This summer is a busy time for CD releases, so for the month of May we are giving you a double feature with Matt Cranstoun‘s newly released CD “By Framed Image” and Mike Gorman‘s upcoming release “The Love Parade”.

While these artists have very different approaches to writing and performing, they share some surprising similarities. Both have rich, timeless voices evocative of bygone days where people sang not as a means to receive adulation and money, but because they needed an outlet for pain and fear and joy. There’s a purity in that kind of singing that is incredibly refreshing in a culture of over auto-tuned, entitled, and self-centered voices. While Matt’s CD leans more toward a funk-infused mixture of folk and blue-eyed soul, Mike’s new release swings more toward Tin Pan Alley and true country and western. I highly recommend purchasing both albums.

Matt Cranstoun

Matt has been a member of LC from the start. He hasn’t needed a band to charm an audience with sweetly crooned tones or powerfully delivered lyrics. But the band arrangements on the new album work perfectly with layered vocals to further enhance each song in a way I could not have imagined until I’d heard it.

This is even more impressive knowing that Matt played and sang just about everything on the album. One of the highlights on the album is “Daylight”.  I dare you to listen to this song and keep from dancing in your chair, which is what I’m doing right at this moment.

http://www.myspace.com/mattcranstoun

BIOGRAPHY: Matt Cranstoun was born and raised in central New Jersey. Starting at an early age and throughout his youth he played and studied drums on his father’s drum set. He gained interest in guitar (and not much else) while playing drums for a friend’s band in high school. He then began to sing and put together his own songs and recordings. Through the learning process of those early recordings, the years that followed, evolving musical tastes, personal strife and the natural maturing process, Matt found himself as nothing more or less than a songwriter.

Matt’s writing mixes content reminiscent of folk, romanticism (or “cry baby stuff” as he refers to it) and other messages with a dynamic voice familiar to classic soul and r&b. Matt is a huge admirer of artists ranging from Ray Charles to Ani Difranco. Soul and folk music are one in the same to him. He writes and performs with this ideal. “Whatever it is in music, it’d better be real or I can’t care. If it’s groove, lay it down. If it’s just you and your guitar, say something and mean it. I’m not sure that makes much sense hearing it out loud…I think I just need to be moved. I’m as much a music lover as I am a music hater.”

Matt recently completed his first ever LP entitled “By Framed Image” released independently in 2010. It is available at shows and soon will also be available on iTunes. He currently records, performs, and collaborates throughout the New York area and doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon.

ALBUM INFO: “By Framed Image” is Matt Cranstoun’s first LP release. With a few studio EP’s that never satisfied him, Matt decided he’d try something else… recording on his own in his Brooklyn apartment. This was two years ago. It was an exhausting experience. One he says he’ll never try again. “I don’t like recording. I like the live element. It’s so hard to capture whatever emotion occurs live on a recording…” he says.

It took nearly two years because as Matt set out to record the songs he originally decided would be on the record, he didn’t take into account the ones he’d then write over the course of recording and subsequently desire to add. Thus began an ongoing problem of adding and subtracting. Basically, the result in “By Framed Image” is a compilation of three to four albums worth of material that developed during this span of time. “It would’ve never been released had I not decided one day, ‘You know what? This thing has to go.’ It’s not perfect. It’s incomplete, but it’s time.”

Matt played mostly every instrument on it, mixed and produced it himself, designed the CD artwork and has finally decided it’s time to let it go. As is characteristic of Matt’s music, “By Framed Image” is an attempt to capture candid emotion, soul dissection, and a raw truth. He hopes some of this will come across to the listener.

Mike Gorman

I’ve only heard one song from Mike Gorman’s new album. You can stream it from his website. The arrangement is light and pleasing, allowing Mike’s voice to sit front and center where it belongs. It’s such a natural sounding recording- it feels like sitting in a room with Mike and the talented musicians on the album. Everything is crystal clear, despite the feeling that this song could come from anywhere or anywhen, like it might be an old record spinning somewhere, or a song sent out over the ether.

http://www.mikegormanmusic.com

BIOGRAPHY: Mike Gorman was born with a guitar in his hand in the middle of a blizzard in Buffalo, NY. He traveled to New York City with his life in a guitar case and his guitar on his lap. Since moving to the metropolis his songs have become leaner and more dedicated to pure songwriting. Mike’s music combines country western and Tin Pan Alley jazz with a pop sensibility and an ability to spin quirky stories with a personal touch. After releasing his debut album ‘The Bridge out of Town’ in 2008 he was greeted with comparisons to a variety of performers spanning from Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams to Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. Mike continues to write and perform and is releasing his second album in June 2010 entitled the The Love Parade, a departure from the lone wolf folk sound into a fully realized country-folk-blues jamboree.

“Gorman’s lyrics are close to the bone, no pretension, no class conflict, no materialistic woes, just the simple concerns of the common man.” -Fame Magazine

ALBUM INFO: Mike Gorman teamed up with New York singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Ryan Langlois to record a follow up to his debut record in late 2009. With a brand new sound in his head, one that included mandolins, pianos, clarinets, bells, guitars, harmony voices and some pots and pans he found under his kitchen sink, Mike was able to fully realize his folk-country tunes that he’d been performing throughout the city with just himself and a guitar. The songs took on a life of their own as Mike and a whole bunch of friendly New York musicians added sweet, organic sounds to already solid folk songs, conjuring up feelings of late night drives on old country roads but with constant lyrical references back to the city that gave birth to these songs. “The Love Parade” pleasantly and playfully exists between the city and the country, the noise and the silence, a mix of the very old and the modern, something that Mike has been striving for from the very beginning.

Now Mike is very proud to announce that “The Love Parade” will be released in the Summer of 2010. Check out his website to hear the first single off the album entitled “The Ballad of TT Thompson”. In addition Mike will be playing all over the city this Spring and Summer and is happy to announce his very first gig at Bar 4 on May 20th at 8PM. Join Mike’s Facebook Fan Page to receive updates on shows and the official release date of “The Love Parade”.