ON SALE NOW!
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Songbyrd Presents
Henry Jamison + Gracie and Rachel
Wednesday August 30, 2017
D: 7:00 // S: 8:00 PM
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ABOUT Henry Jamison
If you take a look through his family tree, one thing becomes abundantly clear: Henry Jamison was born to write songs. Of course there’s his father, the classical composer, and his mother, the English professor, who both inspired and encouraged him directly, but if you continue tracing Jamison’s lineage back even further, some interesting names start to turn up. Go back to the 1800’s, for example, and you’ll find “Battle Cry of Freedom” author George Frederick Root, the most popular songwriter of the Civil War era. Travel even further back in time, to 14th century England to be exact, and you’ll find the poet John Gower, known to be a friend to both Chuacer and Richard II.
With his stunning debut album, ‘The Wilds,’ Jamison is ready to claim his place as the latest in a long line of remarkable storytellers. Blending delicate acoustic guitar and banjo with programmed percussion loops and synthesizers, the Vermont songwriter grapples with the jarring dissonances of contemporary life in his music as he struggles to reconcile the clashes between our inner and outer selves, the natural world and our fabricated society. Jamison is a solitary artist, writing, recording, and arranging everything himself on the album including the gorgeous string parts, and he pens his lyrics with cinematic precision, conjuring vivid scenes and fully realized characters wrestling with existential crises and modern malaise. His dazzling way with words and keen ear for memorable hooks at once calls to mind the baroque pop of Sufjan Stevens and the unflinching emotional honesty of Frightened Rabbit, but the delivery is uniquely his own, understated yet devastating. Jamison is a solitary artist who writes, records, and arranges everything himself, including all of the album’s gorgeous string arrangements, and ‘The Wilds’ is a pure reflection of the world through his eyes.
ABOUT Gracie and Rachel
Gracie and Rachel are a study in duality: light and dark, classical training with a pop sensibility, Californians in New York. Their music pits anxiety and tension against an almost serene self-assurance. The result is a compelling juxtaposition of Gracie’s piano and lead vocals and Rachel’s violin and voice, augmented with stark percussion. Though they make music as a duo, Gracie and Rachel together far exceed the sum of their parts. Like their stylized color palette of black and white, their instrumentation appears simple and spare at first glance, but there’s a powerful prism effect at work that brings us back to the concept of duality: their songs are intimate and expansive, questioning and confident. The nine orchestral-pop songs on ‘Gracie and Rachel’ (out June 23) tell a story that’s rooted in the truth — their truth — but retain an enigmatic air that makes them relatable to anyone who has ever found their heart racing with doubt and pushed forward regardless. Listen here: https://lnk.to/gracieandrachel
“There’s a terrific tension in the sound, an underpinning of mystery set against a baroque, but modern, pop foreground.” [Gracie and Rachel is] something that I’m finding myself falling in love with a lot, which is music that has more space in it, and I really like that.” —Bob Boilen/NPR Music
