The Stained Glass Comes Alive

The Child Ballads “Green Jewelry” – After about twenty false starts, the Child Ballads’ debut EP has finally come out in England, nearly ten years following the release of Stewart Lupton’s last officially released studio recordings with Jonathan Fire Eater. In the time since, he has reinvented himself as a folk singer heavily indebted to Bob Dylan and Romantic poetry, and penned some truly outstanding songs that have circulated online via live recordings of their sporadic shows, one of which is available for purchase on eMusic. “Green Jewelry,” which would open side b of the record if it were to be released on vinyl, is a ramshackle ballad that finds comfort in the rituals of Catholicism when it is abstracted by a dead language, and evidence of divine beauty in nature’s interaction with the ornaments of religion. (Click here to buy it from Juno.)

Elsewhere: Eric Harvey on the face of James Mercer, Edward Oculicz on Marit Larsen’s “Don’t Save Me,” and Rachelle Goguen on that one time when John Byrne forced Superman to star in a porno film with Mister Miracle’s wife.

Also: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from New Young Pony Club, Deerhunter, and Malajube.

And: The server that hosts this site was down yesterday, and there wasn’t much that I could do but wait for them to get it all back online. I hope that you were not too troubled by a Day Without A Fluxblog.