Dutch rock: Brown Feather Sparrow is now Eins, Zwei Orchestra

As I have mentioned before, I love Dutch music. There is tons of good stuff out there, but living in the United States makes it almost impossible to keep track of. Most of these bands I discovered in Holland in 2003 during Flevo Festival: This Beautiful Mess, Brown Feather Sparrow, The Spirit That Guides Us, People Get Ready, etc. Brown Feather Sparrow was the only one of those three who actually performed that year at the fest, and I love their version of quiet folk rock in the vein of The Innocence Mission or Over the Rhine. Brown Feather Sparrow released three LPs (2003, 2005 and 2008), and I was sad to see when they "broke up" a couple of year ago.

Brown Feather Sparrow is the brainchild of Lydia van Maurik-Wever. I just discovered her "new" project Eins, Zwei Orchestra she started with her husband, Stefan Maurik. I say "new", because I discovered them yesterday, but their LP, 100 Colors, was released in 2011. They also have an acoustic EP they released this year.

Eins, Zwei Orchestra is a noiser, more-rocking version of Brown Feather Sparrow. There are similarities to shoegaze, but it is more diverse than that. Apparently her husband has also performed with The Spirit That Guides us, but this is no where near that loud.

Thankfully with Bandcamp, now all of this music is readily and cheaply available for us on the other side of the Atlantic. Both the Eins, Zwei LP and EP are "name your own price" on Bandcamp, and all of the Brown Feather Sparrow albums are very cheap. I recommend all of it. For information on all of these bands I recommend using the Netherlands version of Wikipedia, then allow Google to translate it for you.