![]() From Sloan and Fountains of Wayne to Mayflies USA and Bell X1, letting loose such pop melodies to the world is something Yep Roc has done a long time, anyway. They’ve pushed Chatham County Line from locals mostly playing bluegrass into a headlining act with a proud pan-Americana approach and recently given newcomers like Cheyenne Marie Mize, Peggy Sue and Jukebox the Ghost a chance to broadcast their peerless hooks to the rest of the world. Taking its name from a song written by playful jazz pioneer and jivester Slim Gaillard, Yep Roc has nursed baby bands into some of its most noteworthy success stories and broken way beyond the boundaries of bluegrass, alt-country or whatever bucolic potion you pick. Those generalizations, however, are only half of the story, if that. And indeed, from Dave Alvin and Caitlin Cary to The Sadies and Chatham County Line, Yep Roc has often stuck to a roots-music mien appropriate for a label that’s always called North Carolina’s Piedmont home. They proudly scoop up legacy artists like Nick Lowe, Robyn Hitchcock, John Doe and Paul Weller, not only confirming their pasts but furthering their futures by releasing some of the most compelling music of their careers on Yep Roc. Yes, the common assumptions about Yep Roc hold. You get the point.īut trying to circumscribe the 300 or so albums, singles, videos and box sets that Yep Rec Records has released during the last 15 years is an endlessly frustrating and thankfully informative lesson in slippery definitions. ![]() One imprint only rolls with the heaviest of metal, while another tries to cash in on the most powerful of all the pop. In an era of infinitely splintering genres and border retrenching, that often seems simple enough: This label only reissues Northern Soul that never made it beyond an initial private press, while that label only sells music that can trace its cleanest roots to the folk traditions of the Appalachian mountains. The easiest way to describe a record label might be to define the kind of music it releases.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |