If I had gotten to these guys in time, the last album would have made the list last year certainly. Hard not to get swept up with the rises and falls of these songs.
Nashville rockers giving it everything they've got to shrug off their day jobs and avoid "The Temporary Blues." Hopefully it works.
She's kind of like the female version of fellow West Texan Jimmie Dale Gilmore; some great haunting vocals and lyrics here.
I don't often compare contemporary bands to Uncle Tupelo, but these guys made me do it, almost against my will. "Small tent" alt-country is not dead.
Consistent mid-tempo country rockers are the best vehicle for Berman's witty observations and off-kilter narratives, and this album's full of 'em. With wife Cassie Berman also front and center, they put on the show of my year anyway.
Extremely well-written piano folk ("Damn this Feeling") which broadens out instrumentally to include groovy bass lines ("In Field and Town"), jaunty horns ("Where and When"), and Crazy Horse style guitars ("Did I Wake Up Beside You?").
Only a block or two from the hotel in which Berman tried to end his life a few years before; at show's end he hopped down from the stage and fully embraced the adoration coming from the crowd. Nice to see.
Maybe they're the "best bar band in America" but even a not so great bar band can still be pretty enjoyable. What distinguished the two previous albums were the lyrics, and here the new album falls awfully short. "magazines and daddy issues" ... but what *about* the daddy issues. It's a cheap shorthand that goes nowhere. Maybe it's because I know Craig Finn better now, but the meanspiritedness which has always kind of been there feels on this album more like his than the characters'. Witness, "Sequestered in Memphis." Ugh.