Will Sheff - Extra Mile - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

With sober, unvarnished vocals front-and-center of the mix like never before in Stratton's music, the true focus of these songs is the captured, storied souls they contain. This approach calls to mind Lee Hazlewood's album Trouble is a Lonesome Town-tuneful portraits of an assembly of people lit in sharp relief against the ravages of the West-but many of the touchstones for this work are more filmic or literary than musical. Most of these songs occupy an entirely independent point of view - some are driven mad, some paranoid, some wistful, and in one thrilling instance the narration zooms out entirely, evoking the prehistoric sequences from Terrence Malick's Tree of Life. Stratton gives each new fictional perspective beautifully specific verbiage-who else could manage to squeeze InchAQI,Inch InchTioga Pass,Inch and InchVictorvilleInch into rhyming phrases?-that gives them an eerie, realistic quality. The silver-tongued mortgage spells of a real estate agent selling what is known to be a doomed property, in InchHigher and DrierInch-is buying a house in California necessarily a deal with the devil? One can't help but be reminded of Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of Inherent Vice - the ensemble cast, the film grain excellence, the general California-ness, the impending sense of doom. There are similarities in scope and pace, too, to the work of filmmaker Kelly Reichardt who, especially in the film Old Joy, let's dialogue wither among the grandeur of the trees. And much like in Richard Powers' tree opus The Overstory, these characters' lives in the shadows of the Earth are interconnected in deed and through the generations, interwoven like an ever-tightening snare grabbing the leg of a passing fox.

Paralanguage is Will Samson's fifth album and follows releases through Karaoke Kalk (Hauschka, Bill Wells) and Talitres (Destroyer), as well as a string of EPs and collaborative projects. Across his previous releases Will has experimented with electronica, folktronica, ambient and a more guitar-friendly aesthetic - Paralanguage finds him exploring and assuredly consolidating these various styles.Musically, the album perfectly captures the Inchdreams and meditative experiencesInch that provided inspiration for the record with Will's experiments with water-soaked vintage tape machines adding an atmospheric layer to the recordings. His fragile vocals (often compared to Sufjan Stevens and Patrick Watson) and evocative lyrics also add to the dreamlike feeling of the record. The album features contributions from additional musicians including pedal steel and double bass from Ben Lester & Jeremy Boettcher from S. Carey, electronics from Message To Bears and violin from Will Samson's long-term touring partner Beatrijs de Klerck.01. Calescent 02. Beyond The Dust 03. Flowerbed 04. Triplet 05. Lacuna 06. The Human Mosaic 07. Ochre Alps 08. The Smallest Sliver Album Tracks 1. Calescent 2. Beyond the Dust 3. Flowerbed 4. Triplet 5. Lacuna 6. The Human Mosaic 7. Ochre Alps 8. The Smallest Sliver

Having released six best-selling albums since he first exploded onto the pop scene in 2002, including 4x UK #1 albums & 2x #2s with most selling over half a million albums, Will Young has found a new beginning of sorts with Lexicon, his seventh studio album to be released. It is the first time he will a record via an independent tag Cooking Vinyl and for the first time, he has no management, having come to the conclusion that authority is not something he thrives upon. InchThere has been zero stress,Inch he explains, happily. Album Tracks 1. All the Songs 2. My Love 3. Scars 4. Get Me Dancing 5. Ground Running 6. Dreaming Big 7. I Bet You Call 8. Forever 9. Freedom 10. Faithless Love 11. Say Anything 12. The Way We Were