Dan Reeder has such a soothing voice… sometimes you don't even realize that he's singing about how his lady won't give him a bj on his birthday or the flaws of a beach ball.
If I didn’t know better, someone could tell me this amazing 17-track stunner of a dusty country album from Cut Worms is a greatest hits compilation from a long forgotten artist who used to hang out and write songs with Gram Parsons. To be honest, I don’t actually know better, so maybe that is true. I mean, how could there be this many good songs on an album that isn’t a greatest hits compilation?
This is the kind of album that pays for itself with all the deep thinking / creativity / work that you can get done while zoning out to it on front-to-back listens again and again.
A massive collaboration compilation featuring a whole bunch of my favourite hip hop artists? Ok, just let me go grab my samurai sword and then I'm all in.
Kacy & Clayton + Marlon Willliams was not the collaboration that I went into 2020 thinking I wanted, but now it is definitely the collaboration I am going into 2021 hoping for more of. Their voices and styles mix perfectly into a cocktail of classic country with a perfect pinch of old west haunted-ness.
I first heard Ted Lucas (and became a fan on the first listen) when the person who curated this compilation recommended him in a Highly Recommended Q&A a couple years back. Talk about a long game marketing plan, well played Jeffrey :)
Before the internet was a proper thing, I used to go to the CD store and take a chance on an album I had never heard of before based on the cover art. This was a hit or miss technique, but one of the albums that hit was Clem Snide’s ‘The Ghost of Fashion’, and ever since then I’ve had a soft spot in my ear’s heart for Eef Barzelay’s voice and songwriting — and this album is all the best parts of all the best Clem/Eef stuff that has come before and then some. Truly beautiful.
Put this lovely EP on in the morning and, just as the title warns, you will find yourself feeling quite melancholy. But isn’t that what mornings are meant for? So just pour yourself a cuppa and sit in your favourite chair and wait for the rest of the world to wake up.
