Alex Silver
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halfvivid.bsky.social
Alex Silver
@halfvivid.bsky.social
120 followers 130 following 430 posts
Folk music experimentalist and French teacher. Portland, Maine area.

https://alexsilvertown.com
https://alexsilver.bandcamp.com/
Posts Replies Media Videos
halfvivid.bsky.social
Our local alt-weekly @the-bollard.bsky.social wrote the most perceptive, flat-out entertaining review of our band's latest record. Super grateful, mostly on behalf of my friend Joe, the songwriter. No one has matched Chris Busby's close reading 🤯
November 8, 2025 at 2:32 PM
halfvivid.bsky.social
Thank you 💘 Reminds me another time someone "won the internet," linked below. Let's just pin this one globally at Google.com and we can all catch up with the cavemen in terms of graciousness today.
theothersideoflife.bsky.social The Other Side of Life (Pumpkin Stylist) @theothersideoflife.bsky.social · 11d
Instead of watching "journalists" with sloppy "gotcha" videos and other forms of contemporary internet miseries, you can just watch Cocteau Twins' "Iceblink Luck."

youtu.be/L_Tj4bJ0VFw
Cocteau Twins - Iceblink Luck (Official Video)
YouTube video by Cocteau Twins
youtu.be
October 31, 2025 at 10:29 AM
halfvivid.bsky.social
Watch out for this Cuban artist. Love this. Bought the track and planning to blast this several times on the way to the staff breakfast.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-P1...
EIDI - El Güinche (feat JD Asere) (Video Oficial)
YouTube video by EIDI Oficial
www.youtube.com
October 31, 2025 at 10:12 AM
halfvivid.bsky.social
Friday night in a small city
portlandnoise.bsky.social Portland Noise @portlandnoise.bsky.social · 17d
Friday, October 24th
*underlining represents Maine based musicians
October 24, 2025 at 8:41 PM
halfvivid.bsky.social
New Chico States album is out today! Nothing quite like my friend Joe's meticulous surveys of this world through a country-western lens.

anythingbagel.bandcamp.com/music
Anything Bagel
we are a diy record label focused on limited run screen-printed cassettes and other goodies! thanks for being here :) <3 contact: anythingbagelemail@gmail.com
anythingbagel.bandcamp.com
October 23, 2025 at 4:45 PM
halfvivid.bsky.social
Yes, we premiered the album in Spain because the weather was more suitable to the sound.

www.mindies.es/2025/10/estr...
Estrenamos el nuevo disco de Chico States | Mindies
Hoy tenemos el placer de estrena en exclusiva ‘I Saw A Galloping Horse Cover No Ground’, el nuevo álbum de Joseph Barresi con su proyecto Chico States, publicado a través del sello Anything Bagel. Est...
www.mindies.es
October 21, 2025 at 10:21 PM
halfvivid.bsky.social
New Chico States drops this Thursday! Release show in Portland with old friends and new, including several on tour.

www.blueportlandmaine.org/events/chico...
Chico States + Will Lawrence + Dee Dee Sea + Number One Babe | BPM
www.blueportlandmaine.org
October 21, 2025 at 12:34 AM
halfvivid.bsky.social
Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day!

Frey's stuff is perplexingly gorgeous. I loved his show at Portland Museum of Art last year.

www.pressherald.com/2025/10/08/t...
Two Mainers awarded prestigious MacArthur ‘Genius grants’
Jeremy Frey, a Passamaquoddy artist, and Indigenous cartographer Margaret Wickens Pearce both received the $800,000 award.
www.pressherald.com
October 14, 2025 at 1:28 AM
halfvivid.bsky.social
Gah! Why didn't I know about this till seeing my email just now? I could've gone. If you live near Boston, FYI. I only know 'On A Moonlit Hill in Slovenia' but it's wonderful.
October 14, 2025 at 1:21 AM
halfvivid.bsky.social
After giving it some time, this is absolutely my favorite song of the fall. It seizes me every time I hear it. I love it so much.

Thank you @orindal.bsky.social Records. Also, read reviews by @jenpkelly.bsky.social, who did one for this album.

