Essential Listening

This page keeps a list of the cream of the crop of music we have heard in 2011. It is not exclusive to albums released in 2011, it is for music that we heard for the first time in 2011. Also, it is not in any order of preference. As albums are added to the list they will be added to the bottom and will link back to the article on ninebullets which will feature links to the band’s web sites and cd buy links. I hope y’all find some stuff on here that appeals to you as much as it has to me.

THE WHITE BUFFALO – ONCE UP A TIME IN THE WEST

Feb 192013
 

I know I checked out The White Buffalo back when Once Upon A Time In The West was originally released, but I must have been hopped up on stupid pills that day ‘cause I passed on the cd in the most decisive way possible…I deleted it.

Shame on me.

A couple of weeks ago I was watching Sons Of Anarchy when this completely awesome song starts playing. So, I fire up Soundhound and learn that it’s “The Whistler,” a new single from The White Buffalo. I immediately buy it and start playing it on the radio show and on the podcasts. The awesome factor of the song finally gets the best of me and I pick up Once Upon A Time In The West for a second look-see.

The White Buffalo is a trio out of Southern California, and their sound seems to straddle somewhere between JKutchma & The Five Fifths and Chuck Ragan. How I passed on this cd the first time is genuinely beyond me. It’s like it was custom made for the “ninebullets sound.” I guess, more than anything, I’m just glad I made it back to the cd. Don’t be stupid like me. Check out Once Upon A Time In The West. It is Essential Listening.

The White Buffalo – The Pilot
The White Buffalo – One Lone Night
The White Buffalo – Hold The Line

The White Buffalo’s Official Site, The White Buffalo on Facebook, The White Buffalo on Spotify, Buy Once Upon A Time In The West

THE SNAKEHEALERS – CURE ALL

Feb 122013
 

Since one day in the real world equals about one week in the internet world, there is a chance there are people finding this music scene who’ve never heard of Suburban Home Records. Despite how things played out at the end of SHR, the story of this musical scene can not be told without SHR being mentioned repeatedly. It should be. Virgil Dickerson gave a lot of bands a voice they would have struggled to achieve otherwise and brought them a fan base that was, at one point, willing to throw money at anything bearing a Suburban Home Record imprint on the case.

A little band called The Takers was the beneficiary of that built-in fan base when SHR signed on to release/distribute their debut cd, Taker Easy. Taker Easy was a jangly, modern take on outlaw country with no shortage of ‘getting drunk songs’, and I suggest you pick it up. As bands are known to do, The Takers couldn’t find a common ground and ultimately disbanded with barely a whimper outside of Florida.

Out of the ashes of The Takers, Devon Stuart and Chad Smith formed The Snakehealers. The Snakehealers possess that same spirit The Takers had, but wrap it in a more rocking sound. A sound which allows Devon to spread his wings a little more, moving out of the drinking and drugging lyrical realm and into more mature songs, a point he chooses to make himself in “Maybe It’s Mutual”, when he sings, “This ain’t a song about whiskey, this ain’t a song about losing control….” There was no doubt when he was in The Takers that Devon could pen fantastic lyrics. With a little time, he’s grown into someone who can pen fantastic songs.

I’ve had the privilege of watching this band become The Snakehealers. I was present of one of their first shows. I’ve offered my unadulterated opinion on what they were working on and I’d like to think there were moments when they took that opinion to heart, and Cure All honestly exceeded all of my expectations.

I think, if they can keep this ship together, this bigger sound will suit them better and offer them more play in their music. I think, if they can keep this ship together, nobody will miss The Takers anymore.

I think Cure All is Essential Listening.

The Snakehealers – Easy Young, Easy Old
The Snakehealers – Roadside

The Snakehealers on Facebook, Buy Cure All

HOLLY WILLIAMS — THE HIGHWAY

Feb 062013
 

Holly Williams has quite the legacy to follow up. She’s born into one of the most legendary country music families in America, and with Hank Williams Sr. as her grandfather, Hank Williams Jr. as her father and Hank Williams III as her half-brother, it can’t have been easy start singing and playing for herself.

