Music Reviews
Dear Nora

Dear Nora

There is No Home

Magic Marker

Why does Dear Nora have to call it a day? With authentic lo-fi music already so close to extinction, it stings even worse when one of the most charming stalwarts puts away it’s 4-track. Gloriously chaotic and eccentric, Katy Davidson’s songs on There is No Home –as well as her in back catalog– have the capacity to be anything from the sweetest minute-long ballad imaginable to a sprawling six-minute psychedelic experiment and anywhere in between. Sutured together with DIY aesthetic make seemingly disparate sounds completely reconcilable. “The Dream Five,” the disc’s opener, is two minutes of swelling guitar feedback and barely discernible melody, which segues through the jarring industrial scrape of “Nora in Berlin” and lands comfortably on the sanguine pop of “My Friend and I (For Gretchen)” which sounds like it could have been culled from any Julie Doiron record. Davidson’s method of painting in broad, vibrant stokes then bringing things quickly into fleeting focus speaks to her strength as a musician. It’s especially obvious on “Frank, The Witchdoctor,” which comes from a live backyard recording and features laughter and applauses from the audience and feels oddly at home among the “studio” tracks. Sigh. Dear Nora, I miss you already.

Magic Marker Records: http://www.magicmarkerrecords.com


Recently on Ink 19...

Incubus

Incubus

Screen Reviews

Both bold experiment and colossal failure in the 1960s, Esperanto language art house horror film Incubus returns with pre-_Star Trek_ William Shatner to claim a perhaps more serious audience.

Garage Sale Vinyl: Loretta Lynn

Garage Sale Vinyl: Loretta Lynn

Garage Sale Vinyl

In this latest installment of his weekly series, Christopher Long is betrayed by his longtime GF when she swipes his copy of Loretta Lynn’s Greatest Hits Vol. II right out from under his nose while rummaging through a south Florida junk store.