Gravy Records, Sept 2016) is easily Nick Jaina’s most daring album to date. And that is saying a lot when you consider that Nick has made a career out of re-inventing himself. The 14-track album primarily features work that he originally composed for a contemporary dance piece in the summer of 2014. Though the songs were not used, Nick thought the recordings had some value in them, so he refashioned them, adding vocals, choruses and ambient sounds to give them new life.

Stylistically, the album jumps from the indie-pop standout “Make A Life”, to the haunting “Co-Creators”, to the jarring “Saw You On The Train Last Night”. And I swear, “Fell Too Much In Love” would be right at home in a John Hughes film.  Due to the unusual provenance of the recordings, almost every instrument was played and recorded by Nick himself. He gave the collection of songs the title that he proposed for the original dance piece, which was also rejected: Vies Brutales, or Brutal Lives.

This is Nick’s second release on Fluff & Gravy Records, a follow-up to 2013’s Primary Perception. It will be available digitally on September 16, and coupled with a limited-edition printing of an essay that Nick wrote for people who are new to dance, How To Enjoy Dance. 150 copies of the essay will be released in October.

One listen to her world-weary yet somehow bouyant songs and it’s clear – Anna Tivel has spent her share of quality hours behind the wheel of a Dodge Caravan, repeating lines over and over until the words fall in time with the windshield wipers, or until the gas light comes on.

Heroes Waking Up, Anna Tivel’s third full-length album, was be released on May 20, 2016. It is the result of a year spent living and writing in a friend’s garage and on the road. The eleven song recording winds through a dusky darkness of hopeful strangers, shadowed struggle, quiet love, and flying dreams. Produced by guitar magician Austin Nevins (Josh Ritter, Anais Mitchell, The Mountain Goats), Tivel’s faded-photographic songwriting swells above a soundscape meticulously crafted by Nevins on guitar, lap steel, banjo, and pump organ. He is joined by Sam Howard (Ruth Moody) on bass, Ian Krist (Blind Pilot) on vibraphone, Robin Macmillan on percussion, and Jeffrey Martin and Moorea Masa singing harmonies. Throw in some violin and octave violin from Anna herself and the final effect is a sweeping, dream-like exploration of Tivel’s raw imagery and powerful storytelling.

Give a listen to the record here, and then buy it.

Here’s what some folks are saying about it:

“There is not a single song on here that is easily forgettable, much less filler”. – No Depression

“Anna Tivel writes songs that demand the full attention of the listener, and it isn’t hard to give her that because her singing and writing seem to take power over you” – Glide Magazine

“Heroes Waking Up” is a kind of consecration of artistic identity – Music Won’t Save You

“Each song on this album seems to simultaneously sing of sorrow and celebration. That even in the direst of circumstances, life is a still a beautiful thing. The most accurate connection that I could draw to this album is the writing of John Steinbeck.” – Northwest Music Scene

 

 

 

Along with our partners Decor Records in Europe, Fluff and Gravy Records is excited to announce that a new record from Richmond Fontaine, titled You Can’t Go Back If There’s Nothing To Go Back To, is available today.  This Richmond Fontaine’s tenth full-length studio record, and it will be the seminal alt-country band’s swan song.

As songwriter Willy Vlautin puts it, “We all wanted to make one more record after The High Country. Dave moving with his family to Denmark stopped us for a long while, but we were dead set on one more. I wrote You Can’t Go Back… to give an end piece for all the characters who inhabited the world of RF over the years. Throughout the new record are hints of past RF albums and nods to past locations that the characters had found themselves in, and always they’re drifting and searching, hoping for a decent place to land. In the end they try to go back home where they were when RF first began. It’s where the characters started and now where they’ll end.”

“RF has had a great 20+ year run and these guys are my best pals so it’s a tough decision but the right one. We’ll tour this record for as long as we can and then we’ll a have a knock down drag-out party, wake up with a hangover, and move on.”

Here is what the media is saying:

“Every song is like a mini Coen Brothers movie… Dramatic and poetic, you’ll sorely miss Richmond Fontaine when they’re gone” –Q Magazine

“9/10” “as good as anything he’s ever written” – UNCUT
“the band’s final reading approaches perfection; an Americana capstone” – Pop Matters

 

 
The record is available in digital/cd/lp formats atiTunes, Amazon, Fluff and Gravy Records, or at your favorite record store.

