Seawolf

Debut Sea Wolf EP "Get To The River Before It Runs Too Low"

You're A Wolf

Winter Windows

Black Dirt

Black Leaf Falls

Uploaded earlier this year but SC removed it without explanation? 

A torn page from a book I can't read
Every line's a whisper every word's a need
Your shadow lingers where the light won't go
A puzzle incomplete that I need to know

Footsteps echo in an empty hall
Your voice a memory that I can't recall
The stars are questions burning in the sky
The missing piece is you and I

You're the chapter that was never written
The melody lost but never forgotten
A riddle unsolved a mystery deep
You're the missing piece of the story I keep

The clock keeps ticking but the hands don't move
The silence speaks louder than I can prove
Every corner I turn feels like the start
Of chasing shadows in my heart

Falling through pages where your name should be
Searching for answers in a vast empty sea
Every heartbeat's a clue every breath's a sign
That the missing piece is what binds you to mine

You're the chapter that was never written
The melody lost but never forgotten
A riddle unsolved a mystery deep
You're the missing piece of the story I keep

A torn page from a book I can't read Every line's a whisper every word's a need Your shadow lingers where the light won't go A puzzle incomplete that I need to know

Missing piece of the story .mp3

Bad Bad Hats plays "Midway" from 2015's Psychic Reader live in the studio for NPR's World Cafe.

Bad Bad Hats: badbadhats.com

Listen to the full session: npr.org/sections/world-cafe/2015/12/08/458921026/sense-of-place-minneapolis-bad-bad-hats

World Cafe www.npr.org/blogs/world-cafe/
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Twitter twitter.com/WorldCafe
Youtube www.youtube.com/worldcafe

"Midway" by Bad Bad Hats recorded live for World Cafe

This track is a cover of Eagles of Death Metals "I Love You All The Time" and appears on the Eagles of Death Metal's charity album to raise money for the "Sweet Thing" foundation following the attacks at the Bataclan in Paris in 2015.

I Love You All The Time

Albert Hammond Jr’s fourth solo album Francis Trouble explores a deeply personal topic – the stillborn death of his twin brother, Francis, and the lingering effects that event has had in his life and music.
In November of 1979, Hammond Jr’s mother, Claudia, miscarried. Although they rushed to the hospital, Claudia and Albert Hammond Sr. were told that the baby was far too premature to live. Albert continued to grow inside of his mother undetected until she was nearly six months pregnant.

Stream on Spotify: ffm.to/mutedbeatings/spotify
Stream on Apple Music: ffm.to/mutedbeatings/applemusic
Buy on iTunes: ffm.to/mutedbeatings/itunes
Buy the album: ffm.to/francistrouble/

Lyrics:
Something 'bout the rules you attract
Don't tell me that you made it up
We can always screw with the facts
Don't tell me that I've seen enough
'Cause if I saw nothing why would I look twice

Ain't about the dress that you own
It's just something came undone
Everything you hide between the lines
Is just another giveaway

You're always the last one to know
We're finally close when you first walk away
There's something about how you go
That makes me feel everything you wanna say
Whether we're fucking around or just feeling it out

With every role that you play
The revolution televised
There's a time and a place
Don't tell me that it's paradise
Everything you hide between the lines
Is just another giveaway

We can always leave this town
Or stay to watch it all fall down
But between you and I
It's just a moment along the way

You're always the last one to know
We're finally close when you first walk away
There's something about how you go
That makes me feel everything you wanna say
Whether we're fucking around or just feeling it out
It's just a moment, it's just a moment, it's just a moment away

We can always screw with the facts
Tell them that we made it up
When all the words were taken back
It doesn't mean you've given up 
'Cause if I saw nothing
Why would I look twice
But between you and I
It's just a moment along the way

You're always the last one to know
We're finally close when you first walk away
There's something about how you go
That makes me feel everything you wanna say
Whether we're fucking around or just feeling it out
It's just a moment, it's just a moment, it's just a moment away

Francis Trouble

Albert Hammond Jr - Far Away Truths

Albert Hammond Jr’s fourth solo album Francis Trouble explores a deeply personal topic – the stillborn death of his twin brother, Francis, and the lingering effects that event has had in his life and music.
In November of 1979, Hammond Jr’s mother, Claudia, miscarried. Although they rushed to the hospital, Claudia and Albert Hammond Sr. were told that the baby was far too premature to live. Albert continued to grow inside of his mother undetected until she was nearly six months pregnant.

Stream on Spotify: ffm.to/mutedbeatings/spotify
Stream on Apple Music: ffm.to/mutedbeatings/applemusic
Buy on iTunes: ffm.to/mutedbeatings/itunes
Buy the album: ffm.to/francistrouble/

Lyrics:
I was so quiet 
But you were excited 
Waiting for romance
Someone come talk to me 
Lonely out on this tree
There is a need to feel safe
How do we get to this place
With eyes on my back
I'm set to attack
I've come to take your hand

Hold on (x8)

Don't know what to do
Don't know what to do
Don't know what to do with you

I was so quiet but you were excited
Waiting for the dance
They all just waltzed in a second behind me
I stood there like some dumb kid
The music played and the boys would take you far from where I was
I was still hoping that you were the victory to what felt like love

Hold on (x8)

Don't know what to do
Don't know what to do
Don't know what to do with you

Hold on (x8)

Albert Hammond Jr - Set to Attack

Chinese Translation

Medusa in Chains - The Fratellis (Cover)

Buy "Old World Romance" on iTunes: http://smarturl.it/oldworldromance

Buy iTunes

Changing Seasons

Dear Fellow Traveler

Miracle Cure

Whirlpool

Taking its name from novelist Jack London’s 1904 seafaring adventure, Sea Wolf has evolved organically from its hermetic origins in Alex Brown Church’s living room into a muscular, full-bodied musical entity with passion to burn. After adopting the sobriquet, Church burst onto the music scene in two-fisted fashion with the EP, Get to the River Before It Runs Too Low, and the subsequent full-length debut album, Leaves in the River, about which Interview magazine observed, “His music is both erudite and unvarnished, a blend of swirling melodies, literary balladry and damaged art-rock composition.”