In her song “Without You”, where Jakob Dylan duets with her, she addresses this:

«I got here on crowded trains
With old guitars and a famous name
Running like a kid»

She started out with a plan to just write songs for others, but ended up releasing the album The Ones We Never Knew in 2005. Then, after a near fatal car accident in 2006, she had to re-train her arm to play guitar again. While setting up successful a clothing-store, she wrote songs for her second release Here With Me, released 2009. It’s one of my favorite albums, where she really shows that sometimes talent can be passed on through generations.

History lesson aside, this means The Highway is Holly’s third album and it’s her best album to date, even better than Here With Me.

She has found her voice, and her songwriting has evolved to a point where she’s not just a songwriter, but a storyteller – and a conveyer of stories where she can choose which voice or character suits her storytelling best. The first of two great examples is “Railroads”, where she tells it from a male characters point of view:

«I had me a woman but she took my kid
When I gambled all our money on a moonshine still
Now I drink my whiskey from a beat up flask
This train done departed and it’s goin’ fast»

The second being the closing track “Waiting on June”, where Gwyneth Paltrow sings backup. This is her tribute to her grandparents on her mothers side, where she tells their story from they met until they died. This is a touching story and a piece of impressive songwriting as personal as  they come, written to her grandmother from her grandfathers point of view.

She has a good number of collaborators on this album, Jakob Dylan and Gwyneth Paltrow already mentioned. Her husband Chris Coleman contributes as a songwriter and a musician and singer, but what’s really my favorite is Jackson Brown’s duet on “Gone Away From Me”. His voice really suits Holly’s. I love Jackson Brown, and it’s great to see young, new artists appreciate a man of his stature.

The only song that could have been omitted is the totally superficial “A Good Man”. To me it’s just a piece of random lyrics dumped on top of a melody to create some kind of hit. It’s co-written with Sarah Buxton (or all written by Sarah Buxton, I’m not sure – as Holly for some reason chose to omit the liner notes and cover from her digital pre-order package), and it really lacks the substance of Holly’s own songs. There’s no story here, nothing to give this any kind of value when compared to Holly’s strong, personal lyrics that make up the rest of the album.

The title song “The Highway” should have all the trimmings to become a massive radio hit for Holly. Catchy melody, well produced and it talks about driving down those long, American highways. What more could a DJ want?

Her ability as a songwriter really shines on this album, but what gets me is her role as a storyteller. This is Essential Listening, and you know we just don’t throw those around for fun over here at Ninebullets!

Holly Williams – Railroads
Holly Williams – Gone Away With Me

Get the album over at Holly’s website (for package deals), or at Amazon. And yeah, there is vinyl to be had! Like her on Facebook.

KASEY ANDERSON AND THE HONKIES – LET THE BLOODY MOON RISE

Feb 052013
 

Kasey Anderson done went and got himself into one hell of a pickle, and since then I’ve had a few people ask me my thoughts on it. A little background for those of you who don’t know, Kasey and Romeo were the original contributors I brought on board a few years ago and Kasey was instrumental in helping me setup the two Ninebullet.net showcases we did at SxSW.

When the original Seattle Weekly article was published, I was talking about it with my wife and I said something to the extent of, “While I’m surprised at the scope of the fraud, I’m not surprised Kasey was capable of it.” and my opinion hasn’t really changed too much as the new details have come out.

To fill in a few of the gaps without killing the guy (and I welcome Kasey to defend himself in the comments as SxSW is a drunken mess and my recollections are tainted by that), the big issues, for me, came on the second SxSW showcase we did. It was a 2 day ordeal and he was supposed to play both but played neither. Why? “A better opportunity came up.” was what he told me. True? Who knows. Point is, it showed me Kasey was in it for Kasey and as soon as you weren’t a benefit for him, he was out. This really came into play on day 2 of the showcase….

