Music
Press
There’s a playfulness in the lyrics of Angela Faye Martin, a Georgia musician currently based out of Franklin, NC. Her debut EP One Dark Vine is a sparse affair that lets her vocals shine, and her wry Southern storytelling recalls the clever turns of early Vic Chesnutt. - Flagpole Athens, GA
Just north of the NC/Georgia state line lies Angela Faye Martin, a singer songwriter who with the help of Sparklehorse guru Mark Linkous has created a strong, ten song slab of backwoods weirdness that is as good as anything released on a major label this year.
From the beginning of Pictures From Home’s opener “Strawberry Roan”, a creepy, one chord at a time slow builder featuring Martin’s vocals distorted and tremolo’ed all over the place, listeners are taken on a journey of songs that are not only interesting lyrically, but new little bubbles pop up musically all the time.
Linkous’ production isn’t so much the star on Pictures From Home as it’s a place setting for Martin’s increasingly interesting songwriting. There isn’t a bad track amongst the bunch on the album, although a scant few feel weaker than others, but the odd blips and creeks that make even the bum notes worth a second listen.
Martin may still be growing as a songwriter, but the sounds she’s created on this album are worth taking notice of, and anticipating what’s to come. - Fuzztone
Discography
PICTURES FROM HOME, LP Released, Sept.2009, Totemgirl Music -- Airplay WXYC, Chapel Hill, NC; Asheville FM
ONE DARK VINE, EP Released 2005 -- Airplay on WUGA NPR Athens, WPVM Asheville, WNCW Spindale/Asheville North Carolina
Photos
Bio
"If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.", urges Thoreau.
Then why shouldn't musicians be named after some of the 'fairest features' of our landscape? Christen then, the band, Angela Faye Martin & The Scarlet Oak Sway -- inspired by the overhill spectres atop the Nantahala mountain range of western North Carolina.
Angela Faye Martin and her band, The Scarlet Oak Sway thus assembled, embark from their rural base to sail the furrowed lands of the southeastern U.S. debuting Angela's first full-length LP, PICTURES FROM HOME (Totemgirl, 2009), with the indie-music legend Sparklehorse aka, Mark Linkous producing and collaborating.
AFM & The Scarlet Oak Sway have been generously harbored by those who seek their brand of haunting "lit & grit rock" since their successful debut at The Grey Eagle Music Hall, last fall. They have burned bright building their fan-base from loyal western North Carolinians and outward ever since.
Having first cut multiple demos, a solo-acoustic EP in 2005, formerly performing as a lone singer-songwriter, Angela has built a band, a unique vessel, comprised of talented woods-rockers, living a paradigm apart from the traditional city-musicians, among the very lands, people and ghostly histories that inspire songs she's written.
This band's performance of the LP, PICTURES FROM HOME has been described as "Early 70's Stones feeling" and "better than the album" by some of the most stalwart studio-philes. The band's ghost ship navigates through subtle shifts while staying true to the production with infectious esprit de corp making a show with Angela Faye Martin & The Scarlet Oak Sway a voyage worth taking.
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