Woodland is the name of Gillian Welch and David Rawling’s studio in Nashville, and it’s also the name of their new album. On Woodland, the duo continue to show their deep connection as collaborators. The album has a wide open sound that features their seemlessly blended and intimately recorded vocals, and the light touch of a backing band that includes drums, bass, pedal steel, banjo, and airy strings on tunes like "What We Had" and "Hashtag". "Lawman" and "The Bells and the Birds" have a lovely somberness, and the album as a whole has a "live off the floor" feeling to it that we hear less and less of these days. Woodland will stay in our "recently played" column for the forseeable future.
We interviewed Gillian and Dave back in 2001 for Tape Op #85.
Tape Op is a bi-monthly magazine devoted to the art of record making.
It's that time of year again where we go back through our digital listening histories or simply look over at the turntable to get a handle on just what we were enjoying this past year. There were a ton of great releases this year, many of them...
So here it is. The fateful letter that relentless talent scout and A&R honcho John Baccigaluppi sent to my band Vomit Launch back in 1988. Little did we know that soon we'd be holed up in his studio making records, and less than a decade later...
August 17th marked the release of a new Joe Meek restrospective.
The full album's title is Joe Meek: From Taboo to Telstar 1962: A Year In The Life of 304 Holloway Road (Joe Meek's Tea Chest Tapes).
This is not necessarily "new" music from...
I’ve been a fan of the band Nada Surf for several decades now. They’re one of the few bands from the 1990s that have continued to make catchy, smart, guitar-based pop music that also managed to stay relevant, releasing records in 2024...
Check out the new video and single "Honeycrash" from SASAMI (#157). Produced by Jennifer Decilveo, who is interviewed in our May issue.
Listen to "Honeycrash"
Check out our interviews with SASAMI and Jennifer here:
SASAMI Tape...
Malian guitarist Mdou Moctar's new release, Funeral for Justice, is a wild ride. From the almost Iron Maiden-sounding moments of the title track "Funeral for Justice", to the frentic energy of "Sousoume Tamacheq", to the ethereal and more...
Yup. From 1985 to 1993 I was in a band with the polite name of Vomit Launch. One of our songs, "Exit Lines" is in a movie called "The Wackness", in theaters now. A pretty damn good movie, and our song fits the scene too well! Most of our back catalog...
I pulled short straw and had to go pick up the take out tonight (take away for our UK readers). The radio was set to NPR, so I let it alone. The announcer introduced a new segment called “Listen to This,” that features famous musicians...
(me and Elliott rolling in Jackpot!'s original MCI JH-16, Feb. 1997)
As most readers of Tape Op may have picked up on by now, I have been involved in the archiving and cataloging of the music of my late friend, Elliott Smith. Here's an interview I...