"Driving slow / to a bridge / I kinda know / where."
orindal.bsky.social Orindal Records @orindal.bsky.social · Aug 27
"wistful, bittersweet, and deeply nostalgic, like flipping through an old photo book of half-forgotten memories."

Thanks @undertheradar.bsky.social for premiering "Driving Slow" the final single/video from 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐞𝐚's debut album 𝙃𝙚𝙖𝙧 𝙖𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙈𝙞𝙧𝙧𝙤𝙧 𝙀𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙚𝙨.

www.undertheradarmag.com/news/premier...
Premiere: herbal tea Shares New Track, “Driving Slow”
{meta_description}
www.undertheradarmag.com
October 12, 2025 at 9:38 PM
halfvivid.bsky.social
The world was fragrant, dense, and multi-dimensional until what, like 2014?
October 8, 2025 at 8:11 PM
halfvivid.bsky.social
This is a lovely, patient album that "makes sense" whether you play it in the trees or the dark fold of an idea-world. Calming and I love "A Vivid Imagination" for its images.
October 7, 2025 at 10:14 PM
halfvivid.bsky.social
Awesome background on Portland, Maine's (so-far) successful effort to prevent a Live Nation venue.

See @spacegallery.bsky.social,
@umaw.bsky.social, and Maine Music Alliance

#portlandme #music #arts

jacobin.com/2025/10/live...
Musicians Against Live Nation–Ticketmaster
Live Nation–Ticketmaster controls nearly every corner of the US live music business, from ticketing to touring. In Portland, Maine, a coalition of venues, musicians, and art workers rallied the city a...
jacobin.com
October 6, 2025 at 11:38 PM
halfvivid.bsky.social
"In the latest case for East Coast Country music"

Them Blundstones, they ain't cowboy boots / Me and you, we’re just blundering on through / A dozen beers ahead of most of the rest of the world

Thanks Ugly Hug!

uglyhug.com/2025/10/01/c...
Chico States Share “A Dozen Beers”, Announce New Album | Single Premiere
In the latest case for East Coast country music, Chico States shares “A Dozen Beers”, the first single from their upcoming album I Saw A Galloping Horse Cover No Ground out October 23rd via Anythin…
uglyhug.com
October 2, 2025 at 12:00 AM
halfvivid.bsky.social
Chico States has a new single out today through The Ugly Hug. I wrote the blurb for this album. Can't wait for you to hear the whole thing on Oct. 23.

uglyhug.com/2025/10/01/c...
Excited to welcome Chico States to the bagel fam with this fantastic third record. Hope you enjoy :) This third full-length of encyclopedic Americana shows Joseph Barresi elaborating on his odd merger of personal minutiae and public history. 𝘐 𝘚𝘢𝘸 𝘈 𝘎𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘏𝘰𝘳𝘴𝘦 𝘊𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘕𝘰 𝘎𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 appears almost Lorca-esque in its take on the hyper-current-meets-the-heriditary. Coming off a few years of heavier performance and a shifting and expanding membership, Chico States’ band shows a pithiness in style and sonic clarity that earlier records hadn’t yet realized, partly due to scale. But here you can feel—in mind and chest—the distance and scary spaciousness of Barresi’s experience of travel through subcultures of the Pacific Coast, France, Aotearoa, Maine, or even along tracks in imaginary locations like Farmington Bay. It’s difficult, and rewarding, to know an artist whose voice confuses you about what’s real and what’s simply interesting. Barresi’s is like that, and this third record gives it a durable body. Like the tongue-and-cheek term “American primitivism” Fahey gave to his guitar music, the terms cosmic Americana or even anti-country become easier ways to understand this music. But the joke is that there is no actual desire to appropriate: in fact, Barresi’s songs are achingly sincere and concerned with real relationships to tradition, place, people, and 2020s gestalt. Folk music, from Roud Ballads to the documents of Appalachia made by Alan Lomax, has always expressed the individual situation in a way others feel inclined to repeat. In recording highly idiosyncratic, personal music borne out of compulsory love for rail systems especially, Chico States permits us to partake in the organized disorientation normally reserved for trainspotters. - Alex Silver
October 1, 2025 at 10:16 PM
halfvivid.bsky.social
The joys of finding the quiet, lucid people in the world.