And now, Church’s singular vision has led to the creation of the eloquent and expansive new album White Water, White Bloom, which not only fulfills the immense promise of the initial musical diptych but conjures up its own cosmology. This is one of those rare and mysterious records wherein, the first time you hear it, you can’t shake the feeling that it’s always been part of the soundtrack of your life. You intimately know its ups and downs, its melodies and cadences, its settings and characters.

“I couldn’t have known beforehand what the next record would sound like,” says Church, “but I did know I wanted it to be bigger, with a band feel, rather than another series of intimate confessionals.”

A song cycle set against the changing of seasons, this timeless work unfolds like an epic poem, yet resonates with thematic elements that speak, elliptically yet unmistakably, to the world we live in. Pulsing with evocations of nature at its most elemental, Church’s songs are flooded with vivid imagery, carried along on torrents of sounds as majestic as a mountain stream swollen with the bracing, crystalline runoff of spring’s first warming breath. What’s more, he sings these songs with newfound power, the result of extensive roadwork behind Leaves in the River, while deepening the mesmerizing expressiveness with which he made his initial mark.

Opening track “Wicked Blood” begins with what sounds like an orchestra tuning up before surging to glorious life, the rhythm section shaping itself into a propulsive groove accented by delicate piano notes, carrying along the opening chapter of the saga: “We met in the East/ poured in like a flood,” Church begins, shadowed by the breathless wheeze of an air organ, “You’re the whispering kind/dark sapphire blood/A vision of veils/all shimmery white/like a backdrop of sails/all aglow from the light/of the wonder behind/at a starry night.” And with that, we’re off into an adventure of cinematic immediacy, as befits the sensibility of this onetime film student, who’s clearly found his natural medium of expression.

“Lyrically,” says Church, “I like to incorporate what one would construe as classic imagery, and even infuse the songs with elements of mythology, but also delve into more contemporary themes. I’m interested in the way words look and feel, not just when you hear them but also when you read them.”

Church’s verbal acuity is mated with bold, vibrant soundscapes set off with thundering drums, stabbing, reverb-soaked electric guitars and ghostly keyboards, resulting in such memorable pieces as the mythological tale “Orion & Dog,” ornamented with strings right out of a John Ford western; the folk-noir fable “O Maria!”; the surging title song, burning with Byronic heat; the fever-dreamscape “Spirit”; the muted, idyllic, “The Orchard”; the Dylanesque roundelay “The Traitor”; and the closing “Winter’s Heir,” with its life-embracing denouement.

“When I write a song,” says Church, “for me it’s always associated with a specific place and time. For example, ‘Orion & Dog’ was written during the summer, and ‘Winter’s Heir’ is about coming out of the long Montreal winter and experiencing a sense of rebirth.”

The album has a back story: “I met and fell in love with a girl in Montreal while on tour with Irving, and just before signing with Dangerbird,” Church recalls. “And then, while touring behind the Sea Wolf record, I spent most of my time off in Montreal with her. Apart from ‘Wicked Blood’ and ‘O Maria!,’ which I wrote in Los Angles, everything on White Water was written in Montreal, holed up in our little apartment, a block away from the river. That was all of last fall, winter and spring, so I was very much influenced by that experience, and a lot of the record is set there in my immediate surroundings, along with remembrances of being home on the West Coast.”

White Water, White Bloom was recorded at the Omaha studio of Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, M. Ward, Monsters of Folk), with Church handling vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, as well as some of the air organ and pump organ sounds that were such a big part of the sonic signature of the earlier records. Joining him were the three core members of the six-piece Sea Wolf touring lineup: keyboardist Lisa Fendelander, bassist Ted Liscinski and drummer Joey Ficken. The remaining slots were filled by Mogis on lead guitar and an assortment of other instruments, with his Bright Eyes cohort Nate Walcott filling the role of the cellist, arranging strings for a quartet, sometimes working from cello parts originally created by Catherine Odell, who’d been part of the initial Sea Wolf touring lineup, with Church’s input.

They arrived with a full set of song demos, providing a detailed blueprint for their subsequent expansion into widescreen anthems that reshape the classic aspects of traditional folk, folk rock and chamber pop—but these bucolic elements are intercut with aggressive bursts of raw emotion sharpened to a serrated edge—making for a rich, vibrant sound that is virtually unprecedented.

Church is working in the most personal of mediums, and that results in constant self-questioning. “Every time you make a record,” he says, “you invariably think, ‘Oh, I wish I’d done this differently,’ or ‘Next time I want to do this.’ But if you get to the point where you don’t think that, then it’s time to quit. In terms of aspirations, as long as I’m constantly having new ideas and finding new places to explore with the music, I’ll be satisfied.”

Black Dirt

Sea Wolf

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