Thursday, May 1: Listen for selections from Enjoy Your Rabbit, the 2001 release from Sufjan Stevens. Unlike subsequent releases, this album consists of music that is driven primarily by electronics. The record is being reissued on the heels of another electronics-centric recording featuring Stevens, Sisyphus.
Friday, May 2: It’s our New Month, New Music feature: Listen for new releases from Old 97’s, The Black Keys, and Cloud Nothings, among others.
Saturday, May 3: Peter Stampfel is a founding member of the psychedelic folk band Holy Modal Rounders, a group that has been active since 1964. Stampfel, who plays banjo and violin, has also contributed to recordings by They Might Be Giants, Yo La Tengo, and Loudon Wainwright III. His latest release is titled Better Than Expected and it finds him leading a group called the Brooklyn & Lower Manhattan Banjo Squadron. We’ll hear selections from that release as well as songs from Nixon, the 2000 release by Nashville’s Lambchop. Although the band remains little more than a cult act in the United States, Nixon saw the band rise to almost universal acclaim in Great Britain.
Monday, May 5: We’ll hear selections from Eli and The Thirteenth Confession, the 1968 album from singer-songwriter Laura Nyro. Although not her most commercially successful album, the record is considered by many to be her best and features songs that would go on to be hits for acts such as The 5th Dimension and Three Dog Night. We’ll also hear music from A Song In My Head, the first studio album in nine years from Boulder, Colorado’s The String Cheese Incident.
Tuesday, May 6: We’ll celebrate World Accordion Day with selections that incorporate this unique instrument in sometimes unusual but always entertaining ways.
Wednesday, May 7: Midnight Sun is the latest release by Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, a musical project led by Sean Lennon. The psychedelic pop outfit has garnered comparisons to both Beck and The Flaming Lips and won critical acclaim with its unique band of music. We’ll hear from that album as well as from Record Heat, the latest release from Chicago’s The Safes.
Thursday, May 8: Jekyll / Hyde is the debut EP from Taryn Miller who records under the name Your Friend. Written and recorded over a two year period in her adopted hometown of Lawrence, Kansas, Miller, a native of Winfield, used live performances to develop the songs gradually both as a solo performer as well as enlisting the help of a rotating cast of supporters from the town's music community.
We’ll hear from that release as well as selections from I’m Still Here, the debut album by neo-soul act Sonny Knight and The Lakers. Sonny Knight began his singing career 50 years ago, only to have it interrupted by military duty and a series of other complications. Knight did have some success with a Minneapolis band called Haze in the 1970s but left the group to pursue a career as a trucker driver. Knight recorded the album only blocks from where he cut his first single as a teenager.
