Americana

The Real Deal Music Review: Jill Cohn – Heartstrings Touching The Ground

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By Brian Rill

Jill Cohn’s eleventh album, Heartstrings Touching The Ground, is only three years old, and is already out of print. However, there are some hard copies on line and it is also available digitally via www.jillcohn.com, along with her other ten albums, more info and downloads. The album was recorded in New York by Grammy Award winning producer Malcolm Burn, who has worked with some huge names. He also is credited with backing vocals, guitars, piano and bass. His resume includes credits with Iggy Pop, John Mellencamp, Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris just to name a few. Burn captured Jill’s sound respectfully keeping the organic style that most fans of Cohn’s have come to love. Jill has a very soft succulent voice that drips into the microphone with aplomb. Her breathy vocals are layered over a minimalist arrangement of acoustic instruments and sparsely played snare drums that lend the prefect balance for her delicate style.

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The Real Deal Music Review: Chris Arellano – Nuevo Americana

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By Brian Rill

The new sound of Americana is a slow and robust tone with concise phrases that spin stories into spells, devised to bring rain into the dry Northern Plains. You can hear acoustic guitar strings reverberate along desert canyon walls as well as the sound of burning wood chips in a campfire. Long-strummed minor chords send out feelings of lonesomeness into the night. Words sung of promise display a longing to return home but with no idea of the path to get there. Soft songs with sweet memories are written down and then delivered to empty mail boxes that line old Nashville roads only to be forgotten again. Chris Arellano’s album Nuevo Americana contains all these ideas and more including the influence of Norteño music from his New Mexican upbringing. The conglomeration of all these styles is surprisingly mellow and moderately inspired by uptempo pop music.

“The sun is going to chase the moon the night is going to end too soon. I’ll wake up in this lonely room again because morning always wins.” The song Morning Always Wins discusses the obtuse feeling of displacement that one experiences when waking up alone, with the ghost of a lover. With a sound resembling Dire Straits, this tune drives along with a steady back beat. The songwriting is objective but optimistic, leading one to believe that maybe her ghost will one day return.

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Music Review: Free the Honey – Fine Bloom

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Fine Bloom is an album graced by three instrumental muses: mandolin player Jenny Hill, violinist Lizzy Plotkin and guitarist Katherine Taylor. In the hives of these queen bees dwells a lone upright bass player, Andrew Cameron. He works his tail off to bring home a steady beat that forms the bottom end of this talented bouquet. Gunnison-based Free the Honey was formed as a string quartet steeped in the Appalachian sound. Its traditional mixture of slow-brewed fiddle is simmered on top of a jangling banjo, which warms when cooked over hot coals. Deep, low tones of double bass penetrate, held together with the churning chunk of a mandolin. Three American girls descant a breathtaking three-part harmony, blending together their soulful whispering vocals into a thick syrupy flow. These three sirens are songwriters accustomed to the classic country tune. Southern heritage runs like long river deltas down their veins. The Central Colorado Rockies beckoned them all distinctly with an older bluegrass mythos. A simpler form of music then made its emergence from floral meadows deep beneath the shadow of a prestigious mountain.

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