Sounds Familyre and Asthmatic Kitty

Sounds Familyre is a music label started by Daniel Smith in 1999 to release the double LP of the Danielson Famile's Tri-Danielson!!! Daniel Smith is a musician who realized that he needed to sing about his family and the faith that sustained it, as well as to sing and play with his family. In creating Sounds Familyre he is essentially also creating a wider family of musicians.

With a similar ethos (one which would also seem to be shared by Communion in the UK) and sharing some of the same artists, Asthmatic Kitty Records was originally conceived as a platform for musical projects by a community of artists from Holland, Michigan, a small city on the shore of Lake Michigan. Some were Holland natives, and others had come to attend local colleges and universities. While the original Holland nucleus has now dispersed to various parts of the country, the fellowship is still growing, with new friends and shared projects with other independent labels.

Highlights among their wonderfully eclectic rosters of artists include: Danielson, Half-handed Cloud, Linda Perhacs, Sufjan Stephens, The Welcome Wagon and Wovenhand.

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Half-handed Cloud - You've Been Faithful To Us Clouds.   

New albums round-up

New albums worth checking out include:

• Josh T. Pearson - Last Of The Country Gentlemen. Ian Johnston writes: "Even those whose idea of a spiritual quest is a trip to the off-licence should be profoundly moved by Last Of The Country Gentlemen, due to the universality of the primal emotions revealed and evoked in Pearson’s poignant work. Last Of The Country Gentlemen is roots music looking towards the heavens. Pearson hails from Texas and a Baptist/Pentecostal church background. In 2001, Pearson’s three piece rock band Lift To Experience, released their one and only double album masterwork, The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads. Brimming with apocalyptic biblical imagery and soaring, feedback overdriven rock guitars, The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads was instantly commended by critics and audiences alike as a masterpiece, with the band offered several radio sessions by a smitten John Peel. Not that long after the album was released, Lift To Experience imploded. For the next ten years, Pearson would alternate between hiding away from the prying eyes of the world deep in the heart of Texas and performing odd concerts and shows, in America and Europe, when the muse moved him. Pearson has finally chosen to return to the fray, with a new empathetic record label (Mute) and a collection of songs recorded in Berlin in January last year."
• Danielson - The Best of Gloucester County. Amanda Petrusich writes: "Daniel Smith is the patriarch of the Danielson Famile, a longstanding collaborator and pal to Sufjan Stevens, and the former inhabitant of a nine-foot tall, handmade, fruit-bearing tree suit. He's also something of an enigma, aesthetically-speaking, and it's easy to get distracted by Smith's oddball presentation: There are costumes (besides the tree, he's wiggled into a nurse's uniform, heart-shaped blinders, and a sad, Willy Loman-esque Bible salesman suit), Christian ideology, plenty of high, unhinged bleating, and family-band mystique. His work has never been especially easy to categorize ("This man in a tree suit is making high-concept outsider art!" vs. "These are pretty great pop songs written by a dad from New Jersey!"), but genre is an especially fluid thing these days, and on The Best of Gloucester County, his eighth full-length, Smith successfully nods to a variety of influences - from Daniel Johnston to Genesis - while still retaining his particular singularity."
• Lizz Wright - Fellowship. Phil Johnson writes: "The Georgia-born singer's fourth album showcases her gospel background in a set that mixes traditional songs with adaptations of Bob Marley, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. As on her previous outing, The Orchard, the calculated downhome-rootsiness can leave her sounding, oddly, like a pious Bonnie Raitt, but things really catch fire with "I Remember, I Believe" and "God Specializes". Two contributions from guest singer Angélique Kidjo add west African flavours."
• Caedmon - A Chicken To Hug. Lins Honeyman writes: "32 years after the release of their one and only studio album, the five original members of the then Edinburgh-based student folk rock group Caedmon have reunited to record a sensational and long awaited follow up. The years simply roll away in the opener "Peace In The Fire" - thanks to the haunting vocals of Angela Webb (neé Naylor) and the interaction between Ken Patterson's charango and Jim Bisset's guitar - and, although many elements of the original Caedmon sound remain, the band have clearly evolved. The subject matter of the songs hone in on life's experiences rather than specifically referencing Christianity as per the group's earlier work. This new focus works particularly well and songs such as Ken Patterson's achingly honest "Childless" and the band's own acknowledgment of their different opinions in "Elephant In The Chatroom" make for a sincere, candid and warm album that celebrates the life journeys of each member in the convening years since the group's split."

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Caedmon - A Chicken to Hug.