Overpass

Souvenirs - Christine Fellows

I wouldn't follow John Darnielle off a cliff (i.e. buy a metal album), but I'd seriously weigh any opinion he might have on singer-songwriters. Darnielle has said "nobody else is writing at Christine's level," and I'm inclined to believe he's on to something.

"Souvenirs" is a short, focused, feverish burst of twitching strings and throbbing keys. It's a road song, and like many road songs, evocative of blurred faces and landscape, the rush of hot, dry air and distant blink of red brake lights. Unlike most road songs, it's told not from the road, not by the driver or even the passenger. But by the person left behind, waiting in a house next to a highway overpass, imagining the road and its spoils, its souvenirs. The setting is as unprepossessing, even bleak, as you could imagine and yet, and yet, there's this warm, dark curtained romanticism about it, this hold-your-breath anticipation.

Fellows is touring with The Mountain Goats this fall.

Buy Paper Anniversary on iTunes and from Six Shooter Records.

Christine Fellows' Web site

The Merry Muses of Caledonia has a track from Glasgow's disco-mashup-whatever band Flying Matchstick Men. I posted a track by them earlier this year, and I dunno, I like 'em. I like their sloppy free-for-all vibe. But I can understand why there'd be a lot of haters, too.

Don't know how much longer they'll be up, but The Of Mirror Eye has posted a bunch of fantastic tracks from The Birmingham Sound: The Soul Of Neal Hemphill Vol. 1: The Rabbit Factory. You can read the really interesting story behind the collection here (no seriously, read it).