The Clearwater Swimmers
The Clearwater Swimmers
(New Martian Records)
★★★★

RECORDED over just three days with producer Bradford Krieger, the self-titled debut album from The Clearwater Swimmers is a notable entrance into the world.

Lead singer Sumner Bright’s melancholic vocals combined with the New York four-piece’s unhurried Americana brings to mind much-loved US indie artists like Mark Kozelek’s Red House Painters, Beachwood Sparks and Friendship.

They crank up some Crazy Horse-style churning guitars to great effect on tracks like Valley and Kites, though much of the set has a more subdued acoustic sound.

According to the band Firewood concerns “the end of the world, really, and dread of catastrophe,” while Proud addresses self-destruction.

Happy days, then, though the lyrical darkness is somewhat offset by the beautifully atmospheric music.

Expect to see them on the bills of next year’s Green Man and End Of The Road music festivals.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Live At Fillmore East, 1969
(Rhino)
★★★★

AFTER playing the generation-defining Woodstock music festival in the summer, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young toured for the rest of 1969.

A fascinating historical document, this newly discovered recording comes from one of their concerts at the famous New York City live venue Fillmore East.

With just one album under their belt at this point, the first acoustic set confirms the US folk-rock supergroup already had an abundance of anthemic songs, including multi-part opener Suite: Judy Blue Eyes and David Crosby’s mythological Guinnevere.

Neil Young singing the relatively unknown I’ve Loved Her So Long is a real highlight.

The electric second half contains a gnarly take of the apocalyptic Wooden Ships and an epic, swirling, very heavy version of Down By The River, which first appeared on Young’s debut album with Crazy Horse released earlier that year.

Andrew Tuttle and Michael Chapman
Another Tide, Another Fish
(Basin Rock)
★★★★

AUSSIE banjo player and composer Andrew Tuttle communes with the dead on this new instrumental Basin Rock release.

After Michal Chapman passed away, aged 80, in 2021, his partner shared some of the tracks the British guitarist and singer-songwriter had been working on with Tuttle, having been impressed — as I am — by Tuttle’s 2022 record Fleeting Adventure.

“Part remix album, part cover album,” according to the press release, on the first disc Tuttle fashions otherworldly sonic landscapes out of Chapman’s demos. The marvellous second disc consists of Chapman’s original sketches.

Tuttle’s banjo playing brings a lightness and sense of movement to proceeding, while Chapman’s guitar work sounds foreboding on Wholly Unrelated To Four Seasons.

With both artists contributing synths, some of the first set, such as the funereal One Lateral Line, verges on ambient music.

An inspired pairing.