duggup

Another serendipitous find this one, as I started listening to the title track “Only As The Day Is Long” from her new album I was hooked. This has it all razor sharp lyrics, gorgeous and simple production, nothing gets in the way of the song heading straight to your heart. Think back to early Lucinda Williams, back when you had to look up who was singing and went I must remember that name, it’s the same deal here. I am not a big fan of country but this has a delicious darkness to it. The guitar reminds me of Neil Young’s acoustic work.

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Sera started gigging at 12, she played drums behind a bunch of bluesmen on open mic night. She first picked up the sticks in junior high band class, after bumrushing the kit to show the percussion students how to play.She has played drums for Band of Horses (she plays on their acclaimed 2006 album, Everything All The Time), as well as a stint for the late indie band Carissa’s Weird.

Sometime in 2006, she decided to step out from the cymbals and snare and focus on singing, songwriting, and guitar playing, skills she’d been honing for nearly 15 years on her own.

“You can’t really write songs on the drums,” says Cahoone, who’s lived in Seattle for the past decade. “I needed to find something to get my creativity out.” As it happens, the stage is where she found her calling, something she knew even as a 12-year-old, backing up strangers in a bar. “It opened my eyes,” she said. “I thought, ‘This is amazing. This is what I want.’”

The video of “Couch Song” from her previous album…

An ode to a relationship’s moments of much-needed peace — “If we don’t talk, I won’t mind,” she sings over a bed of acoustic guitars and strings, before adding, “’cause it’s the only way to get along sometimes” — “Couch Song” finds Cahoone channeling Patsy Cline by way of Neko Case or Cat Power. No song fitting that description would be complete without a planet-sized dollop of melancholy, but Cahoone finds room for hope, ultimately declaring, “I know it’s hard, but you know we’ll make it, my darling.”

Listen: www.myspace.com/seracahoone.

thatch is fascinated by guitars, music, guitars, production, silly noises, guitars and used to be a musician. Did I mention the thing about the guitars?
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