Along with his partner in crime, Chuck Prophet, Dan Stuart led Green on Red to the forefront of the Americana movement from the early 80’s through mid 90’s, before Dan disappeared from the music business in 1995. In 2010 he fled to Mexico and began writing under the pseudonym “Marlowe Billings”. 2012 saw the release of a new record, The Disappearance of Marlowe Billings, to be followed by a false memoir of the same title.  Both were explorations of the events that had led to his unraveling, his early days leading the erratically magnificent Green on Red and his later years as a kept man and occasional screenwriter who wandered the streets of NYC and Barcelona looking for opium dens that no longer existed and regrets that always will. The world took notice and he was back in the game but somehow all the rules had changed. Now, shunning his Americana roots, Stuart wanted retribution, songs that still had a taste of danger and intrigue, what use to be called rock ‘n’ roll. Recording alone in a concrete bunker in Oaxaca, with only the help of a banda engineer keeping time with a 30 peso little black egg shaker, Marlowe’s Revenge was born. He would later bring on Twin Tones (Mexico City) as his backing band, and the match couldn’t be more perfect. Today, Fluff and Gravy Records is proud to release Marlowe’s Revenge, digitally, ahead of our 2/19 physical release (LP/CD). You can grab a download at iTunes, stream it at Spotify or Bandcamp, or can order directly from the Fluff and Gravy store (LP/CD/mp3/FLAC). The CD contains a beautiful 12 page booklet, and the LP includes a color insert. Here’s what the media is saying: “this “wonderfully sleazy chunk of dirty, dangerous rock ’n’ roll gets Stuart firmly back in the game” – Q Magazine “8/10” – Uncut Dan will be touring Europe from February – April, and has plans for US dates in April/May. Keep up to date here.

On November 20, Nathaniel Talbot will release his fourth full-length album, Swamp Rose and Honeysuckle Vine, via Portland’s Fluff and Gravy Records. Nathaniel, who operates an organic vegetable farm on Whidbey Island, WA, works roughly 60 hours a week on the farm every year from March through October. As such, the songs on the album are intimately tied to the lush farmland and windswept vistas of Whidbey Island, deeply rooted in the earth and American traditionalism.

Swamp Rose & Honeysuckle Vine captures the raw, live energy of Talbot’s guitar playing, and has a more stripped-down approach than his previous albums  – no drums, fewer string arrangements, and sparse vocal harmonies. Tracking guitar and vocals live and solo, usually in just one or two takes, Talbot then brought in his quartet of Portland all-stars, Anna Tivel (violin, vocals), Sam Howard (double bass) and Lincoln Crockett (mandolin) and Benji Nagel (dobro), whose auxiliary instrumentation is used intentionally and sparingly to great effect, filling in and conversing with the core of Talbot’s playing and singing. “Challenging what folk music is capable of,” says Seattle Weekly, “Talbot’s powerful, uplifting voice harnesses a country twang complemented by lush acoustic finger-picking and a violin that feels like it was birthed next to a babbling brook in the mountains.” Channeling the lyrical prowess and gritty charm of Anais Mitchell on tracks like “As the Way,” and the concrete characterization in the work of Elliott Smith on tracks like “Able Man,” Talbot stands on the shoulders of generations of folk musicians and Americana singer-songwriters before him. His approach to music feels like that of someone who treats it as a craft handed down and honed, like the tilling of soil or the carving of wood.

“It’s a wealth of lyrical vision, complex guitar playing, and expert musicianship; a work about people’s connection to one another through the earth,  disguised as a folk album about farming.” – American Standard Time

“simple, pure, haunting” – Vortex Magazine

Listen to the record here!

Buy the cd or digital album here!

It’s finally here! Today is the official release day for Fernando Viciconte’s long-awaited 7th full-length release, “Leave The Radio On“. Even better, KEXP featured the first single “Save Me” on their Song of the Day podcast. Whoop!

The album, which features Peter Buck on 8 of the 11 tracks as well as Scott McCaughey (The Minus 5, The Baseball Project, Young Fresh Fellows) has been 3 years in the making. This is a new chapter in Viciconte’s ever-evolving musical trajectory, a career marked by creative integrity and an almost painful honesty which attracts fans from high and low that still believe in the redemptive power of rock and roll.

He will be touring the US through the end of 2015, and will embark on European Tours in early February and April of 2016.

Available now on LP, CD and digital formats. Look for it at your favorite record store, on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify or get it directly from Fluff and Gravy Records.

