Roman Candle is honoured to welcome Vetiver to St Mary's creative space, Chester. Special guest to be announced.

​

Saturday 9th July, 7.30PM. Tickets £14 advance from See Tickets.

​

VETIVER

​

Andy Cabic’s musical being is, like many curious 21st century musicians, shaped and sustained by divergent tangents. If he’s not crafting a melancholy folk rock diamond in his Northern California studio, he’s moving a dance floor with bossa nova and house DJ sets, or helping curate a compilation of Japanese City Pop.

​

What’s magic about this new Vetiver LP Up On High is the way these tangents color the ten songs without undermining a distinct move to more elemental, spacious and natural arrangements. At the heart of each of these ten songs is Cabic’s voice: sweet, tender and weathered—a welcome and soothing old friend if ever there was one. There are other familiar friends: the album also features longtime engineer and collaborator Thom Monahan and the same resourceful and versatile band that helped Cabic make the more dense and layered Complete Strangers from 2015.

​

Up On High was written on acoustic guitar. Having moved twice since Complete Strangers, increasingly accustomed to a life in and out of boxes, it was the easiest instrument to reach for in moments of inspiration. The basic tracking of the album took place over a few Spring days at a friend’s house in the high desert of California. This simple set-up captured the organic immediacy of a roomful of friends playing together on the floor. It’s alive and ever so subtly crackling with the intensity of a band working together, teasing out the melody and rhythms of songs with warmth and intimacy. Cabic and Monahan took the fruits of this session to Los Angeles and finished the album at Monahan’s studio over the summer as other friends popped by to lend their talents.

​

This album reflects the world that Cabic created and lives in: Jorge Ben phrasings peek out from behind Tom Petty's Wildflowers outtakes, a gentle jangle lifts whispers of REM’s Murmur on a breeze up from Compass Point Studios. But Up On High is most clearly Cabic and his band inhabiting the realm the band was born in—sleek, economical, soulful, and sometimes sadness-tinged melodies riding on the gentle choogle and sway of an ensemble moving in beautiful unison. This is an album that breathes with you in real, lived in, natural time.

​

ALEXIA AVINA

​

Alexia Avina is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist born and raised in Southeast Asia, previously based in Montreal and now living in rural Massachusetts, whose heavenly music is rooted in ambient, folk and dreampop traditions. Her new album Unearth will be released on CDR, cassette and digital platforms on October 9, 2020 jointly by Lost Map Records and, in North America, by Topshelf Records. It’s preceded by the single ‘Fit Into’, a track which captures much about what makes her so special – minimal, arrhythmic and tempo-based looping, ethereal melodic hooks, beauty, spaciousness and restraint. ‘Fit Into’ has received support from Paste, GoldFlakePaint and Clash among others.

​

Alexia Avina’s debut solo album Betting on an Island was released in February 2018 on Never Content, followed by her second album All That I Can’t See in March 2019. She also makes music as one half of ambient synth duo Best Fern. After recording Unearth at Breakglass Studios, Montreal together with a coterie of friends from the local music scene including Cedric Noel (bass), Nick Schofield (synth), Evan Tighe (drums, mastering), Justin Wright (cello) and Tim Gowdy (mixing, engineering), Alexia connected with Lost Map Records online, leading to her becoming the label’s first North American signing. Inspired by the visceral lyricism of Fiona Apple, the ambient electronica of Ai Aso, Sea Oleena and Hiroshi Yoshimura, the gauzy alt-folk of Lotte Kestner and the experimental sound collages of Kria Brekkan, Unearth is an utterly intoxicating listen – a kaleidoscopic swirl of textures and emotions, a record to get lost in again and again.

​

SEAFOAM GREEN

​

"Seafoam Green are Irish band Dave O'Grady and Muireann McDermott Long. The pair specialise in what we now call Americana. If you want blues, gospel, and folk, they’ve got it, but what they’ve actually perfected across two albums and countless live shows is the sound of a glorious rock n’ soul revival. Seafoam Green even find room for a dash of Dublinese, just to remind people where they’re coming from. Heavy hitters like Rich Robinson, Derek Trucks, and Tyler Greenwell have all chipped in, and it’s not hard to hear why, for this is thrilling, vital, and – that word again - soulful music."
Pat Carty - Hot Press Magazine