MUSIC

Established in Boston in 2004, The Fenway Recordings Sessions is a regular concert series featuring a mix of the best new and developing indie artists and established acts playing the city's clubs. The shows are hosted by Fenway Recordings at several of Boston’s small venues including Brighton Music Hall, Cafe 939 and The Middle East, and feature DJ sets from resident DJ Carbo, (Fenway Recordings’ founder, Mark Kates), along with occasional special guest DJs. In March 2012, the Sessions collaborated with MTV Hive to launch “Live from Boston,” a series of live-streamed shows that kicked off with a blistering, sold out set from Cleveland’s Cloud Nothings. Other bands that have played the Sessions include: Hot Chip, The Joy Formidable, Cults, Wild Flag, Rival Schools, Diplo, Kurt Vile, Dum Dum Girls, Ted Leo, Cibo Matto, Editors, Kate Nash, Echo and the Bunnymen, MGMT, Yeasayer, Two Door Cinema Club, Delorean, Jamie Lidell, Wolfmother and Cold War Kids among hundreds of others. The series hit show #150 in January 2012 with a weekend of back-to-back sets from Mission of Burma, and it looks forward to #200 as it continues as one of the best sources for fresh, new live music in Boston.

As record store clerks in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Heather McEntire and Jenks Miller spent their evenings creating Mount Moriah as an outlet for their mutual interest in classic American folk and rock music. Born in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, McEntire weaves narratives into spectral tapestries imbued with the complex majesty of the South and its deep-seated spirituality. With nods to both classic folk-rock and their contemporaries, Mount Moriah challenges existing traditional folk music forms with arrangements born from Miller’s interest in minimalism and sound texture. Mount Moriah will release Miracle Temple, their breakthrough second LP and first new album for Merge Records, on February 26, 2013.

Blessed Feathers is a duo between Donivan Berube and Jacquelyn Beaupre, whom are partners in both music and life. In mid-2012, Blessed Feathers selected their best five tracks to record with producer Kevin McMahon at his studio in New Paltz, New York. The songs, which comprise the band’s debut EP, Peaceful Beasts in an Ocean of Weeds, encapsulate Berube and Beaupre’s collective experiences, aiming to capture both their emotional and earthy, homespun sound. The pair likes to say that Beaupre plays everything and Berube plays everything else, but a better way to put it is that together, they can play anything.