New Tess Wiley

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If you've been reading this blog for a while, you probably already know who Tess Wiley is. She's a mid-90s indie rocker turned singer-songwriter who, after being in a number of bands in the 90s (Phantasmic, Sixpence None the Richer, etc), started releasing strong, pop-oriented solo efforts. 2004's Not Quite Me is currently not available in the states, but if you're in Europe you can probably still get your hands on it. It looks like we'll see a new album from Tess this year. The new album is called Super Fast Rock'n'Roll Played Slow and is expected to be out this April on Tapete Records.

Three songs from the new album are currently available to download (and a few other songs have been "leaked" legally through various promotions): "Halfway Thru", "Messed Up Everywhere Blues", "Raise Your Hand". Also, you can see the cover art over at Turn Off the Radio, and you can see the full tracklist on this German page.


So far, it looks like this will be good but not as good as Not Quite Me, which was really quite excellent for the amount of recognition it received. Seriously, if we could re-write our best of 2004 list, it'd be right behind Funeral. This is the part where we tell you to buy Tess's music, but since Not Quite Me isn't on Amazon and we can't vouch for Rainy Day Assembly, we'll just have to tell you where to buy Super Fast Rock 'N' Roll Played Slow when it becomes available. If you want to buy me a copy of Rainy Day Assembly though, the link's to the right.

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(Old) Arcade Fire

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Yeah, I know, everybody's talking about The Arcade Fire right now. We have something, however, that the other sites don't: a few early tracks only available through The Internet Archive. Some digging we did while we were not posting anything here turned up this link, which was listed on an older version of The Arcade Fire's website to promote their self-titled EP in 2003. Three tracks are available - one from the EP (Woodlands National Anthem), one interview clip, and an early version of Funeral's "In the Backseat". Enjoy! That ought to be enough to tide you over until Neon Bible comes out during the first week of March, or at least until the Arcade Fire appears on Saturday Night Live this weekend. We know you're too good to listen to the leaked version illegally, right?


...and for you cave dwellers who haven't bought Funeral yet...

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Internet archive

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Although the site remains in disarray, I was happy to find that most (if not all) of our articles are still available online. You can view a cached older version of our reviews page (with links to most of the other pages) here. I'd like to thank Archive.org again for all of the wonderful things they do. If we were able to get anyone writing regularly here, we'd be raving on and on about their Live Music Archive, their "Wayback Machine", and their many other amazing features.

Poke around a bit there. Feel free to let people know that articles, interviews, reviews and such that used to be at Unfound Bloom can now be found there.

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More Downtime and Another Server Change

The non-blog sections of Unfound Bloom are down. I know we never finished rebuilding the site after the last server change, so this isn't too much of a loss - but still, we're in the midst of another server change. It appears that we'll be staying with the same company as the incident that made the site go down is not their fault and we've been happy with their service. I'll continue to update this blog intermittently until we re-launch the site.

American Music Club

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Just a quick update to say that you should download (legally) a free American Music Club album here: http://music.download.com/americanmusicclub/3600-8573_32-100345935.html?tag=chart_topdls_artist . Apparently the singer's sort-of on tour with David Bazan from Pedro the Lion and a few other guys. I'm hoping to see the tour and possibly even write a review of the show for the site (Although the site does appear to be dead now, so who knows).

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The End of 2005

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Ok, so it's only November. I'm early, I guess. I also haven't posted anything on the non-blog portion of this site in months, so I figure if I want something done by new years', I ought to start it now. It's not been a good year for Unfound Bloom - most of the "usual suspects" wound up putting out CDs that let me down, and my lack of writing means that I haven't really had a chance to discuss the concert experiences that made the musical year's highlights for me. So here's what we're doing for the end of 2005 - make up some other lists that aren't as relevant, and let visitors tell us who should be on the top.

