new: White Antelope "Silver Dagger"

"I Can Be Your Bride"
As if you needed another reason, this is why Twitter is great. Robin Pecknold tweets "Silver Dagger / Wild Mountain Thyme http://is.gd/inf2" and we get two new songs from the Fleet Foxes/White Antelope. "Silver Dagger" is a fine example of Pecknold channeling Dylan the storyteller, the Blood on the Tracks/Desire-era Dylan, where stories were the center of the song, rather than just a mere aspect of them. Pecknold really hits this one on the money. The other new treat is "Wild Mountain Thyme", which is basically a Jackson Browne-CSNY-Laurel Canyon dream come true. Hit the MySpace asap.

White Antelope- Silver Dagger & Wild Mountain Thyme

mp3: White Antelope "It Ain't Me Babe"

"You Say Your Looking For Someone"
(photo by grandchildren)
He's done it again, this time covering Bob Dylan's classic "It Ain't Me Babe." As expected, absolutely majestic, most notably the doubled vocals, which give it a sort of campfire deep inside a cave sing-a-long vibe. Apparently this was on the White Antelope MySpace page, although it seems to have been removed. Oh well, you can snag an mp3 below. Thanks to Peenko for the heads up.

White Antelope- It Ain't Me Babe

update: Pecknold is White Antelope

"Said the Knight on the Road"

Just a little follow up on the last post. AtEaseWeb member Robin Pecknold confirmed that it was he who recorded and posted the two songs on the White Antelope MySpace page. In his own words:

Ey!!!

I used to post demos of songs on that page before the record came out. The Guitar Duet thing dates from when we were recording the LP and the cover of False Knight I did about two weeks ago. I posted the first demo of Blue Ridge Mountains (when it was called Stirring, before the other Stirring) on there before. I might put that back up, it had different instrumentation and was kinda cool....

Right now I am alone in this house we've rented to record the next record in and tomorrow I'm going to record a cover of Ridge Rider, the Judee Sill song, for this compilation. Trying to write new stuff is hard right now for some reason.

I want to do a record of really spare stuff for White Antelope so it may be recorded this year. I dunno if that is a good name though.

Thinking out loud.

I guess I can add the White Antelope (or Robin solo disc) to my increasingly elongated list of albums I'm anxiously awaiting to hear in 2009. The two tracks in discussion are available below.

White Antelope- False Knight of the Road
White Antelope- Magic Rings, Guitar Duet

new: Fleet Foxes Side Project?

"And He Stood, And He Stood"

A good friend in a quaint, psychedelic fishing village just passed along a fascinating piece of information. White Antelope's MySpace Page. I told him" I know nothing" of said band. But the first song, "False Knight on the Road", automatically started playing and its gentle finger picking felt pretty good. Then, about 30 seconds in, I heard this familiar voice, angelic in its tone, come weeping through the tree's. Robin Pecknold? My IM box bounces and it, coincidentally, reads "Robin Pecknold." Some extremely light research showed that he was "friends" with Fleet Foxes and fellow Seattle folkees the Cave Singers. Still somewhat skeptical, I took a look into the pics section of White Antelope's profile and noticed a picture of someone who looks a lot like the dude that sings in that pretty awesome band with the Peter Breugal painting on their album cover. Well, the songs, the second being "Guitar Duet", an instrumental, are stunning, especially in their ability to summon the heart and soul of American folk music. Pecknold's(?) voice is timeless, able to conjure Woody Guthrie, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Paul Simon and James Taylor in one fell swoop, without sounding like neither an imitator nor an impostor. It's quite wondrous to fell a century's worth of history in the voice of a young man.

Listen to White Antelope here.


ED Note: So the Kids on AtEase have verified "False Knight on the Road" as the b-side on the Mykonos 7". White Antelope is all but confirmed as the solo work of Robin Pecknold. Great news all around. Anybody have any info on the Mykonos 7"?