Here’s two new James Yorkston songs. Check out the press release below from Domino Records below. For fans of Jose Gonzalez.
FROM DOMINO RECORDS:
Once you’ve heard James Yorkston’s new arresting, intimate and subtle album, you may find yourself wondering how to categorize it. Or maybe you will do the sensible thing and not care how about its phylum – which suits James Yorkston just fine. A member of the seminal Fence Collective of Scottish-based folk singers, James is part of a scene that is developing an international audience of fans who savor contemporary folk and modern singer-songwriters. His first album, the lush and rousing Moving Up Country (the Rough Trade Shops’ album of the year in 2002) was often labelled alt-country. His, second, the sparse, meditative Just Beyond The River, tended to get corralled under the term “new folk.” Neither appellation seemed accurate in the end.

Yorkston’s stunning third album, The Year Of the, Leopard, confounds categories once again. Simply, It’s an uplifting wee beauty. If there’s a traditional side to it, it’s following the tradition of individual singer-songwriter albums which conjure and inhabit a genre that lasts just as long as the needle’s in the groove. The Year Of the Leopard was produced by former Talk Talk member Paul Webb alongside that band’s acclaimed engineer Phill Brown. The duo are responsible for the understated but enthralling work on Out Of Season, Webb’s Rustin’ Man album with Beth Gibbons of Portishead.

“Woozy With Cider,” the first single, which upon reflection seems like a absurd thing to say… to debase this song with the trivialities of pop music. In a perfect world, a song like “Woozy With Cider” wouldn’t need a commercial usage or placement in the denouement of a Hollywood film before the credits roll for folks to discover it en masse. But, if the opportunity came, would James even take it? Probably not and we’d love him all the more for it.

James Yorkston – Woozy with Cider.

And I’m not trying to be an ironic dick by offering up the next track to everyone during this harsh stretch of weather. It’s simply that this is James at his most potent. The quiet warmth and intimacy of “Summer Song” is exactly what makes James Yorkston such a powerful songwriting force.

James Yorkston – Summer Song.