Search - Tim Bluhm :: Soft Adventure / Colts

MOTHER HIPS FRONTMAN RELEASES ALT. COUNTRY MASTERPIECE

05/13/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Despite his prolific discography, Tim Bluhm leads a life informed less by the pages of Rolling Stone than by a Jack London novel. He may well be the only musician in the world with seven albums who lives in a van. Bluhm has balanced his music career with the life of a vagabond, drifting between the California coast and its mountain ranges in a Chevy van crowded with mountaineering gear and surfboards, and, as he puts it in his characteristic understatement, "looking around." As a result, few artists are as inseparable from a place as Tim Bluhm is from California. To natives of the state, his language is at once familiar, droll, and poetic. As in the songs of Brian Wilson and Merle Haggard, the poems of Robinson Jeffers, or the novels of John Steinbeck, Bluhm's rhythms and images, his dreams and disappointments, reflect a distinct sensibility distilled from the complex and beautiful Golden State. The songs on Bluhm's new EP The Soft Adventure are crafted with a bird's-eye view, flying over landscapes and swooping down to inspect the details that make personal lives personal: the humorous, the curious, the vulnerable, the sarcastic and the earnest. Listeners will hear the influence of Bluhm's favorite musical predecessors: Neil Young, Gene Clark, Leonard Cohen and Skip Spence. Colts, which was recorded on a four-track in 1996, chronicles a dark period that Bluhm glibly calls his "indoor lifestyle," and the subsequent escape back into light. The songs are filled with longing, tenderness, resignation and regret. For 12 years, Los Angeles native Tim Bluhm has been the lead singer, co-guitarist and chief songwriter of the Mother Hips. They released three albums with Rick Rubin's American Recordings before self-releasing Later Days in 1998, and in 2001 they released Green Hills of Earth on Future Farmer Recordings, which was named by Rolling Stone critic Bill Crandall and the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the year's ten best records. Bluhm's work also includes the album Land and Sea Chanteys and the self-released collaboration with Greg Loiacono Ball-Point Birds. With the Mother Hips, Bluhm has performed with Wilco, Johnny Cash, the Old 97's, Cake, Cracker and the Black Crowes. As a solo performer he has played with Jimmie Dale Gilmore and The Flatlanders, Kieran Kane, and John Doe."

California Soul in it's finest hour

05/13/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is, I promise, the greatest album you have never heard by a singer/songwriter.Bluhm, as leader of seminal west coast band The Mother Hips (fathers of what's since been dubbed the "California Soul" scene) learned to craft colorful, honest songs about living and loving and losing as an old soul in the modern world. At times recalling everything from Neil Young to Townes Van Zandt to the Stones to Brian Wilson, Bluhm is a true gem for fans of great, timeless songwriting.The homespun production is a welcome change from today's super-produced slickfests by brooding, wannabe folk rockers (I'm looking at you, Ryan Adams). I found out about them a few years ago, and passed it off as yet another crappy band that someone decided was genius because they heard of them first. Well, all it takes is a listen to realize how good this music is.Listen to the free clips for an idea, but do yourself a favor and get this album (and/or a Mother Hips album) and you will hear soemthing that will warm your heart and shake your bones."