Tim Eriksen

Tim Eriksen

Tim Eriksen

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Cordelia's Dad vocalist Tim Eriksen has probably seen the inside of more New England flea markets and garage sales than your average grandmother. The results of such musical searches having previously provided material for Eriksen's band, they likewise are sources for his self-titled solo CD (in fact, sometimes both; this CD includes only his most recent recording of "Farewell to Old Bedford"). What's particularly interesting about the pared-down interpretations of ballads, hymns, and other folk material on Tim Eriksen is that Eriksen didn't start out as a folk preservationist. Cordelia's Dad was initially plugged-in and punk, and their catalogue provides some interesting listening as it chronicles the transition from garage rock to roots music. However rooted in tradition Eriksen is these days, though, there's still something of a punk aesthetic at work here: the songs on Tim Eriksen are unabashed, forthright, honest, and were recorded in just a few short hours one November afternoon. Eriksen's also evolved considerably as a singer from those early days, and here, often unaccompanied, his voice is full of raw power and emotional intensity. As always with any of Eriksen's projects, the liner notes provide enlightening courses in American musical history. --Genevieve Williams

Q Magazine, June 2002
"Eriksen's songs have a rare sense of purpose. . .Each song gives his remarkable voice room to do its stuff."

Tim Eriksen

Tim Eriksen,Tim Eriksen,Appleseed Records,Folk,Folk & Traditional,Neo-Traditional Folk,Pop,Widely regarded as the best traditional American ballad singer of his generation, Tim Eriksen creates this stark, powerful debut solo album.
Every Sound Below
Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
  • Another starkly gorgeous CD from one of the great ones
  • beauty and terror
 Every Sound Below
Tim Eriksen
Manufacturer: Appleseed Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

GeneralGeneral | Folk | Styles | Music
Traditional FolkTraditional Folk | Folk | Styles | Music
Similar Items:
  1. Tim Eriksen
  2. Back Roads to Cold Mountain
  3. Songs From the Mountain
  4. Cold Mountain
  5. If I Go Ten Thousand Miles

ASIN: B00020HB4G
Release Date: 2004-05-25

Tracks:

  1. The Stars Their Match
  2. The Southern Girl's Reply
  3. The Cumberland And The Merrimac
  4. The Soldier's Return
  5. Careless Love
  6. A Tiny Crown
  7. Occom's Carol (O Sight Of Anguish)
  8. Friendship
  9. John Colby's Hymn
  10. Bassett Creek
  11. Red Rosy Bush
  12. Two Sisters
  13. Omie Wise
  14. Every Sound Below

Album Description

The commercial and critical success of the "old-time"/bluegrass-drenched music in the 2000 movie "O Brother, Where Art Thou," its "Down from the Mountain" tour-film spin off, and recent "Cold Mountain" blockbuster proved that millions of Americans were eager to connect to their country's musical roots. This second solo CD by Tim Eriksen, already a burgeoning cult figure as one of the leading U.S. traditional folk balladeers, should be their next focus.

Eriksen, featured vocalist on three "Cold Mountain" songs and arranger of two "shape note" songs on the soundtrack, sees music as a link between the past and present and between individuals and communities, which has led him to the ten traditional American folk ballads he reanimates here and the four haunting original compositions that comprise this view of pre-20th Century life and its 21st Century resonance. Tim brings sounds of the American past into the "now," starting with the first track, an original a cappella salute to sunrise in the strong, brave tenor voice that has won him awe. He follows with chilling accounts of the Civil War, the lament of a traveling preacher (one of two songs utilizing harmonic, "overtone" singing that imitates the buzz of nature), murder ballads, and sprinkles in a pair of instrumentals. Tim's has a scholar's instinct for uncovering obscure, often unrecorded folks songs, and his liner notes give a fascinating insight into their history and his own sensibilities. Tim's two other compositions are "A Tiny Crown," a tale of imagination, reality and sea monkeys, and the eerie, hovering title song.

Using the same minimal, live-in-the-studio technique as on his first CD, Tim performs alone here, cycling between guitar, banjo, and fiddle without overdubs, an approach in keeping with the direct connection between Tim, his music and his listeners.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars Another starkly gorgeous CD from one of the great ones.......2004-08-04

What a pleasure to be sitting here listening to a new austerely beautiful and enigmatic CD from one of my favorite musicians in the world. It's amazing to me that Tim can sound so individual and idiosyncratic within the self-imposed confines of his stark, traditional sonic palette. The only analogy I can think of would be Bjork doing a whole album accompanied solely by harpsichord and viola de gamba.

As usual, Tim's voice is arrestingly intense, sometimes even desperate, but always with that deadpan Appalachian affect that conveys a kind of weather-beaten optimism. And as usual, his guitar and banjo playing are intricate, driving, sometimes hypnotically repetitive, sometimes jagged, always lush and transporting. He makes self-deprecating comments about his fiddle playing in the liner notes, but it's becoming more confident, and its dry tone suits his hymnal material well. He's broadened his vocal technique in subtle ways as well, with more whistling, humming and overtone singing than on his previous recordings.

