
Cancion Franklin – Motel Room Bibles
Similar artists: Jason Isbell, Gillian Welch, Townes Van Zandt, John Prine, Chris Stapleton
Genre: Folk, Americana, Alt Country
It’s not easy to be a man that has no dreams. The human mind just seems to cook those up. Even the ones who swear they can never quite remember the fancies of the nighttime are known to drift in and out of realities, seeing the things that they really want to see and the ones that they’d rather avoid. Capturing dream-like moments through recorded music, however, is not easy.
Cancion Franklin takes a stab at it. And indeed, violence of different sorts may well be included in the songwriter’s illusions. While some may dream of snowy mountains or of broken down Xerox machines, some are preoccupied with heroes, with villains, and with trying to figure out which one of the two they might belong to.
Cancion Franklin’s “Motel Room Bibles” is a Townes van Zandt-like country-rock ballad about life on the road and about escaping the long arm of the law. None of it seems real, and the world might be better off for it. Franklin, however, remains dedicated to two ideas: surviving and going straight if the first idea works out. It all comes together for a country-rock dream, complete with gunshots and silences.
Michael Feuerstack – Your Mind’s Made Up
Similar artists: Bill Callahan, Andrew Bird, Damien Jurado, Nick Drake
Genre: Indie Folk, Folk, Americana
Just like waste collectors or farm workers, few people genuinely seem excited upon hearing that the person they’ve just met is a writer. But just like those professions keep the world going, so do writers manage to keep the entertainment world afloat. Get them mad enough so that they don’t have a reason to get out of bed, and everything grinds to a standstill.
But surely writing words can’t be that hard? Well, thankfully, exhaustive tests have been carried out in which famous singers and renowned movie stars have been asked to improvise their own lines. Apart from a few “baby, baby” and “I love you, baby,” not much of great importance has been noted to come from the privileged entertainment class.
Cherish your writers, then! Michael Feuerstack’s ‘Your Mind’s Made Up” is a really well-balanced folk-rock tune in which the sentimental lyrics are carved through just enough so that they fit perfectly and never require reassembling. There are no flamethrowing guitar solos or looped beats here. What you do get instead is the incredible capacity to create a full story based on a bit of poetry and a few guitar chords.