paradiseofbachelors

James Elkington in Paradise.

We’re excited to welcome to PoB Mr. James Elkington, whose masterful guitar playing and arranging you’ve certainly heard, even if you didn’t realize it. An inveterate collaborator, Jim has been the other guitarist in Steve Gunn’s band since Way Out Weather. He has also toured and/or recorded with Michael Chapman (on 50), Nathan Salsburg (on Ambsace), Jeff Tweedy, Richard Thompson, Joan Shelley, Tortoise, and Brokeback, just to name some of his many enthusiastic admirers. Stay tuned for details on his debut solo album, and catch him onstage this week with Jake Xerxes Fussell and Wilco.

Mind Over Mirrors: Undying Color Release Day + Our First 100 Days.

If you require a mind-expanding tonic to our national spell of ignorant, truculent insanity, the new Mind Over Mirrors album Undying Color is available today in your favorite record shops and online merchants, digital and physical alike. Listen, read critical acclaim for the album, learn about Secretly Group’s Our First 100 Days Project, and catch up on current and upcoming PoB tours.

Stream Mind Over Mirrors’ Undying Color via The Quietus.

Mind Over Mirrors will release their expansive new album of ecstatic drones inspired by the cyclical patterns of the natural world next week. Today The Quietus is streaming the album in full alongside an interview with Mind Over Mirrors mastermind Jaime Fennelly, who discusses expanding the project’s line-up to a full ensemble and how he settled on the album’s title.

Jake Xerxes Fussell Shares “Furniture Man” via Aquarium Drunkard.

After presenting debut single via NPR Music’s Songs We Love, the Durham, North Carolina singer and guitarist now shares “Furniture Man,” a desperate tale of poverty, dispossession, and imminent homelessness, as relevant and heartrending now as it was when first recorded in the 1920s. Aquarium Drunkard calls him “a national treasure.” Jake plays Chapel Hill tonight and opens for Wilco this month and next in Chicago and New York.

Promised Land Sound Shares “By the Rain” via Clash.

On the eve of their first-ever tour of the UK and EU, Nashville’s Promised Land Sound holed up in the studio with Pat Sansone (Wilco) and Billy Bennett (MGMT) to cut their first official recording since their acclaimed 2015 album For Use and Delight. It’s now available as a digital-only single, with a premiere by Clash, who call it “heavenly.”

Mind Over Mirrors Shares “To the Edges” via XLR8R.

Mind Over Mirrors has shared “To The Edges,” a strobing, drone-centric track from Undying Color, via XLR8R. Featuring drifting wails from vocalists Haley Fohr (Circuit des Yeux) and Janet Bean (Eleventh Dream Day), as well as percussionist Jon Mueller, it showcases the unique combination of Indian pedal harmonium and analog synthesizer that makes Jaime Fennelly’s music so singular. Don’t miss the Chicago release show at Constellation on March 3.

Michael Chapman: 50 Release Day.

If you need a distraction from the eldritch horrors of Inauguration Day, take a lesson from the Fully Qualified Survivor. Get thee to your local record store to grip what is shaping up to be one of the most critically acclaimed albums of 2017. Or, as Laura Snapes (Pitchfork, NPR, Guardian) recently recommended: “If you’re looking for a peaceful record for this torrid week, 50 is it.” Check out Uncut’s career-spanning 7pp. feature and new rave reviews in The Times, Daily Mirror, i, etc.

Pre-order Jake Xerxes Fussell’s What in the Natural World + Hear “Peaches” via NPR.

As we brace ourselves for this week’s ersatz presidential pomp, rank and rancorous politics, and righteous protests and marches, please allow us to ask one philosophical question no pundit but Jake Xerxes Fussell is asking: “Have You Ever Seen Peaches Growing on a Sweet Potato Vine?” Today NPR Music premiered this first Natural Question from Jake’s forthcoming album, with Laura Snapes writing that his “burly, winking voice is made for storytelling.”

Promised Land Sound UK/EU Tour + Tease.

Nashville’s Promised Land Sound today embark on their first-ever tour of the UK and EU, so please try to catch a show and show them some love. You will not be disappointed; we first fell for them as a live band, and while their two albums, including For Use and Delight, are remarkable, their shows are a whole other elevated experience. We’ll have something very special to share from the lads very soon, so stay tuned.