New Records from Fernando, Mike Coykendall, Drunken Prayer, and Vacilando

Happy summer everyone! It’s going to be a busy one for us here at Fluff and Gravy Records. We are excited to welcome two new artists to the family, long-time Argentinian troubadour, Fernando Viciconte, and newcomer Indie Rock/Ambient Soundscapers, Vacilando.

Just to get you started, here is your 2015 summer anthem, from Mike Coykendall, as presented by Glide Magazine.

Read more about all of the release below! Remember that all of these records can be preordered here, and that shipping charges ONLY apply to the first item that you order.

The Vacilando and Fernando records are available as limited edition colored vinyl (hand numbered to 100), so be sure to get those before they go if it’s your bag.

Thanks so much for all of your support!

Much love,
John and Chad

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Half Past, Present Pending is Coykendall’s 4th solo album,and his second on Fluff and Gravy Records. A departure from 2012’s Chasing Away The Dots, which featured numerous guests (M Ward, Ben Gibbard, Zooey Deschanel) and full band arrangements, this record is all Coykendall. The goal was to bring the listener closer to his live performances, and his setup which he affectionately calls “the rig”, consisting of an oversized Kay electric guitar, a tin can kick drum and a huge set of high-hat cymbals, all awash in delay and reverb. Half Past, Present Pending mixes excellent new compositions (check out “Hard Landing”) with tracks from his back catalogue (check out “East of Cheney” or “Spacebaker Blues”) along with fresh interpretations of other artists (he covers Roger Miller, Syd Barrett etc).

Available July 17, 2015 on lp, cd, and digital formats

Sample a track and pre-order the record here!

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Hailing from Portland, OR, Vacilando might accurately be called the Fluff and Gravy house band. At it’s core, the band is a vehicle for the songs of John Shepski (FnG Head Honcho), accompanied by Chad Lanning (FnG partner, photographer, and social media guru) and Juniana Lannign (FnG Studios lead engineer).

Their debut record, While They Were Dancing, is slow and atmospheric, breathing deeply with vast empty spaces underneath heart-in-hand lyrics and a humble delivery. The band is fond of describing their record alternately as Bummercore or Bleak Midwestern Soundscapes, but just when the listener is drawn in and seemingly transported to another time and place, the band brings them crashing back to earth in a sonic explosion of screaming guitars and feedback. The music feels at once nostalgic and timeless, all while remaining grounded in the present.

RIYL: Yo La Tengo, Low, Fennesz, Vic Chesnutt

Available July 17, 2015 on lp, cd, and digital formats

Sample a track and pre-order the record here!

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The Devil & The Blues sounds at first like a party record. But fans of The Reigning Sound, The Sadies or Freakwater will recognize the droll narratives of sadness, rebellion and wild redemption on this slightly psychedelic trip through the history of American roots music. Here, once again, Morgan Geer finds common ground at the peculiar crossroads of gospel, soul and 60’s psych.

There’s a real connection to the aforementioned bands too. Along for the ride with Geer is the rhythm section of drummer Lance Wille and bassist, David Wayne Gay, both former members of The Reigning Sound (Geer, Gay and Willie, as “The Unholy Trio”, have a crazy popular video of Public Enemy’s “Bring the Noise” that Bloodshot Record’s released a while back). Dallas Good, from The Sadies, drops by to play some spectacular guitar.

Rowdy, unswerving and often outrageously funny, The Devil & The Blues, is the new old sound of Drunken Prayer.

Available August 21, 2015 on cd, and digital formats

Sample a track and pre-order the record here!

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3 years in the making, the album Leave The Radio On a virtual who’s who of Portland’s finest musicians, including Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey as well as members of M.Ward, Elliott Smith, Richmond Fontaine and The Delines. Fernando has come a long way since Magnet Magazine named him one of the ten Best New Artists of the Year in 2006. This record represents the next step in his ever-evolving musical trajectory, a career marked by creative integrity and an almost painful honesty which attracts fans from high and low that still believe in the redemptive power of rock and roll.

Last fall, Fernando dropped an early 7” single from the LP as a preview of what is to come.  The a-side (“The Dogs”) is the second track on the record, and was featured by KEXP as their song of the day.

Available September 18, 2015 on cd, and digital formats

Sample a track and pre-order the record here!

“Sea of Japan”  is the first new material from Nick Jaina since 2013’s Primary Perception. The single, and it’s b-side, “Delta of Venus” were recorded during the same time period, and they would feel right at home on the album.