Here's what you can do: send us a list of your top 5 favorite albums released this year. If you want to do more or less than that, that's cool too. If you give reasons why, we'll even post your list (if you don't mind) alongside ours (to be blunt, most of "our favorites" don't match the "right answers" for great albums this year - so we're going to print our favorites, and not just what the actual best albums are). We'll be taking favorites-lists in the comments section to this post and at unfoundbloom@gmail.com . Actually, now that I think of it...that e-mail address is good for whatever spam, news, gossip, chit-chat, etc you want to send in, so feel free to use it (even though it's not properly listed on the sidebar or on the other part of the site yet).

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"Stripped" video and audio

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A cool little site for live footage (and audio) that you can stream and download: http://www.strippedmusic.com/ . Switchfoot, Kanye West, Gavin DeGraw and more. I like how they end each session with a cover - it's a nice way of making sure they have content that the other sites don't.

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Recent Buys, Leslie (Sam) Phillips, Sigur Ros

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Ok, so it's time to post about some new music I've been getting into lately. Well, some new and some older stuff that's new to me, anyway. Let me catch you up to speed. A few weeks back I bought a good-sized box 'o' CD's from Joel over at The Unscene, and I've been exploring that for most of the time while the blog's been out of commision. Some great new music for me by Velour 100, Sixpence, Sarah McLachlan, Fleming and John and more. I haven't even had a chance to listen to half of it yet. I figure that ought to keep me from trying to buy too many more CDs this year.

...or maybe not. The other day, while killing time before I had to pick up my mother from an appointment she had, I decided to see what exactly the "Family Christian Store" had in stock for CDs. I was expecting to see a pitiful selection of crappy and overpriced Christian pop artists - to my surprise, the selection wasn't too bad and some of the prices were pretty good. I mean, I still had to chuckle when I noticed the second Jars of Clay album missing from the shelf full of their albums (that's the one that most CCM fans consider to be "of the devil" or "secular" or whatever), but I also found some items I actually wanted. I actually found myself walking past the latest titles from better Christian bands like metalcore act Living Sacrifice and the experimental Starflyer 59 in favor of the clearance section - where I still spent just as much money! I picked up a copy of the highly recommended (and out of print) Chasing Furies album for $4.95. I picked up a copy of the new Kevin Max EP for 6 bucks, and I even spotted a solo project from The Choir's Steve Hindalong for just $1.97! To top it off, I found an old copy of the last Sam Phillips album she released before leaving the Christian music market for $4.95 - and when I got to the register, I found out that the out-of-print little gem was only going to cost me $1.97. Not too bad.

You're probably wondering if the CDs are any good. So far, yes. Steve Hindalong's Skinny has quite a few high-profile guest appearances by some of CCM's best - Matt Slocum, Jason Martin, Andy Prickett....you get the idea. Chasing Furies will have to grow on me a bit, but I like the sounds on that album. None of the songs stick out at me too much, but that atmospheric pop-rock sound has a way of sucking me in. The Sam Phillips album (technically a Leslie Phillips album - see, before she was a critically-acclaimed acid-pop singer-songwriter famous for composing the score for Gilmore Girls, she was a Christian rock star....then she changed her name and renounced all of her previous work, with the exception of 1987's The Turning, which is largely considered one of the most influential CCM albums of all time) is pretty strong, but it sounds a bit dated. In a weird way, I wish that "Carry You" wasn't the only song from that album to have been remade (by Sixpence None the Richer, no less!) - I think some of the other songs on the album would benefit from more modern sounding production. I can see how it was an influential album and I can appreciate it for that, but to be honest I doubt I'll listen to it too often. My favorite album from her will probably be The Fan Dance for a while yet.

...but feel free to call me off-base there. It is a bit weird for me to disregard an album that well-respected this quickly. You can listen to most of the album here, in a radio special promoting it. It's mixed in with interview clips and I think it's missing a song or two, but it's still most of the album. Just so that I get the page I got that link from plugged on here (since I doubt I'll plug that page again - I don't know too much about classic Christian rock), here's a link to Servantsheart.net.

