this week.
Lewis & Clarke (w/ Caroline Weeks, Corridor) - July 24th - The Church
I distinctly remember my first encounter with Lewis & Clarke. It was one of those terrifically ordinary rainy days at the end of march, the kind that offer themselves up in abundance here in philadelphia as if to say spring’s procrastination is almost over. Well, L&C’s music is a bit like that. Each of their elongated songs (most lasting for six minutes or more) starts off with what feels like a slow rhythmic drizzle, the kind where you don’t even notice the individual drops; everything is just a cool, reverberating mist. Soon, the flutter of a guitar, the pluck of the ever present harp, the first recognizable rain drop on your left shoulder, travels along an unassuming, yet unquestinably dynamic, melodic pattern. Throw in the deep, wide current of the cello, occassional motifs from the banjo, violin, keyboards, pianos, and you’ve got a well-bred utopia of a rainstorm. The most refreshing part of Lewis & Clarke is the organic, natural quality of their sound. There is a movement among recent artists to drown the musicality in a sea of hazy distortion. It would be incorrect to claim I’m not a fan of the amplified, smoggy sound [I can’t help but read gorillavsbear religiously], but sometimes the clarity of a bell-like voice or acoustic ensemble is beyond invigorating.
Caroline Weeks [imagine the prose and distinction of Joanna Newsom in a lower register]
Corridor [sharp, experimentalism with electronic undertones and a very awake percussion section]
I would also highly recommend browsing Lewis & Clarke’s record label, La Société Expéditionnaire. They’re the home base for a number of truly remarkable new-folk artists; strand of oaks [a personal favorite], matt bauer, and dragon turtle, just to name a few.
