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EVENT DETAILS |
Sharon Van Etten, Festival
Music: Clubs:
When: 08/16/08 @ 7:00pm
Call: 442-5339
Web: www.myspace.com/sharonvanetten
Email:
hi@theprojectlodge.com
More Information:
Saturday, August 16, 7pm
Sharon Van Etten and Festival
Sharon Van Etten: www.myspace.com/sharonvanetten
Festival: www.myspace.com/linzyandlexi www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/50772-come-arrow-come
Brooklyn-based FESTIVAL will be undertaking their first national tour in support of the release of their debut album Come, Arrow, Come! which was released on the Language of Stone label this Spring. FESTIVAL is the work of Brooklyn-based sisters, Alexis and Lindsay Powell. They recorded Come, Arrow, Come! in Nashville with engineer and co-producer Jeremy Ferguson of Battle Tapes Recording.
Recording sessions began in the Summer of 2006 for Come, Arrow, Come! with the Powells enlisting friends Jake and Jamin Orrall, the brothers in the rock band JEFF, to help round out their old recordings and inspire new elements to the fore. The result isn't just an album illuminated by the obscure bonds of sisterhood -- Alexis' voice poised and operatic; Lindsay's wild and brave; the blend remarkable -- but by a general atmosphere of family and collaboration. In the summer of 2007, Alexis and Lindsay found their long-lost brother, Mike Powell, who began playing live with the sisters adding viola, drums and backing vocals (the three Powells rarely sit still during a set, trading instruments and microphones and are lively with the energy the collaborations produce). The press response to date has been highly enthusiastic:
As the girls take turns spinning yarns of ageless love, their friends and family join in an unaccompanied chorus, with only spare percussion as counterpoint to an upward-reaching hymn of solemn sincerity. The acoustic guitar only sometimes communicates the songs' progressions, though the girls clearly find inspiration in six-string tradition. In its place, sleigh-bells and creaky pianos gossip a millennium's worth of backwoods musics: the kind of interstitial mantras that echo from the coffeehouse, the church gathering, the picnic, the old-time dance hall, the wild wood. Mike Orme,Pitchforkmedia.com June 04, 2008
Recently, I stumbled upon the idea that so many old folk and country singing groups were family (siblings especially) for a good reason: A family's voices would be more likely to resonate with each other for genetic reasons, or something. It's an interesting thought, but it doesn't quite explain the effect sisters Lindsay and Alexis Powell of Festival have when they sing together. They're no CocoRosie, to be sure; the effect is more of one person singing in unison, which is both lovely and striking. When, on "Boxcar", one sings lead while the other murmurs and coos echoes in the background, it's hard not to think of the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind, as classically conceived (let's not think about the kind of analogy we'd have to get into thanks to the twistier bits of modern neuroscience). Ian Mathers/Popmatters.com 7/10
The Powell's beautiful melodies and harmonies will stay in your ears for some time, not to mention their incredible instrumental arrangements. Together, the ten songs on "Come, Arrow, Come!" only total about 29 minutes, and those minutes fly by as you get caught up in the music. This album is a ride you don't want to end, and when it's over, you're ready to start again. Really, it's the type of CD that you will to listen to five times in a row to try and catch all of the subtleties that slipped past the time before, and to enjoy all those twists and turns that you loved the first time through. Matt Blackall Foxydigitalis.com(16 July, 2008)
Though Come, Arrow, Come! appeals to the mystical, the sisters always stay committed to musical clarity. Tribal drone, backwoods spiritual, basement psychedelia, hilltop roots romp . every element they touch upon filters through the genetics of sisterly song and descends on eager ears like a misty rain. Songs can be as simple as two voices and one drum or a thumb piano; and even when more elaborately arranged or produced, FESTIVAL never retreat from their talents as musicians--they're the kind that can command attention in even the barest, most basic contexts. Brooding verses about loneliness and displacement sound oddly comforting ("Boxcar"); songs appealing to fickle lovers ("Valentine") muster the zeal and celebration of a New Orleans brass band. And despite the size of FESTIVAL's ongoing line-up (the two Powell sisters being the group's core) their music speaks to the kind of hard confidence that can only be drawn in insularity, in dreams of retreating from the unkindness of civilization to the woods or inside invented worlds -- places more rife with possibilities than where they are, but more uncertain than anywhere they've been.
Despite a shared penchant for the artistic (Alexis studying as a vocalist since childhood and making films in her spare time, Lindsay producing visual art and recording her own songs, the sisters collaborating on plays and films involving a variety of wigs), they'd never made music together until the Christmas holiday of 2005, when they began recording four-track demos at the home they'd grown up in. What emerged was a natural combination of their sensibilities: Alexis' interest in folk and gospel music, Lindsay's in psychedelia and pop, and story-telling. Stories about heartbreak, family, planetary alignment, and game hunting. Outside of FESTIVAL, the Powell sisters also contribute to Greg Weeks' (Espers) latest solo outing and Begushkin's King's Curse. In addition Alexis Powell is a current and founding member of the meerkat media arts collective based in New York City. Lindsay Powell has released two solo records under the aegis of Cake Bake Betty and is a member of the psychedelic rock quartet, Skyblazer.
www.myspace.com/linzyandlexi
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