Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Les Shelleys (Tom Brosseau and Angela Correa), Shelley Short, South China, Cabinet of Natural Curiosities

Friday, June 11, 2010:


Location:
The Space
295 Treadwell Street
Hamden CT

$10 - 7:00PM - All Ages

Les Shelleys (pronounced Lay Shell Ease) is a Los Angeles-based duo - Tom Brosseau and Angela Correa. As a gift, Al Guerra, a San Diego music scene main-stay, gave the Les Shelleys a mini-disc recorder. Les Shelleys recorded on that mini-disc recorder with one condenser mic in 2003 & 2004 in Tom’s Angelino Heights bungalow. The incidental background sounds that were picked up, including dogs barking from a neighbor's yard and a man coming down the street with a cart full of bottles to recycle, became part of the unique arrangements of folk and American classic songs they explored. Les Shelleys' debut album will be released on Fat Cat in early fall of 2010. This show is a preview of all that was captured in that bungalow. This is the first time the band will be playing in Connecticut and the first time Tom Brosseau will be doing an All Ages show in the area.

Shelley Short (Hush Records) is a native and current resident of Portland, Oregon, who grew up among characters and artists in a wood-heated home stocked with books, records, and well-cooked meals. As Short recounts: “It was like growing up in a time machine; in some ways we lived like it was 1896, chopping wood, growing our own food, wearing eclectic clothes in a Victorian home and singing our own songs. Other times it seemed like we were living in 1955, driving around Cadillacs and Hudsons and listening to Jonny Ray, Lester Young and The Flamingos. And yet it all felt like growing up in a movie made in 1963, full of these big personalities." Her most recent album, A Cave, A Canoo "captures that feeling of sidling up to the fireplace while waiting for the sleet to stop, pairing minimal instrumentation with Short’s soft, sweet voice, and hinting at an atmosphere both delicate and haunting." - Paste Magazine: Best of What's Next

South China was born in 2002 as a marriage, musically and literally, of Jeremy and Jerusha Robinson. Their individual backgrounds in experimental rock and classical music produce a sound that feels sparse and improvised, evoking a slightly dark and dream-like state, like trying to recall something that is just beyond the edges of memory. They draw listeners into their intimate world of Maine winters, bittersweet moments, subtle humor, and the bizarre dream imagery.

"Cabinet of Natural Curiosities is a result of the indie-music world's ongoing experiment with folk: It cuts the music apart, sending its pieces back to imagined woods, shires, and netherworlds, and patiently lets them drift back in new configurations… Cabinet leader Jasmine Dreame Wagner has a feel for her influences' primal sweetness and creepiness. Between her vocal melodies and some spare guitar-plucking are cracks that fill up with the sounds of glassy chimes, tweeting birds, children's voices, and other idyllic forms of ambient noise." —The Onion A.V. Club

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