It only takes a near death experience with an arsonist to make great music. Before making their new album, Lubbock roots rock band Thrift Store Cowboys had a stranger set fire to their trailer filled with merchandise and gear. But it appears that brush with the end fuelled this new effort, one with confidence, consistency and brilliant verve.
Steven Page has the ability to spin a moment of turmoil into both hopeful and hopeless, and it is the oscillation between these two that make him such a strong songwriter. Whereas his co-BNL writer Ed Robertson either came across as too earnest or too banal-parading-as-comedic, Page strikes an excellent emotional balance when deciphering the human experience, and it's no more apparent than on opener "A New Shore."
The four CDs and one DVD in West Coast Seattle Boy seek to dispel the shadows cast over the late guitarist’s legacy by the spate of questionable releases that flooded the marketplace in the wake of his untimely death in 1970. Containing more than a few extended and/or complete recordings that previously appeared in truncated form, this box set also compiles, in rough chronological order, a plethora of song sketches and unfinished master takes that presents what is perhaps the most accurate portrait to date of Jimi Hendrix’ working methods in the recording studio.
The Televangelist and the Architect is a MIT PhD student named Jerry Chen (with various friends helping out) who seems to get a kick out of hiding his face in the band’s promo photos. Then again, when you produce something that is simultaneously pompous and dull (a nifty trick) anonymity could be a blessing.
Of all the extraordinary aspects of Bob Dylan’s flair for composing early in his career, the prolific nature of his writing may be the most awe-inspiring. As demonstrated by The Witmark Demos, Dylan’s output reached and remained at a prodigious level not just in terms of quantity, but in the scope of the writing.
Diving into their brand new release, Worm Moon Waning, it is apparent the band is a creative and inspired trio lead by songwriter and vocalist Jody Nelson. With so much folk and Americana indie rock being released these days it is challenging for a band to stand out from the heaps of mustached hipsters but Through the Sparks manages to strike a solid balance inside their melancholic lyrics and wistful, creative arrangements.
Andy Hunter’s fourth album, Collide, bears little resemblance to his last album, Colour, and its more traditional song structures. A return to the epic and ethereal rhythms and beats that were found on his first two records—particularly on his debut Exodus—Collide is a thirty-five-plus minute dance party that is tailor-made for the club scene, and it is one hell of a show.
From one bar story to another, Please Stand By rolls by quick, one Crazy Heart anthem after another, except these guys aren’t has-beens playing bowling alleys. Amaker’s voice is more spoken word than country howl, which depreciates any old timey gracefulness for a rougher edge. Although Brent Amaker and the Rodeo don’t score any points for originality, these guys are no posers. Grab the bourbon and enjoy.
Beginning with the upbeat knee-slapper “I Feel The Christmas Spirit”, the twelve tracks in Indigo Girls’ Holly Happy Days include standards like “Oh, Holy Night”, “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” and “Angels We Have Heard On High” along with inspired versions of not so familiar tunes and three original songs that will find their way into one’s holiday rotation.
If you have the patience to give one more Christmas album a go, then you could do much worse than Crazy For Christmas. Hicks and his band mates roll triumphantly through a few classics (“Run Run Rudolph” and “Here Comes Santa Claus”), but it’s the originals that shine brightest and set this apart from other holiday offerings. “Santa’s Workshop” for one is a classic in the making with its signature sense of humor and witty word that we’ve come to expect from Hicks.
