Artist Category: Indie Folk | Page 5

SHEL

The billowing curtains of sound on Just Crazy Enough, the second full length album from virtuoso indie-folk band SHEL, will be both familiar and far-out to fans of the exciting sister quartet.

The classically inspired mandolin, violin and piano are there, along with the band’s glowing vocal harmonies. But we also hear dense, ethereal textures that hover between the digital and the analog. Grooves are deeper, emboldened with electronic ambience and beat-boxing. The overall effect sheds light on their broad collection of influences, from the daring rock bands of the 60s to the contemplative composers of the 18th Century, and even the waves of modern electronica. Because or in spite of this effervescent mashup, Just Crazy Enough is a masterful move for SHEL. It’s the integral, front-to-back album statement the band has been preparing to make since they began making music.

Dynamic change and self-searching was inevitably going to be a big part of SHEL’s story in these early career years. Sisters Eva, Hannah, Sarah and Liza Holbrook are, after all, twenty-something women, born in a five-year span and raised in a bohemian, art-loving family in Fort Collins, CO. Each found an instrument to master early on, studying classical music while composing and arranging unique works for their anomalous instrumentation, violin, mandolin, piano and drums. They gained performing experience working with their songwriter father, and soon had festival promoters and media figures championing their fresh, intricately drawn sound.

SnugHouse

SnugHouse is Nikhil Dasgupta, Alex Millan, Rosie Borden, Laura Pauline and Sam Kyzivat. In the studio and on stage, the quintet explores its full expanse of influences which includes indie-folk, bucolic acoustic balladeering, frisky soulful pop, and delicately textured indie rock. This eclectic palette is masterfully tied together by a sweet sincerity captured in emotionally direct lyrics, stunning four-part harmonies, and profound interpersonal bonds that shine through onstage and in recordings. SnugHouse tracks fit comfortably alongside songs by Darlingside, The Ghost of Paul Revere, and The Head and the Heart.

The band name is a tip of the hat to the beloved local watering hole, The Snug, conveniently located below Nikhil’s apartment where he hosted countless formative rehearsals. Since forming in the fall of 2017, the quintet has made profound headway in the local scene. To date, SnugHouse has made appearances on Portland’s two biggest televised music programs, and garnered regular radio airplay on all local stations, most notably 98.9 WCLZ. In addition, CLZ has featured SnugHouse on their station stage at Portland’s biggest summer food and culture festival, Old Port Fest. The band has released two EPs: 2017’s self-titled, and 2018’s Like Water, with plans to work toward a full-length album.

Jesus the Dinosaur

Gentle and confessional. Warm acoustic guitar + waves of bittersweet harmonies. Speaking to the soft spoken.

Melissa Weikart

Melissa Weikart is a vocalist, pianist, composer and educator based in Boston, MA. After graduating from Tufts in 2016 (B.A. Music and Spanish), she pursued her Master’s degree in Contemporary Improvisation at New England Conservatory, where she studied with Carla Kihlstedt, Anthony Coleman, Dominique Eade, and Hankus Netsky.

Melissa co-founded Students Advocating for Gender Equality at NEC, and was awarded an Entrepreneurial Musicianship grant to recompose the album Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys for an all-female ensemble. In December 2017, she released her debut EP “Coffee,” and she is currently working on a full-length album.

Max Shakun

Max Shakun (of the folk rock band Parsonsfield) offers a witty twist on the classic singer/ songwriter/ indie acoustic set. Unafraid to traverse his effortlessly smooth falsetto, Max will have you both grooving in your seat, and contemplating the more intricate parts of life.

Low Ceilings

Low Ceilings is an indie-folk project currently based in Windsor, CT. While the group has taken many forms over the years, its core has always been Ben Mueller, who writes the songs; produces, records, and mixes the albums; and handles guitar and vocals live.

Low Ceilings’ recordings tactfully straddle the line between lush production value and intimate, basementy lo-fi in a way that only a college career in the Boston DIY scene could make possible. While attending Emerson College, Mueller, a Connecticut native, started the group with some friends and released an EP and two full-lengths as a full band. Boston, a veritable cornucopia of music venues formal and informal, gave them plenty of room to play. They belted their folky rock with a progressive tilt everywhere they could: basements, bars, living rooms, and venues like Club Passim, Club Bohemia, and The Middle East. Since then, the band has also performed across New England, notably in an empty swimming pool in Nashua, NH; The Met in Pawtucket, RI; and Cafe Nine in New Haven, CT. Digital Wheat Paste’s TJ Foster called their self-titled LP a “tremendously impressive record…songs that somehow sound intimately lo-fi and carefully polished all at the same time.”

After finishing school and moving back to Windsor, Low Ceilings became a Mueller solo project. The 5-song EP Least Favored Painting, out May 1st 2018, is the first release since the change. And change is good: CT Scramble wrote of the EP that “throughout its almost beachside strummings, there is a weary urban beat mysticism that permeates its mood, weighing down what could be easily sunny pop songs with something more literary, wistful, and vibey.” Mueller is currently performing solo and working up to the next Low Ceilings full-length.