The venue the showcase was at severely oversold what they had, and it quickly became obvious that morning that there was a better than average chance that this show just wasn’t gonna be able to happen. No sound guy on site and a shit PA that no one knew how to connect or where all the cables required to connect it were. It was a colossal goat fuck and when that fact became horribly obvious, Kasey bailed. Leaving me with all the broken pieces. Two Cow Garage showed up early that day, saw the situation, went back to their hotel and got their acoustic guitars and played an unplugged show while the sound guy, who showed up 2 hours late, set up the PA. In the end, Two Cow rolled in, calmed me down (I was prepared to cancel the showcase) and saved the day. Not that Kasey would have known….shit got hard, he vanished. There was also an incident where he asked a friend of mine to make a video (pro-bono) for his song “Photograph”, but failed to mention that has was getting lots of people to make videos for the song and was gonna have a vote for which one would be the official video.

So there you go. A lot of press has been given to Kasey’s claims of having bipolar disorder and a myriad of other mental issues. There has been a lot of speculation as to whether that’s real or a convenient cover. I’ll be honest, I don’t care. If he’s really sick, I am happy he’s finally getting the care he needs. If it’s a cover, it won’t affect me ‘cause I’ll never have any dealings with the dude in real life again.

All of this brings us to Let The Bloody Moon Rise, the album that Kasey released digitally for a few days before pulling it off the internet . He presold vinyl copies of it as well, but considering the fact that he’s had a six digit civil judgement fall on his head, I’d assume you’re shit out of luck if you were a buyer. Let The Bloody Moon Rise finally saw Kasey abandon that lazy vocal delivery and drop some rock. The end result was everything about the guy’s talent shining. Look, I got my personal issues with Kasey, but 9b is a blog about music not Bryan’s opinions of people, and I have no qualm in saying Let The Bloody Moon Rise should have been Kasey’s coming out party. Instead, it’s a rumor. Save for the few people who managed to grab it on those hours it was available online.

Let The Bloody Moon Rise is an album made by a shady man. Let The Blood Moon Rise is also Essential Listening, and the way I see it, defrauding people of over half a million dollars relinquishes your right to complain about people pirating your album. So here you go, 9b readers: DOWNLOAD THE ENTIRE ALBUM

Kasey Anderson & The Honkies – Some Depression
Kasey Anderson & The Honkies – Just Kids
Kasey Anderson & The Honkies – Like Teenage Gravity

I can’t provide you any links for Kasey as he removed himself from the internet once all this started breaking. Shit got hard….Kasey vanished.

ANIMAL CITY — SEE YOU IN THE FUNNY PAGES

Jan 302013
 

I didn’t come here to talk, I came to fuck myself up on concrete.
- Animal City “And Learning to Dive”

 

Animal City calls home the city of Chicago and the awesome midwestern label Sophomore Lounge Records (State Champion, The Only Sons). It’s harder to locate their second LP, See You In The Funny Pages. Sixteen mangy, asphalt-scarred rock songs run feral through Mike Watt-ed funk and Sebadoh-zy stoner romancery; soundtracking greased skateboard trucks, unpolished horse tack, piss on the side of the bank building, or fixing the hole in the drywall you just punched.

This band speaks my language and I love this album. They can talk about god and drugs without sounding like pricks–because they do it without pretense. In Animal City’s hands, those aren’t topics of currency. They’re not trading irony for substance. They can talk about that part of life with more complexion than drunks talking about drink. “I just want to do drugs with the people I love,” goes a line from early in the album. Toward the end, ”I’m my only friend for life; I’m the only source I like to cite.”

It’s an honest album about curious people–so it doesn’t matter if you prefer The Hold Steady, Possessed by Paul James, Micah Schnabel, Arliss Nancy, or whoever–you should connect with something this album somehow.

Animal City: fine stories, hard rock. Essential Listening.

Animal City – The Bosmoti Rice
Animal City – Orphan Husband
Animal City – Drummer City

Buy/Pre-order See You In the Funny Pages from Sophomore Lounge Records (available 2/19). Check the SLR news page or Animal City’s SongKick site for tour dates.

 Older Entries  Newer Entries