kd lang
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K.D. Lang has mapped a month-long tour for early 2008 as she gets ready to release "Watershed," her first album of original material in almost eight years.
With the new album marked for release in early February, the veteran singer/songwriter will kick off her support trek Feb. 21 in Toronto. The tour will cover 23 dates in 18 cities, wrapping in late March with a trifecta of dual-night engagements in Seattle, San Francisco and Portland, OR.
Aside from the tour behind "Watershed," Lang will tackle a pair of UK shows in January, as well as a Jan. 26 show in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, as part of lesbian-oriented travel company Olivia's Caribbean Dreams Cruise.
"Watershed," which Lang recorded in California and self-produced, is the singer's first set of all-new material since 2000's "Invincible Summer." The album, featuring 11 new Lang compositions, hits stores Feb. 5.
Lang's last studio album was 2004's "Hymns of the 49th Parallel," which featured covers of songs originally sung by various natives of the singer's home country of Canada, including material by Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen.
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Dustin O'Halloran
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Poignant and eerily lovely, Piano Solos is the newest release from Dustin O'Halloran, one half of the creative mind behind the imaginative music of the Devics. Nothing less than revelation, the album takes O'Halloran's emotionally resonant melodies and strips them bare, leaving nothing but a delicate and starkly moving beauty.
Recorded alone in Italy on a 1930s restored Swiss Sabel piano, these 12 tracks reveal a musician in the midst of a personal transformation. Fans of the Devics may recognize the atmospheric, noir sway, but there is something timeless here, a longing captured by a lone piano played with raw sentiment and grace.
Dustin O'Halloran first began classical training on the instrument at age 7. Six years of lessons were abruptly interrupted when he relocated to live with his father. O'Halloran would not touch the piano again for over a decade.
His reunion with the instrument began after meeting Sara Lov, a dynamic musician in her own right and one half of the creative force behind the Devics. Through writing music together with Lov, O'Halloran found his interest in piano reignited and his passion for the instrument slowly found it's way into their songs.
Two years ago, O'Halloran began spending time in Italy, writing music with Sara Lov and slowly beginning to focus more and more on the piano. Dividing his life between L.A. and Europe, O'Halloran has finally compiled enough material for a fully realized work.
Recorded in blissful isolation in Italy, the pieces on Solos are a nod to the composers that have influenced and inspired him, such as Satie, Chopin, Debussy and Beethoven. Yet listen close and you'll hear a nod to postmodern beauty as well, to the epic, enigmatic sound of bands like Rachael's, Mogwai and God Speed You Black Emperor.
Solos is somehow both fragile and grandly majestic, a vulnerability echoing in the air around each elegant composition. O'Halloran plays his instrument with reverence and simplicity and the combined effect is undeniably cinematic. This is music which evokes a wealth of imagery fresh snow, black boughs, mist and rain, the wind brushing aside dry leaves, light like diamonds on the water.
All of Solos tracks contain this nuanced, multifaceted nostalgia, along with a slight taste of the bittersweet. It is O'Halloran at his most exploratory and ultimately, at his most intimate.
"I have always felt the closest to the piano in terms of being able to express myself clearly," he explains, ?There was even a small hesitation to even play these songs for people as it felt so personal, but in the end I think that is what music should be. vulnerable. It's just me and the piano and all that I can give through it.".
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