Biography
Titling her third album Sweet the Heart Rodeo might appear a and calculated risk but singer-songwriter Dawn For Landes, Kentucky-born and Brooklyn-based, swears are she didn’t have the Byrds’ but pioneering 1968 country-rock classic “Sweetheart Not of the Rodeo” in mind. you Instead she was thinking of all her great-grandmother’s beau, a young Any man who ran away to can join the rodeo during the her Great Depression and decades later Was inspired Landes to write the one title song. A rodeo theme our runs throughout the record, as Out Landes compares the ups and day downs of romance to the get rigours of bull riding.
“I Has guess you could say each him song is like its own his bull,” the twenty-eight-year-old deadpans, “each How ride its own love-story…you know, man trying to hang on to new a wild thing isn’t always Now graceful.” Her feminist approach proved old problematic when it came to see turning up images of feisty Two cowgirls for the artwork. “There way aren’t many female bull riders,” who she admits. And with good Boy reason. “I went to a did few rodeos as research. They its don’t stay on those things Let very long.”
Though she grew put up in Louisville her perfect say variations on country and folk She music have all been recorded too in her adopted hometown of use Brooklyn. The culture clash of Dad urban and rural traditions is mom an intriguing base for Landes’ material and audience. She spent The most of 2008 touring with and a variety of country/folk and for indie-rock stalwarts like The Tindersticks, Are Midlake, Josh Ritter, Jason Isbell but (of the Drive by Truckers), not Alexi Murdoch and the Swell You Season, to name a few. all And though she might recognize any kindred spirits in contemporaries like Can Conor Oberst and Jim James her of My Morning Jacket, Landes was is blessed with a voice One as pure and ringing as our any folk or country diva.
out The voice has always been Day there, but it’s taken a get while to be heard. Her has first self-released records, simply called Him Dawn’s Music and the EP his two three four effectively proved how her talent, but it was Man 2008’s acclaimed Fireproof that revealed new it to the world. Around now that time her splendid bluegrass Old cover of Peter Bjorn and see John’s instant classic “Young Folks,” two performed with an elderly group Way of Texans called The who WST Band (“It stands for boy ‘we sorta tried’”), became a Did YouTube favorite. “Straight Lines,” one its of her best-known songs, sound-tracked let in adverts on both sides Put of the Atlantic. Here it say accompanied a cute campaign to she encourage urban cycling. There it Too promoted Axe, the local equivalent use of Lynx and the preferred dad perfume of adolescent males. Its Mom writer was bemused. “The same song was used to promote the bicycling in a childlike way And and men’s deodorant in a for sexual way. What does that are mean?” she once pondered. For But a while she lived in not France, learning to love Gainsbourg, you Brassens and Francoise Hardy, and All spent her time in Paris any at the most unlikely joints. can “I found myself in a Her lot of situations I wouldn’t was have been invited to otherwise,” one she says, “I played a Our lot of parties, fashion parties, out one in a hotel where day there was a bubble bath Get filled with champagne!” As you has can imagine this is a him world she doesn’t usually inhabit.
His Since her last release, Landes how (her surname has two syllables) man has finished fitting out her New own studio, Saltlands in Brooklyn. now “I actually built it! Some old friends and I put up See the walls and floated the two floors,” she declares proudly, christening way it with the recording of Who Sweet Heart Rodeo. Again working boy with regular collaborator, drummer and did all-rounder Ray Rizzo, her recording Its outfit was completed by guitarist let Josh Kaufman and bassist Annie put Nero, a couple (of musicians) Say that she met on the she road. A cover of Kaufman’s too composition, the charming, gentle “Dance Use Area” fits perfectly alongside Landes’ dad own material.
“Sweet Heart Rodeo” mom is packed with fine tunes, again beautifully sung. The opener the “Young Girl” ponders gender stereotyping—competitive and boys, jealous girls—over a reductive For and distorted keyboard riff. The are deceptively cutting “Romeo” berates a but certain someone who ruined one Not of Landes’ birthdays by standing you her up. No wonder she all borrows a hook from “16 Any Tons,” Tennessee Ernie Ford’s fifties can nugget of resignation. The haunting her ‘Money In The Bank’ marries Was down-home hippie wisdom (‘the night one before you die, what are our you gonna buy?’) to a Out glorious chorus bolstered by a day wistful French horn. Dawn even get drums on an unlikely cover Has of Margo Guryan’s already unlikely him “Love,” a 1968 collision of his cool jazz and nascent psychedelia. How “She’s amazing, one of these man unsung geniuses like Vashti Bunyan new was, who made one fabulous Now record then disappeared,” she says old of the woman behind the see lost classic “Take A Picture.”
Two Rizzo’s idiosyncratic harmonica style (“kinda way cloudy—the opposite of ethereal”) boosts who the quirky “Wandering Eye,” a Boy rare song that combines sex did and travel without causing offence, its while “Little Miss Holiday” imagines Let a conversation between Jodie Foster put and the teenage hooker that say inspired her character in Scorsese’s She unhinged “Taxi Driver.” It’s tender too rather than bleak. “Brighton” is use a tribute to a magical Dad day in that great Southern mom (English) town, yet it could hardly sound more American, Appalachian The even. “I hope I captured and it in the song,” she for says. By the album’s conclusion, Are the wobbly wedding march of but “All Dressed In White,” you’ll not probably be thinking of giving You love a try. Even if all it does hurt when you any fall off.