I have another streaming album for you to listen to though! That's right, three in one week! Go to the Sigur Ros MySpace Page to have a listen to their new album. This is really my first exposure to the band, but I'm falling in love with their sound. So lush, so beautiful. Who needs intelligible lyrics when you can have soundscapes this gorgeous?

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Nothing Is Sound

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Have a listen to the new Switchfoot album over at VH1's website. It's not too bad, but I was expecting a bit more from them. In spite of it being more of a rock album, the softer songs are the ones grabbing me the most so far. Let us know what you think of it!

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Leigh Nash, Astronaut Pushers (Sixpence revisited)

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OK, so if you've been reading this (or Unfound Bloom proper, not that it's updated much anymore) for any amount of time, you know that I'm a huge fan of Sixpence None the Richer. Well, I've heard from four former band members in the past three months, and I'm ready for some of their new projects. OK, so you've already heard me profess my love for Tess Wiley's latest album, but I'm guessing you haven't heard the new Astronaut Pushers EP. You can download two songs at that link though. AP is the band that Matt Slocum (guitarist/cellist/lyricist for Sixpence) is in now. Sam Ashworth (Yeah, that guy I meant to review the concert of that I saw last June) is also in Astronaut Pushers, alongside Lindsey Jamieson and Superdrag's John Davis. It's a cute little supergroup. I know though, most people around here remember Sixpence's vocals more than anything - well, I happen to know where you can listen to solo material for Leigh Nash's upcoming (early '06) album.

Just because I can, I feel like bragging that I got an e-mail from The Fatherless and the Widow-era Sixpence bassist T.J. Behling the other day. That's in addition to the Sixpence mailing list getting a visit from Leigh and of course, our buddy Dale Baker is always over there.

I guess it's time to mention that I'm going to be moving to a place not too far from where Dale lives soon. I'm planning on doing the whole "groupie" thing. I'm sure that'll help keep this blog (and possibly the regular part of the site too) exciting for the months to come. Heck, maybe I'll even get around to writing something about it sometime too.

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Schizophreniac

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I recently came upon treasure trove of rarities by the band Earthsuit. You've probably never heard of them - they're a little-known genre-hybrid that many people just can't handle. They were discovered at the Cornerstone festival several years back - when a guy from a then-unknown band called P.O.D. decided to announce to his fans that he loved these guys and would make an appearance during their set. Shortly afterwards, they were signed to the normally-boring Christian pop record label Sparrow, where they released one hell of an album - Kaleidoscope Superior. The album was a bizarre mix of rap, pop, rock, techno, and a few other genres on some of the songs (hints of trance, hip-hop, jazz, folk, celtic music, and other unexpected twists were in several of the songs). It's almost funny to think that the album came out in 2000 - before Linkin Park and P.O.D. made their take on the rap/pop/rock sound famous. These guys are better than either of those bands - but they only released one proper album. To be fair, there are two newer bands that were started by Earthsuit's old members - MuteMath and Macrosick. Anyway, you can listen to a good deal of Earthsuit live material, indie material, and rare material at this site. Share the love, buy their CD.

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Sufjan Stevens, Havalina Rail Co., and Arcade Fire News

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Sufjan Stevens has recorded a new song called "The Lord God Bird" for NPR. Don't be fooled by the title, this isn't one of his Christian-themed tunes - it's about a bird that was thought to be extinct that reappeared in Arkansas recently. Some more details (and the exclusive download) are available at NPR's website.

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Apparently, Havalina Rail Co. broke up and didn't tell anyone. Their message board has an announcement of sorts. I just got this news from Buzzgringer earlier today, but apparently it's not new news. If you haven't legally downloaded their Russian Lullabies album yet, you really should get to that soon.

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Oh, and Arcade Fire did a new song for some soundtrack. It's not as strong as anything on Funeral, but it's not bad either. Details (and stream!) at NPR's site

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