“Sea of Japan” was inspired by a hypothesis regarding the Heikegani crab and fisherman in the Sea of Japan who may have been unwittingly responsible for a selective evolution in the development of the species. The theory, as presented by Julian Huxley and propagated by Carl Sagan, suggests that any time a crab was caught whose face resembled a Samurai Warrior, the fisherman would throw it back. Eventually, the crabs would have (artificially) selected for the trait, which would come to define the species. Nick Jaina takes the artistic liberty of connecting this to a school trip to the Sea of Japan at age 12 when he was stung by a jellyfish.

“Delta of Venus” was a $500 commission for a friend who was trying to win back a lost love, which Nick chose to set at a cafe in Davis, CA, where they lived. When the friend was visiting Portland with the girl, he called Nick and asked if he would stand nonchalantly in the doorway of Mississippi Records and “spontaneously” play the song as they walked past.  He did, and they listened. The awkward silence that followed was nearly unbearable. In the end, the friend didn’t get the girl back. No word on whether he considered this to be a good investment.

Click here to stream the new tracks!

 

 

The debut album from Catherine Feeny and Chris Johnedis is finally here!  Early reviews and premiers from sites including Magnet Magazine, The Bluegrass Situation, American Standard Time, Glide Magazine and The Examiner have already begun to build a wave of excitement. It’s “a strange and powerful sound” (American Standard Time), “infectiously listenable, and like nothing you’ve heard before” (Glide Magazine).

Pick up your lp/cd/digital copy right here

[youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7HoFKBmmms[/youtube]

Acclaimed songwriter Catherine Feeny met jazz drummer Chris Johnedis after recording her rebellious fourth solo album. She had just come back from the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, and he was returning from 2 years of working and studying in Thailand. The two hit it off, and Johnedis helped translate the varied rhythms of “America” — which ran the gamut between vintage drum machine sounds and captured field recordings — into a live show setting.

Two years later, working with producers Sebastian Rogers (Floetry) and Sheldon Gomberg (Ben Harper, Ricki Lee Jones), in a live four-day session in Silverlake, CA the two create a universe of sound that is sparse and propulsive, yet playful, for their eponymous debut as a duo. Producers Rogers and Gomberg and mixing engineer Tony Lash (Elliot Smith, Feist) leverage Feeny’s quietly arresting vocals and classic pop songwriting against Johnedis’s R&B inflected polyryhthms, masterfully maximizing their tools — ukulele, voice, guitar and drums.

Catherine Feeny remains best known for 2005′s “Hurricane Glass. The song “Mr. Blue” was picked up by KCRW in LA, and later featured in “Running with Scissors,” “The O.C.,” and “Miss Conception.”  The attention won by “Hurricane Glass” resulted in the album being picked up by EMI Records.

Audiences across the US and Europe have been mesmerized by the spell Feeny and Johnedis cast on stage. Feeny has played internationally as a headline act and in support of: Wilco, Belle and Sebastian, Suzanne Vega, John Prine, The Indigo Girls, Kelly Jones (Stereophonics) and Martha Wainwright.

Catherine Feeny and Christopher Johnedis’ eponymous full-length cd/lp will be released on Fluff and Gravy Records on 4/21/15, preceded by a 4 song digital ep, featuring the  single “Harm” on 2/17/15.

Find Catherine Feeny and Chris Johnedis here http://www.catherinefeenyandchrisjohnedis.com/

Pre-order the ep and full-length here http://www.fluffandgravy.com/store

[youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhJ15yHtAO4[/youtube]

On January 20, 2015, Fluff and Gravy Records will be releasing an expanded 2x LP version of Dogs in the Daylight.  The doubel lp set will include 4 exclusive bonus tracks in addition to the 15 tracks that make up the original cd pressing.  The pre-order link can be found here, and will ship in mid-January.

Praise for Dogs in the Daylight

“Dogs in the Daylight is as close to a masterpiece as a folk album by an emerging singer-songwriter can get” – NoDepression

“It’ll give you shivers” – The Bluegrass Situation

“It’s tough to pinpoint exactly what it is that sets certain singer/songwriters apart from other singer/songwriters, other than the thoroughness with which their songs turn your guts inside out. And by that measure, Martin is way ahead of the pack” – Portland Mercury

 

[youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19xi1g08NKU[/youtube]