"Ça c'est un album. C'est l'album." That's an album. That's the album. [Laughter]

More wonder here in 5 tracks and 8 minutes than...

aglaeetroxane.bandcamp.com/album/passio...
Passions simples, by Aglaë Brown & Roxane Lafrance
5 track album
aglaeetroxane.bandcamp.com
September 28, 2025 at 1:21 PM
halfvivid.bsky.social
The clouds are a different shape today!
September 24, 2025 at 12:24 PM
halfvivid.bsky.social
Recently read a lot of @jenpkelly.bsky.social's music writing, so I was excited to see her write about someone I know for Aquarium Drunkard! Greg is very singular and was gracious to our band several times. Kelly's portrayal of his rural realism has me excited.

aquariumdrunkard.com/2025/09/22/g...
Greg Freeman :: Burnover - Aquarium Drunkard
This second album from Greg Freeman finds northern New England’s hard, un-Instagram-able side, the parking lots of dollar stores, the sooty remnants of burnt-out forests, the single gnarly trees left ...
aquariumdrunkard.com
September 22, 2025 at 11:57 PM
halfvivid.bsky.social
"And as Godfrey-Smith notes, the thought that we’re 'responding to only a small sliver of what is going on—and other animals will respond to a different sliver and process it differently—is not an easy idea to take on board.'”

www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
‘Such Flexible Intensity of Life’ | Verlyn Klinkenborg
Their striking intelligence makes octopuses tempting subjects for wishful anthropomorphism and uncanny reminders of nature’s mysteries.
www.nybooks.com
September 21, 2025 at 10:27 PM
Reposted by Alex Silver
subvert.fm
Toronto (Friday Sept 26)

@subvert.fm 🤝 @newfeelingcoop.bsky.social

This event brings together Subvert and New Feeling for a conversation about the future of worker and artist ownership in music.

Join us. RSVP: luma.com/subvert
September 17, 2025 at 11:24 AM
halfvivid.bsky.social
Headed in. This is a great label. Do not miss Nick Dunston's Colla Voce in particular. He's with Mary Halvorson in Portland, ME tomorrow @spacegallery.bsky.social, along with many other OOYH artists!
ooyhrecords.bsky.social Out Of Your Head Records @ooyhrecords.bsky.social · Sep 15
Webber/Morris Big Band - Unseparate listening party tomorrow 9/16 at 7:30pm EST! Hear the full album before 9/26 release. “as cinematic a listening experience as anything since Charlie Haden's 1970 epic Liberation Music Orchestra." —DownBeat

webbermorrisbigband.bandcamp.com/album/unsepa...
Unseparate, by Webber/Morris Big Band
11 track album
webbermorrisbigband.bandcamp.com
September 16, 2025 at 11:30 PM
Reposted by Alex Silver
carolinedavis.bsky.social
tour dates for my band Portals comin' up.
September 15, 2025 at 1:27 PM
halfvivid.bsky.social
This is an incredibly mature piece of art. I found it by happenstance and I'm very excited. There's been some music journalism about it (@spinal-bap.bsky.social, @callinamagician.bsky.social, @paddyclarke.bsky.social), but I think it merits more.

wormery.bandcamp.com/album/pantilde
Pantilde, by The Worm
12 track album
wormery.bandcamp.com
September 15, 2025 at 5:38 PM
halfvivid.bsky.social
I'm "reissuing" this two-part collection of draft recordings as Exactly and However in 34 tracks. I put it out very quietly but it's really my favorite. Come chat, give impressions, hear why I made it. Pay $5 and get a physical copy when I print them.

alexsilver.bandcamp.com/merch/exactl...
Exactly and However Listening Party from Alex Silver
Listening Party from Alex Silver.
alexsilver.bandcamp.com
September 14, 2025 at 1:47 PM
halfvivid.bsky.social
Who's responsible right now? Who's aware of the tangible world in North America?

It's probably not powers-that-be and it doesn't seem to be the task of public artists anymore... Poor people? Indigenous people? Road crews?
Open meadow of ferns with some degree of perceivable depth, as viewed on a computer screen.
September 13, 2025 at 3:51 PM