Stream Brazilian/Americana folk fusionists Ley Line's new album 'We Saw Blue'
Ley Line met in Brazil and are currently based in Austin, and their multilingual, genre-fluid folk music reflects their time traveling across both Brazil and the US. It very much comes across in their new album We Saw Blue, which is described via press release like this:
We Saw Blue is in many ways the origin story of Ley Line. Bandmembers Kate Robberson and Emilie Basez met in Brazil in 2012 and travelled the country playing shows, learning traditional folk songs and writing their own music along the way. When twins Madeleine and Lydia Froncek joined their duo project in 2016, much of the band’s repertoire was influenced by the sounds and experiences Kate and Emilie had gathered during their time in Brazil. In 2017, Ley Line decided to return to where it all began. They raised money to buy a van and took off for a four month long tour from the south of Brazil to the Northeast. Their self-managed tour included stops around the country playing venues, cultural centres, leading workshops in schools and all the while staying with new and old friends they met along the way. We Saw Blue is comprised of songs the four women learned and composed in Brazil and songs written after their return home. Kate explains, “Not only was this adventure a way to dive deeper into our study of Brazilian music, it was also an opportunity for the four of us to solidify our bond by experiencing the rewards and challenges of traveling together.”
Emilie adds, “This album documents Ley Line really refining our unique sound through an exploration of Brazilian folklore and the spirituality embedded in nature.”
It’s a very cool record that expertly fuses together sounds from various cultures and eras, and if you like folk music of any kind, you should give this a listen. It officially comes out on Friday (12/4) (pre-order), but we’re premiering a stream of the full album right now. Listen:
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In a 1975 Rolling Stone interview, Neil called his long-shelved-and-now-finally-released album Homegrown "the darker side to Harvest." With more hindsight, he called it "the missing link between Harvest, Comes a Time, Old Ways and Harvest Moon" in Jimmy McDonough's 2002 Neil Young biography Shakey. Those albums are all on Neil's folkier, more acoustic side, and Homegrown is indeed cut from that cloth. As soon as you hear the opening of "Separate Ways," you're transported right back to the warmth of the Harvest era. It's of the same proto-slowcore variety of that album's opener "Out On the Weekend," but even more haunting and melancholic. Just 30 seconds in, and Homegrown already lives up to the description Neil gave Cameron Crowe of it 45 years ago.
That same mood carries over into second track "Try," which -- like "Separate Ways" -- features The Band's Levon Helm on drums, and Levon really managed to capture the bare-bones, slow-paced drumming style that these types of quietly revolutionary Neil Young songs always demanded. "Try" is also one of two songs on Homegrown with backing vocals by Emmylou Harris (the other being "Star of Bethlehem"), and her soaring voice makes for a truly lovely contrast with Neil's more somber delivery. And as melancholic as those songs are, they've got nothing on the melancholy of the entirely-solo cuts "Mexico" (voice and piano) and "Kansas" (voice, acoustic guitar, and harmonica), or on "White Line," which features Neil, his acoustic, and his harmonica joined only by some lead guitar by The Band's Robbie Robertson. It's on those breathtaking songs where you can really hear why Neil -- coming right off the release of On The Beach -- might have felt like he was digging himself into a hole of dour, depressive music. But all these years later -- now that Neil has cemented his legacy over and over again and proven to be an artist who can evolve and adapt with the times without losing his own uniqueness -- those songs feel like buried treasure, especially for fans who gravitate towards his most hushed material. Full review here.