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Dave Hause – Resolutions

Resolutions – by Dave Hause

One of my favorite albums of 2011 so far, has been Dave Hause’s Resolutions. It was already published in January. I bought it in April when the dates of Chuck Ragan’s Revival Tour in Europe were announced and it was clear that besides Chuck Ragan himself, Dan Andriano and Brian Fallon there would be a guy called Dave Hause joining. Until that point I had never heard anything from him and I decided to change that right away.

Due to the fact that Resolutions (if you want to order it via Amazon in Germany) costs more than 20 Euros, I went for the I-Tunes download option this time (which means I still do not have a hardcopy version and I’m really hoping he’s going to sell them during Revival Tour).

The album more or less blew me away. Dave Hause is an awesome songwriter and the songs on that album are perfectly arranged. Most of the songs are totally different. There are quite slow and calm ones and there are up-tempo songs that make the feet automatically start to whip in the rhythm.

The song “Rankers & Rotters” reminds me of a Foo Fighters song while others like “Time will tell” can not be compared with anything else. It starts quite slow and calm and at the end it’s an up-tempo song with that just keeps you wanting more, which makes the song the perfect opener for the album.

Whoever is going to see the Revival Tour in Europe this autumn should definitely give that album a try beforehand. It’s awesome and Dave deserves our sing-a-long during the tour (I know that can as well be regarded as torture sometimes) and his songs are easily sticking in mind.

For sneak listening I suggest:
-Time will tell
-Pray for Tuscon
-C’mon Kid
-Heavy Heart
-Rankers & Rotters

Which is already half of the album … but I can’t help, this would be my top 5 of this album!

As for the Revival Tour, all 4 have outcoming albums in 2011. Dave & Dan have been published already and Chuck & Brian (w. Horrible Crowes) are due for September. So far, with pre-listening some of those upcoming songs, I can already tell that the Revival Tour will be my personal highlight of the year!

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Dan Andriano in the Emergency Room – Hurricane Season

A lot of time has passed since I wrote my last post about music. Not due to the fact that there haven’t been great releases meanwhile, but I somehow neglected that part and so all those will find their way to my homepage later than there release date. Nevertheless the latest addition to my vinyl / cd collection can not wait for bad weather.

My music collections contains a lot of different bands from sometimes quite different genres. Some of those bands have been there ever since their first record came out and whenever a new one is released it’s added to the collection. I wouldn’t even say that I constantly listen to those. Sometimes I don’t for month and then when I’m in a special mood I pick up one of those album to listen to and they always have the ability to drag me into the music. All those bands have one thing in common. They have a singer that is able to transport feelings, lyrics, just everything just by the way he/she uses it’s voice. When it comes to this point I have like 4 favourite male voices that are able to make me shiver or help me relax to an extent that I only experience when hearing those voices sing.

Those artists are: Ed Vedder, Chuck Ragan, Brian Fallon & Dan Andriano. The lastest is one of the two singers of the band „Alkaline Trio“ and his voice & songwriting is probably the reason why the band has been & still is one of my favourites. Due to the fact that Dan is the second singer of Alkaline Trio it’s clear that there’s a number one and this can be clearly seen by the shares of those two voices on the Alkaline Trio albums. Normally Dan has 3 or 4 songs and Matt has the rest. (Don’t get me wrong, I like Matt’s songs too, but it’s different). So a long time I was hoping that one day Dan would finally publish some of his solo stuff on a solo record and this is happening today!

His first release is called „Hurricane Season“ and contains 10 beautiful songs from what people normally call singer-songwriter-genre. All songs combine breathtaking lyrics with wonderful relaxing and comforting music. Strongly recommended.

Just an example what I mean with breathtaking lyrics, an excerpt from „The last day we ever close our eyes“:

You and I did sprout like a planted love, so deep in the ground that it grows on forever. So that anyone can feel it. And ten bugs will come to fill up on our sweet blood and chew up the bark that shields us. But we’ll keep on growing towards the sun.

The whole album is full of such awesome lyrics! Unfortunately 10 songs go by pretty fast, so that I really, really hope Dan is not going to keep us waiting another 15 years until the second album shows up.

When it comes to the songs itself, Dan has done a Track-by-Track comment, so there’s nothing left for me to say on the tracks itself.

The album has been release through Asian Man Records (500 black, 500 turquoise, 500 clear). Kings Road Merch is selling a blue vinyl limited to 300, Interpunk a white limited to 300 and from Hot Topic one can order a clear red which is limited to 300 as well. All sell the CD as well and downloads are available through Itunes or Amazon, whatever you prefer.

For all the rest I can as well recommend Dan’s homepage .

And I will catch up in the following weeks with music from : Dave Hause, Alkaline Trio and some more…..

 

 

Cactus

A new album has been added to the gallery. My Mom’s cactus is in full bloom again and I managed to take some shots early this morning before I went to work. There will be more to come…hopefully

Just so that you get an impression…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

iSplash

I just downloaded a new little program / app from the app store called iSplash. It’s pretty much obvious what it does if you just look at this picture. It was originally shot in Savannah, Georgia, USA and was colored. The modification iSplash offers takes about 30 seconds. You can choose wether you want to take the colored picture and add grey parts or the other way around.

The colored parts are chosen like in Photoshop with a brush that can be changed size-wise and with that brush you just scroll over the areas you want to be colored. Pretty easy (this one took like 10 seconds) and the picture can be saved afterwards.

Nice tool if you like this effect and don’t want to bother with Photoshop.