Sandy Bell has moved through a vibrant and textured musical constellation, playing most notably with the late but eternally brilliant Jeff Buckley as well as singing on the Bat for Lashes album “The Bride.” Bell’s debut solo album, “When I Leave Ohio,” was hailed by Stereo Embers Magazine as “…beautiful, resonant work that’s stark and painful—Bell’s songs have crushing, emotional exactitude that is nothing short of staggering.” Her new album is titled “Entelechy.” Music journalist Alex Green found “Entelechy” to be “filled with stirring melancholy and musical grace,” an album that “explores the geometry of both musical form and sorrow, while the cathartic transmutation of grief into promise will take you somewhere between the worlds of Harry Nilsson and Kate Bush.”
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Two Dark Birds is a band from the Catskill mountains led by songwriter Steve Koester and drummer Jason Mills.. Prior to Two Dark Birds, Koester fronted the bands Punchdrunk, Koester, and Maplewood, who altogether have released twelve albums. The music has been called "knockout gorgeous" and "timeless... great rock music" and has received favorable reviews everywhere from Fader and Nylon to The Village Voice and The NY Times, showing up on year-end Best Of lists in Magnet, Popmatters, Rhapsody, Disclaimer and more. Koester has also written, recorded and produced a wide variety of songs for TV and film.
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Thin Lear, the eclectic project of NY-raised, NJ-based songwriter Matt Longo, harkens back to the haunting melodies and glimmering production work of 70's-era studio obsessives. Recording and performing with a collective of NYC musicians, Longo is driven by an immersive, idiosyncratic recording process inspired by songwriters in the Elephant 6 collective and melodicists & storytellers like Harry Nilsson, Kate Bush, Leonard Cohen, and Shuggie Otis. Thin Lear's sprawling, evocative story songs pull from a rich palate of instrumentation and arrangements, from ornately orchestrated ballads to spectral folk and propulsive grooves.
The debut album, Wooden Cave, arrived on EggHunt Records (Lucy Dacus), receiving glowing reviews from NPR’s New Music Friday, KEXP, AllMusic, Bandcamp's New & Noteworthy, and PopMatters, who included it in their Best Albums of the Year. The record was a featured album in vinyl subscription service VNYL's #folktheyear collection. Performances at the Mile of Music Festival and a mid-south tour followed, with sold-out shows at Mercury Lounge and City Winery, opening for artists like Jesse Malin and Charlie Parr.
Longo is currently finishing up an EP with producer Matthew E. White at Spacebomb (Bedouine, Natalie Prass) in Richmond, with celestial contributions from the Spacebomb house band, and he just completed a sophomore full-length album with producer Matt Ross-Spang (Margo Price, The Mountain Goats) at Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis. Thin Lear recently performed at SXSW '23 as an official showcasing artist and will embark on an East Coast tour this summer.