Nethers

Well well well... Look who is Mr. 4Late4 in finding today's featured music. The album this song belongs to was actually released last year and received a modest amount of attention in music blogland. Luckily, I was making a project of visiting some unfamiliar music sites when I discovered that Information Leafblower has something of an ongoing fondness for this particular band. It's not difficult to figure out why now that I've been listening. When I first heard the beginning of this track, I was almost certain it was some muddy live performance recording, but at exactly the 24 second mark everything kicks in nicely. As is usually the case, my second thoughts were immediately directed towards the vocals. I did a triple take and had to check to make sure this wasn't Claudia Gonson's voice coming through my computer speakers. If you are one of 'them there' Magnetic Fields fans you can probably hear it also. Front woman/bassist Nikki West really does have an amazing voice. After checking some other blog reviews from earlier this year, I was kind of disappointed to find that this band was only linked as a side note or opening act. In most cases the feedback to these reviews overlooked the band in exchange for inane banter among those I could only guess were annoying ex-dormmates of the blogger. Anyway, this music is a great find for folks like myself who hadn't yet discovered it. There's not much detailed information I could locate on the band but I'll give you what I found.















Nethers were once a Washington, D.C. area garage rock band known as The Carlsonics. They decided to give the noise thing a break a few years ago and moved to a northern area of Virginia (Nethers, Virginia... or so I read) and started recording new and much different material. The product of those recordings is what you are now listening to. The album titled In Fields We Will Lie, as mentioned above, was released in 2005 through the band's Philadelphia based label Theory Box Records. The physical CD can be purchased through Insound for $16.99 USD but if you would rather download the entire album you can do so at ApolloAudio for half the price. To hear more folky sounding songs and make a new friend, check the Nethers MySpace page. There is also an official Nethers website with tour dates and a few more tracks to download. As stated before, Nikki West (vocals/bass) has a wonderful voice and is easily the reason this ended up being today's feature.















Photo by: Kyle (used without permission)

MP3: Hung Herself In A Birdcage