Tag Archives: De Stijl

C.S. Yeh, Transitions (De Stijl)

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LEO Weekly ran my review of C.S. Yeh’s new album, Transitions, in today’s edition:

Defying expectations is risky, but even more difficult for experimental musicians playing pop. That challenge — of a player known for more demanding fare stretching out into “less serious” realms — is readily accepted by C.S. Yeh on Transitions. A violinist known for his Burning Star Core project, Yeh plays every instrument here, with a shaky retro sensibility reminiscent of 1980’s one-man band My Dad Is Dead. Yeh takes more than a few chances on Transitions: His icy vocals, rudimentary guitar work and synth-driven rhythm tracks are far more direct than previous experimental efforts, while lyrics like “I thought that good luck routed me to Cleveland” might be too tongue-in-cheek to take seriously. But with sly nods to the underground and the mainstream, covering both Father Yod and Stevie Nicks, Yeh makes their songs his own.

You can buy it from De Stijl here.

Jakob Olausson, Morning & Sunrise (De Stijl)

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My review of Jakob Olausson’s new album, Morning & Sunrise, was published in this week’s LEO Weekly:

From a part of the world where the sunlight is scarce in the wintertime, Swedish singer-songwriter Jakob Olausson delivers an album that, despite its deceptively luminous title, sounds almost as stark as a Scandinavian winter. All of Olausson’s songs on Morning & Sunrise are lyrically direct, sung as if in a relatively one-sided conversation, though musically they meander, with snaking electric guitar leads overlaid upon the foundation of Olausson’s reverb-drenched strummed acoustic. In a way, Morning & Sunrise is reminiscent of Alexander “Skip” Spence’s loner masterpiece Oar, but without Spence’s supposed drug-addled goofiness or his Nashville-produced influence on the music. Aside from the just-slightly-too-ramshackle song “Engraved Invitation,” Morning & Sunrise is a sober and serious affair, like a steaming hot cup of black coffee at the crack of dawn on a cold winter morn.

Buy it from De Stijl here.