String me up, it's Thursday (Track 4)!

Track 4: Erik Friedlander - Airstream Envy

Ever since I've moved to New York, the cello has come out of boring, Yo-Yo Ma territory for me. My students have helped with this, by showing me a) you don't have to be a dork to play one and b) it's a pretty demanding instrument. What really nailed it for me was the second time I saw Out Hud play live. And bang, the cello had squarely established itself as relevant in today's musical climate. You gotta love how strings never go away - we've got hip-hop violins, good old Final Fantasy, and on and on and on.

Erik Friedlander brings an amazingly rich one-man show to the table, and has won hefty chunk of acclaim from the likes of the previously posted Clogs (plays cello on their album Stick Music), John Vanderslice (Friedlander appears all over Pixel Revolt), and John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats. Darnielle even had Erik orchestrate a significant portion of The Sunset Tree and their forthcoming album "Get Lonely" (in stores the 22nd). In years past, he's played with Courtney Love, Maxwell, John Zorn, and Dave Douglas.

Darnielle (from the Mountain Goats, for our ADD readers), sums up Erik's musical style better than I could have, so I won't try. Here's what he had to say:

"There's a breathtaking lyricism at work in these new tunes, but it's infused with an almost breezy touch: like swirling dust in beams of light, the melodies dazzle and hypnotize and float along on their own currents. Emotional but never sentimental, profound but without pretension -- these songs wordlessly communicate more easily and openly than a dozen singer-songwriters furiously scribbling in notebooks."

So there you have it. Look for Friedlander at Insound, iTunes, and of course, Brassland.org.