Gospel Music Duettes As Owen Holmes Hears It

Owen Holmes is best known as the bassist for the American indie pop band Black Kids. Hailing from Jacksonville, Florida, Black Kids broke out a few years ago with some overtly indie twee-pop party tunes that won over Vice magazine, Pitchfork magazine, and CMJ (but not us).

There is more to hear from Holmes than the fizzy stylings of his band mates. After coming back from the Big Day Out festivals in New Zealand and Australia, Holmes seems to have had some extra time on his hands.

So he dusted off some duets and used them, along with some delirium caused by "two-hour, many-mile runs around Jacksonville" to produce a collection strong enough for an EP. According to Holmes, the songs were written in his apartment while brewing beer in the kitchen and then he recorded the album at home.

"When I say 'recorded,' I mean that I stuck a microphone in front of whatever I was playing," wrote Holmes on a guest post for the Kill Rock Stars label. "I played everything except for the drum set."

Duettes is vibrant collection of roughly produced alternative wanderings with anybodys but not nobodys.

To give you an idea just how accidentally the album came together, Holmes says he didn't even know the singers who accompanied him, with the exception of SoKo. He searched the net and then emailed people to see if they would sing with him.

He came up with SoKo (as mentioned), Shirley Simms (The Magnetic Fields), Tracyanne Campbell (Camera Obscura), Darren Haymen (who recently produced Essex Arms), and Cassie Ramone (Vivian Girls). The effort is titled with the semi-fictitious and impossible-to-find-via-search band moniker Gospel Music.

The effort pays out in dividends. A few years back, these would have been the kind of indie duets that fans would hunt for inside obscure record shops and bootleg sections. Nowadays, digital distribution makes them more accessible. However, as it stands right now, it's hard to tell how many people know they exist.

The five songs are pretty much spelled out by Holmes in his write up. They are all straightforward cuts, random social situations woven together with things he likes, like his car, beer, and boiled peanuts. Somehow, it works.

The best of the bunch is I Miss The Shit Out Of You with SoKo. Automobile with Tracyanne Campbell was the first to see some lift thanks to a campy and underplayed YouTube video directed by Alan Del Rio Ortiz. It was shot as part of a 13-hour road trip. Ortiz has an old school vintage vision. Although he only had three vids under he belt, he's clearly a director to watch.


It's hard to say that Holmes is the best singer ever (he's likable in a Kimya Dawson kind of way), but no one can deny that he is an extraordinary composer, capable of writing some one-off music and bringing the right people together to make it happen. All five of the tracks are worth owning.

The U.K.'s Fierce Panda originally released the album as homespun, homegrown, homemade indie music. They described it as "hobo-jumping leftfield nuggets" with alternative music guest stars." And you know, they are kind of right too. Kill Rock Stars gets props for the U.S. drop.

Gospel Music's Duettes Climbs To 8.5 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale.

All in all, Gospel Music is the kind of stuff we look for every day. Some days we find it. Today was one of those days. Even Charles Newman (Stephin Merritt's man) deserves a hat tip. He mixed the album.

You can find Duettes by Gospel Music on iTunes. You can also find it under duettes - EP on Amazon.

The Corin Tucker Band Offers Up 1,000 Years

Sleater-Kinney seems to be on permanent hiatus, leaving fans waiting for the group to do something, anything. It had a successful run as a punk-edged trio with riot grrrl roots showing for more than a decade. And then?

Janet Weiss (drums), Carrie Brownstein (vocals/guitar), and Corin Tucker (vocals/guitar) never said they've broken up. But it has been four long years since Sleater-Kinney has been together as a cohesive unit. It's an odd way to leave things, given that they were once hailed as the best rock band in America by respected critic Greil Marcus (and rightly so in 2001).

The Corin Tucker Band Slates Something For October.

While S-K isn't recording together, something almost as great is in the works. Singer/guitarist Corin Tucker is back. And her eponymously-titled Corin Tucker Band has an album called 1,000 Years set for release on Oct. 5. The label is Kill Rock Stars.

While Tucker was away for the last four years, she invested most of her energy as a full-time mom raising her two children. And although her Oregon home life was her primary focus, the music inside has never left her.

When she was asked to play a benefit in 2009 in Portland, she readily agreed and decided to try out some new songs in the process. The benefit was quickly followed by another. And friends and fans started to urge her back into the studio.

The resulting album is a solid return for Tucker. Her band includes percussionist Sara Lund and producer/arranger//multi-instrumentalist Seth Lorinczi, the latter of whom has managed to give Tucker a sound that’s still tough, but explores different textures.

Instead of just shredding guitar, bass, and drums, there’s an eclectic mix of acoustic guitars, keyboards, cello and violin thrown in for good measure. The sound speaks for itself. Here is a fan clip of Tucker singing Young Man Blues on New Year's Eve 2009.


Tucker's life may have changed since her carefree days in S-K and it's reflected in the lyrics to her songs. What isn't missing is the strength and power behind them. There’s sadness and angst to be found here.

Several of the 11 tracks were written for inclusion on the Twilight: New Moon soundtrack, but the songs didn't work for that project (and weren't included) so Tucker kept them for herself. This makes for an interesting mix of tunes on 1,000 Years.

There are the un-Twilight songs along with some cut right from her life. It’s Always Summer and Half A World Away are about Tucker’s filmmaker husband, Lance Bangs. He frequently travels for work, leaving her at home to take care of the kids and keep things together.

The lyrics reveal Tucker coping and waiting yet looking forward to his return. Another song, Thrift Store Coats, takes aim at the sad state of unemployment in Oregon, with families being hit especially hard. And then there is Doubt, which was just released on ITunes.

The Corin Tucker Band’s 1,000 Years Rocks An 8.8 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale.

I feel fortunate to have heard the whole album because The Corin Tucker Band reveals a different side of Tucker. S-K fans will eat this up, given that she can still scream and wail (and she does here) with the best of them. Amazingly, the quiet Tucker can be compelling too.

You can download Doubt from iTunes as a warmup. It's an excellent choice for a debut single, giving Tucker a chance to work those pipes and rip through some great riffs. Amazon has the whole 1,000 Years up for preview.

Of course, if you are really paying attention, you can hear Doubt in full. Special thanks to Kill Rock Stars. Or watch for the band live. They're on tour in Oregon, Washington and California in early October before heading to the East Coast.