Record Labels: Signature Sounds

Peter Mulvey: The Fly

[purchase]

Kris Delmhorst: Galuppi Baldessare

[purchase]

Eilen Jewell: Heartache Boulevard

[purchase]

Signature Sounds has only been around since 1995. But in fourteen years, they have managed to corner the market on the New England acoustic music scene. A Signature Sounds artist or band usually features literate lyrics and interesting instrumental arrangements. The high quality of their roster makes it all but impossible to select a track to represent the label.

The first Signature Sounds act to come to my attention was Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer. I have not presented any of there songs here , because Susan has done recently, here, here and here. .

Peter Mulvey has become another favorite artist of mine, and had to be included. Kris Delmhorst’s album Strange Conversation was a fascinating project; Delmhorst created songs from texts by Lord Byron, Rumi, and Walt Whitman, to name a few, and her musical settings were every bit as inspired as the source texts. And Eilen Jewell was a fairly recent signing, who maintains the standards of quality that Signature Sounds has so carefully cultivated.

So those were my choices. I could have left all of them out, and gone with Crooked Still, Rani Arbo, Jeffrey Foucalt, Mark Ereli... You see my difficulty. I have come to rely on Signature Sounds to release music I love: they haven’t failed me yet.