Tim always gets me shaking my head in awe at the little details in his music. The guitar arpeggio and hummed line that open A Tiny Crown manage to be ominously dissonant and delicately graceful at the same time. And that's the first three seconds - I've been listening to it over and over trying to wrap my head around the rest of it. In John Colby's Hymn, listen to the way he extends the word "share" into overtone singing. On Careless Love and other tunes, listen to the way he lets notes a half-step apart ring on adjacent strings of the guitar - it should be dark and conflicting, but like Thelonious Monk's chords, it's so wrong it's right. Listen to the spitting, thumping sound he gets from his fingerpicking. If ever an artist deserved a much bigger audience than they have, Tim is that artist. Anyone with the remotest interest in "folk" or singer-songwriter music owes it to themselves to listen to this CD and its predecessors. I'm certainly looking forward to whatever else this cat has coming down the pike.

5 out of 5 stars beauty and terror.......2004-05-31

There is no finer young singer of traditional American music than Tim Eriksen. His performance is austere, even demanding, and it is more chill wind than warm breeze. He sings inside a 19th Century of sheer existential intensity, conjuring up visions of a Southern church of Sacred Harp singers or a blood-soaked Civil War battlefield or a murderer's icy heart, and confronting life at its most elemental in its friendships, loves, hates, mortality, and fate. His gaze is straight, and it never flinches.

Eriksen's repertoire mostly eschews familiar titles from the American folk canon. Only "Careless Love," "Two Sisters," and "Omie Wise" leap to easy recognition, though his readings of each are distinctive. The first, however, is one of the rare moments that betray Eriksen's linkage to the modern folk revival. The languid arrangement brings to mind the work of the brilliant (though sadly no longer active) British ballad singer/guitarist Nic Jones. The original "A Tiny Crown" is slightly reminiscent of another British folk guitarist, Bert Jansch (or, for that matter, the early, Jansch-besotted Donovan, before he went all wacky). You need not have heard of Jones or Jansch to be moved -- or, more likely, unsettled -- by what Eriksen does with these songs.

In the purely technical or aural sense the sound is crisp as a gorgeous fall day. Yes, the album was recorded in the basement studio of my old friend, the Twin Cities guitarist and producer Dakota Dave Hull, but I would admire it wherever it came from. If 2004 ushers into the world a superior example of hard-core folk at its most brilliantly flinty, I will be very, very surprised.
Tim Eriksen
Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
  • An Incredible Solo Work
  • Amazing, haunting stuff
 Tim Eriksen
Tim Eriksen
Manufacturer: Appleseed Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

GeneralGeneral | Folk | Styles | Music
Traditional FolkTraditional Folk | Folk | Styles | Music
GeneralGeneral | Folk | Indie Music | Stores | Music
Similar Items:
  1. Every Sound Below
  2. Spine
  3. Songs From the Mountain
  4. Cold Mountain
  5. O Brother, Where Art Thou?

ASIN: B00005BGKC
Release Date: 2001-05-08

Tracks:

  1. Farewell To Old Bedford
  2. Boston
  3. I Wish The Wars Were All Over
  4. Lass Of Glenshee
  5. Mobile Serenade Polka/Shep Jones Hornpipe
  6. Garden Hymn
  7. Hicks' Farewell
  8. Dress It In Blue
  9. Hope
  10. Village Churchyard
  11. Last Chance
  12. Brown Girl
  13. Leave Your Light On
  14. I Love Music

Amazon.com

Cordelia's Dad vocalist Tim Eriksen has probably seen the inside of more New England flea markets and garage sales than your average grandmother. The results of such musical searches having previously provided material for Eriksen's band, they likewise are sources for his self-titled solo CD (in fact, sometimes both; this CD includes only his most recent recording of "Farewell to Old Bedford"). What's particularly interesting about the pared-down interpretations of ballads, hymns, and other folk material on Tim Eriksen is that Eriksen didn't start out as a folk preservationist. Cordelia's Dad was initially plugged-in and punk, and their catalogue provides some interesting listening as it chronicles the transition from garage rock to roots music. However rooted in tradition Eriksen is these days, though, there's still something of a punk aesthetic at work here: the songs on Tim Eriksen are unabashed, forthright, honest, and were recorded in just a few short hours one November afternoon. Eriksen's also evolved considerably as a singer from those early days, and here, often unaccompanied, his voice is full of raw power and emotional intensity. As always with any of Eriksen's projects, the liner notes provide enlightening courses in American musical history. --Genevieve Williams

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars An Incredible Solo Work.......2001-05-16

This mesmerizing recording represents a stunning accomplishment. While it will be a must-buy item for the "party faithful" followers of Cordelia's Dad, it is also a compelling work for anyone desirous of a top flight vocal recording. The dark harmonies, indeed eery at times, are as captivating as the striking lyrics. Although principally unaccompanied, there is an occasional acoustic guitar track (of startling quality) and one with clawhammer banjo accompaniment. If this were a vinyl LP, it would be worn out by now given the amount of use it has seen in the one month since release.

5 out of 5 stars Amazing, haunting stuff.......2001-05-15

Tim Eriksen, singer and member of Cordelia's Dad, Zabe i Babe, and Northampton Harmony, has put together a wonderful album of solo work; fine renditions of traditional American ballads and a few original works as well. If you like traditional American music, you need to check out this collection.

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