Brooke Annibale

Singer-songwriter/guitarist Brooke Annibale sheds a bit of her indie-acoustic skin on her newest record Hold to The Light–a pop-progressive album that offers a fusion of textured electronic and traditional (guitar, strings, keys) instrumentation with songs bearing Brooke’s keen, soulful lyricism.

Produced by Sam Kassirer (Josh Ritter, Lake Street Dive) the record features the contributions of seasoned artists Sam Kassirer on Keys; Zachariah Hickman (Ray Lamontagne) on Bass; Josh Kaufman (The National) on accompanying guitars; Sean Trischka (Molly Tuttle, Oh Pep!) on Drums; and Matt Douglas (Sylvan Esso, Mountain Goats) on Woodwinds.

Hold to The Light is an exciting evolution in Brooke’s career as a musician. Her creative roots run deep with family connected to music–her maternal grandfather founded a music store, selling instruments and sound equipment, which continues to operate today in Pittsburgh, PA. Brooke began playing guitar at 14 and since then her passion for making and performing music has taken her all over the country. She released her first full-length record, Silence Worth Breaking in 2011, produced at The Smoakstack in Nashville, followed by 2013’s EP Words in Your Eyes and 2015’s The Simple Fear.

On the road, Brooke has recently been on tour opening for Josh Ritter, Margaret Glaspy, Chadwick Stokes, Great Lake Swimmers, Jesca Hoop, Iron & Wine, Rufus Wainwright, Aoife O’Donovan, The Handsome Family and others. Her songs have been featured on Sirius XM radio in addition to being placed in multiple TV shows including Grey’s Anatomy, Pretty Little Liars, Hart of Dixie, Vampire Diaries and more.

Olivia Barton

Olivia Barton is a singer/songwriter from Orlando, Florida who writes indie folk rock songs in the vein of The Staves and Phoebe Bridgers. Her songs feature a pure voice swimming in dark guitars, singing about sad things she never intended to tell strangers.

Olivia’s debut album, “Bombay” was released in fall 2018. The album has been curating in the basements and bedrooms of Barton’s band mates and best friends, with the sound of laughing, crying, and Victor’s shower, built into the recordings of Barton’s first batch of heartfelt songs.

Matt the Electrician

Matt the Electrician is Matthew Sever, a quirky, sincere folk/pop singer songwriter based in Austin, TX. He has self-released 11 studio albums, and 2 live CDs since 1998.

His most recent release, The Ocean Knocked Me Down came out on February 2nd, 2024.

For the new project, Matt returned to his “home studio” of sorts, The Aerie, in Austin, TX, (owned and operated by Mark Addison) where Matt had recorded 4 of his previous records, including 2009’s “Animal Boy”. And like that project, Matt and Mark played nearly all the instruments on the new record. There are some special guest musicians as well, including MtE regulars, Seela, Jon Greene, and Stephanie Macias. Plus, first timers Carrie Rodriguez, Luke Jacobs and Oliver Steck.

To call this a pandemic record might be slightly misguided, even though most of the songs were in fact written during 2020 and 2021. But the vibe of the record is upbeat, and weird, and fun, and sometimes sad, but hopeful, and occasionally poignant, and silly, and hopeful, but ridiculous, and also hopeful. You might think that’s a lot of vibes, but there are 16 songs on the record, because we’ve all been through a lot, and so Matt figured that, this time, everyone deserved a few more songs and a few more vibes than usual.

Dana Sipos

Originally hailing from the industrial landscape of Hamilton, Ontario, Dana Sipos inhabited the far Canadian north – Yellowknife, Northwest Territories – for many years before going nomad. Her captivatingly nuanced songs continue to be infused with a wild wind and a haunting, slightly hypnotic surrealism, akin to the mysteries of the north.

Sipos toured extensively across North America and Europe in support of her 2015 release, Roll Up the Night Sky, often employing alternative touring modes; bicycle, tall ship, canoe and train. The album was released on underground Nashville label Muddy Roots Records and nominated for a Canadian Folk Music Award in the Pushing the Boundaries category, celebrating innovation in creating new folk sounds.

The ten songs that make up her new album, Trick of the Light, travel extensively as well; to the Blue Ridge mountains of Appalachia, the Kentucky foothills, the wilds of Tennessee, the rolling hills of Virginia. It is partly by chance and partly by choice that rural, mountainous regions of the U.S.A inform so much of of the music, along with the pull of the tides, amateur palm readers, guiding lighthouses and hurricane season. These are tenuous times and there are gentle, tenuous threads that tie this evocative collection of sonic stories together. In making Trick of the Light, Sipos employed the help of experimental Toronto producer Sandro Perri and features Mary Margaret O’Hara, Jesse Zubot and Doug Tielli.