Artist: Myrza Maldonado | Album: Muy Mexicana | Released: 2018 | Genre: World, Pop
Artist: Myrza Maldonado | Album: Muy Mexicana | Released: 2018 | Genre: World, Pop
320 kbps | 86 MB | LINKS
With ornery tuning keys and rattling fret boards, Roscoe and Etta are a pair of aged arch top guitars possessing wills of their own. Maia Sharp and Anna Schulze are two singer-songwriter-producers who play these instruments and claim title to their names as Roscoe & Etta, on their eponymous debut.
Anna and Maia, who met in Los Angeles at the fabled Hotel Café, knew that they were on to something from their first songwriting session, but they had to keep writing to figure out what. Both artists maintain vibrant careers as artists and songwriters. Anna, originally from Minnesota, has released five well-regarded solo projects, placed songs in the Oscar-winning documentary Icarus and the MTV series Awkward, and been featured in the digital magazine This is Melo. She learned her studio craft under the auspices of producers Glen Ballard and Justin Meldal-Johnsen.
Maia Sharp, acknowledged as “a songwriter’s songwriter”(The Chicago Tribune) has writing credits for a roster of platinum artists that includes The Dixie Chicks, Bonnie Raitt, Cher, Lisa Loeb and Trisha Yearwood, and has produced projects with Edwin McCain and Art Garfunkel, with whom she collaborated as a featured artist. In addition, she tours extensively behind her seven solo releases, and performs on bills with artists like Bonnie Raitt, Patty Griffin and Keb Mo.
Exploring their songwriting chemistry, their disparate influences, and acknowledging their double-digit age difference: the concept of recording a full collection of songs as an artist duo dubbed Roscoe & Etta came into focus.
The harmonies of Roscoe & Etta pair Anna’s bright tonalities against Maia’s darker alto. “When both of us are singing, it feels like each voice is the melody,” says Anna. Adds Maia, “If you find the right person to sing with, you’re working half as hard and getting twice the power. It’s a resonance that lifts you both up.”
320 kbps | 102 MB | LINKS
Sean Oliver – Vocals, acoustic guitar
Stephen K. Donnelly – Upright bass, electric & baritone guitar, mandolin, percussion, backing vox
Anastasios Basiliadis – Drums
Karolyne Lafortune – Fiddle, duet & backing vox
Jim McDowell – Keys
Stuart Rutherford – Pedal steel
Robert Alexander – Accordion
Evan Dalling – Trumpet
FLAC | 789 MB | LINKS
“That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be,” the leadoff track of Carly Simon’s first album and a Top Ten hit, in which the singer expresses reservations about getting married, benefited from a sense of role reversal — it’s such a guy sentiment, but sung by a woman in 1971, it came across as a feminist statement, consistent with the overall disillusionment so prevalent then. Nothing on the rest of the album was quite as pointed, though the other songs maintained the same ambivalence toward romance. The one other standout track, “Dan, My Fling,” in which the singer tries to rekindle a relationship with a man she has discarded, was, like the single, co-written by Jacob Brackman (in this case, with Fred Gardner, not Simon), suggesting that the real creative talent here was him and not her (especially since the writing credits also featured another four names). And since Simon, with her plaintive, proper, and relatively inexpressive voice, was such an unremarkable performer, her debut seemed less auspicious than the attention it attracted might have implied.
320 kbps | 117 MB | LINKS
New album from the veteran British indie outfit. After the critical and commercial success of the Top 10 album – Night Thoughts (2016), Suede release their stunning album The Blue Hour. The Blue Hour is the final part of the triptych of albums recorded by the band since they reformed and released 2013’s Bloodsports. Produced and mixed by Alan Moulder at Assault & Battery Studios, the album sees Suede continue to explore new ground sonically. It features a choir and spoken word, as well as string arrangements from Craig Armstrong and the band’s own Neil Codling. The Blue Hour was produced by Alan Moulder and Suede; it shares the same line-up as 1996’s Coming Up – vocals by Brett Anderson, guitars by Richard Oakes, bass by Mat Osman, drums by Simon Gilbert, synthesizers and piano by Neil Codling.