"when you found me I was doing fine / had it figured all out / with a look / and a kindness smile / you turned me inside out..."
The sublime graceful nature and broken sticks of "Sold As Seen" and "Half-lit Dawn" by Scottish artist Lone Stag, and from his upcoming yet unnamed EP (rumour has it that it starts with 'O' and ends with 'E'), feels like the deep thoughts of a man calmly whittling away on a piece of wood acquired from a local forest and while each is carved differently, they both cut to the emotional quick in moving ways. "Sold As Seen" with wonderful textured plucky guitar rhythms feels seeded from 60's and 70's classic and abstract folk but distilled into something incredibly personal and intimate. A song that would feel cozy around a campfire, prescient around a birth and earth shaking at a funeral, it's honest, rustic atmospheres wrapped around Lone Stag's earthy, inviting vocal countenance with loving harmonious support from his wife is a true forever song.
If "Sold As Seen" is a song fused in amber then "Half-lit Dawn" feels more like hot ambers from a fire floating up to heaven. The tapestry of sounds feel a bit more complex with dissonant pushes, collisions of musical sounds and the vocal attack, still wonderfully emotional has a more stoic personna and maybe more grit and tight fisted fury. The sense (to me) feels like life as broken and bruised up, love as care giving and resolve facing floods and fires too. That is, anyway, what I am feeling and as you should know by now, songs are a bit like sonic Rorschach tests that might reveal more of ourselves than what the author is giving to us. Once again, the female harmonies add gravitas and beauty, makes two voices into one.
Besides the acoustic folk aspect, Lone Stag's music / storytelling has a bit of a magical quality, parables and metaphors mixed in with all the sharp edged whittling.
-Robb Donker Curtius
+ + +
https://www.instagram.com/lone_stag/
https://www.facebook.com/LoneStagMusic/
Just trying to make music that I and other folk love as much as I love the music of my heroes - Bonnie Prince Billy, Iron & Wine, Hiss Golden Messenger, Joan Shelley, Jason Molina, Gregory Alan Isakov and myriad others. I will forever reach for that rainbow.
The Lone Stag who sings is a character. An amalgam. A fiction. He might not be real, but he still finds something to say. He is an outsider, probably born in the wrong place and time, searching for meaning amidst the exigencies of modern life in Scotland. He hopes others will join his herd. If not, he still has his guitar.
+ + +
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://www.instagram.com/lone_stag/
https://www.facebook.com/LoneStagMusic/
Just trying to make music that I and other folk love as much as I love the music of my heroes - Bonnie Prince Billy, Iron & Wine, Hiss Golden Messenger, Joan Shelley, Jason Molina, Gregory Alan Isakov and myriad others. I will forever reach for that rainbow.
The Lone Stag who sings is a character. An amalgam. A fiction. He might not be real, but he still finds something to say. He is an outsider, probably born in the wrong place and time, searching for meaning amidst the exigencies of modern life in Scotland. He hopes others will join his herd. If not, he still has his guitar.
Lone Stag, Scottish folk artist, singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, acoustic music, balladeer, folk, indie folk, acoustic folk, story telling, parables and metaphors, "Sold As Seen" and "Half-lit Dawn",
No comments:
Post a Comment