Canon Blue - Indian Summer (Des Moines)

I received this particular track early last week as an extra thrown in from another band who were being supported by Canon Blue on their latest tour.  I really like it.  It has a wonderfully relaxed, early 1980s feel, along the lines of China Crisis or The Lotus Eaters.   Intrigued, I headed over to their website to investigate the latest album and find out a bit more.

Canon Blue is the alias of Nashville-based Daniel James.  The first album, Colonies, came out in 2007 with Rumspringa following in 2011, from which comes this track, Indian Summer,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E67VBL3GTrg&feature=related

Canon Blue's influences are many and varied (Scott Walker, Debussy, Tom Waits, Nick Drake and Ennio Morricone amongst them) and he has ambitions to be recognised not just as a singer-songwriter but also as a composer, and this is shown in his description of Rumspringa - an orchestral pop marvel no less, written while touring the world with Danish indie rock band Efterklang. 

Listening to other tracks from Rumspringa whilst writing this, it is clearly an unusual collection.   Andalusia (Davenport) has that other-worldliness also apparent on Kate Bush's 50 Words For Snow, and in Mark Hollis's less commercial offerings.  Nothing wrong with being compared to either of these of course.  It probably won't be the sort of album you will play every day  (Indian Summer is probably the most commercial-sounding track) but that's not to say it isn't a fine collection of interesting, unusual musical pieces.  You can stream it for free on the website.



http://www.canonblue.com/bio#awp::home