duggup

Lets get started by heading you straight over to www.myspace.com/bellx1 , press play on the “The Great Defector” sit back and enjoy what is currently my favourite song of the year. OK I suppose it would be a bit churlish to stop there – lets try Soweto style guitar (shades of Johnny Clegg and Hilton Rosenthal), David Byrne / Talking head vocals and rhythm section that dance along the thin line between chaos and pop perfection. Weird ass lyrics (OK , I just wish I had written them). Here’s a hint they pull off the pop perfection.

Arborea is Shanti Curran and Buck Curran. Shanti Curran provides lead vocals, banjo, harmonium, ukulele, sawing fiddle, and hammered dulcimer and Buck Curran provides, vocals, guitar, slide guitar and sawing fiddle. They both write arrange and produce. Now I know most of you saw the word banjo, freaked out and were loath to continue BUT [...]

Have you ever discovered that you have been listening to a band for a couple of weeks and then suddenly realise that you have no idea how you found them? Meet  Water Method, I honestly don’t know how these guys ended up on my playlist, not a clue. Don’t get me wrong, I am having [...]

Mason Proper are a rather nifty rock band who fired up in around 2004,they released “Olly Oxen Free” free late last year and there are some great songs on it, but “Fog” is the one for me. Sparse, atmospheric and just compelling. The raw guitar notes and the voice that ring out at the start [...]

Wendy Ealey has a voice that takes me back to smoke filled folk venues of Melbourne 30 odd years ago. With good reason, she has been a performer on the folk scene both in Australia and in Britain since the 70′s.

Hers is a big beautiful voice that resonates with passion as she sings songs penned by herself and others accompanying herself on guitar. Political songs nestle comfortably with love songs to form a quilt of human experience.

A song written by Mary Caruana with Brent Parlane called “Bigger Than This” can be found on on her MySpace site, is a ballsy dig at the treatment of “illegal” immigrants. “Child of My Heart” is the story of grief felt by an infertile woman.

The Guggenheim Grotto showed up a couple of weeks ago on NPR Second Stage and didn’t they just make my day. I had this stuff on the MP3 player faster than you could blink. Kevin May and Mick Lynch began playing together on the Dublin songwriter circuit back in 2003.They recorded a a 5 track [...]

Casual Projects are a big band. No not that kind, I mean there are a lot of members – eight of em. Pat Lillicrap – Vocals Muchtar Johnson – Vocals Julian Abrahams – Guitar/Vocals Munro Melano – Keyboards/Vocals Dan Bray – Saxophone/Synths Nick Keeling – Vocals/Synths/Trombone Kane Watters – Bass Yen Nguyen – Drums “Time” [...]