After Hours, the first full-band album from D. Charles Speer and the Helix, hits true with solid country roots and dark psychedelic twang. Singing and swaying like David Berman used to before he fell in with the Nashville studio band crowd, but with more grit and city, singer and guitarist Dave Shuford slurs his way through these down home songs. Slippery guitars and plucked banjo nail down the structure, but the beer drinking delivery makes the whole thing a bit wobbly and glassy-eyed.

These guys are from Harlem NY, yet the whole experience recollects a Texas icehouse, drinking too many cheap Lone Stars, humid with mosquitoes and honky-tonk. Imagine being crowded up with friends, sharing plenty of good times and high fives, getting drunk while watching giant roaches fly through the smoggy air. It’s that combination that makes these songs stick – friendly, easy delivery weighted by a dark, seedy reality. »Read More

Popularity: 15% [?]

“Tear down the house that I grew up in / I’ll never be the same again / Take everything that I’ve collected / Throw it in a pile”.  And with those words, sung by Seth Avett, the Avett Brothers’ most recent release The Second Gleam begins.  The six-song EP, which serves as the companion piece to the earlier release The Gleam from 2006, finds Seth and his brother Scott standing at a defining crossroads moment in their career.  As the opening track “Tear Down the House” unfolds, you get the sense that the Avetts are taking an honest and poignant look at what it all means.

Over the course of the last four years, beginning with the band’s debut at Merlefest back in 2004 and rolling through the past 12 months, the Avett Brothers have risen from their status as a regional touring act with a die-hard fan base into a band that now seems poised to make the jump to a much larger national stage.  The Second Gleam also marks the final release for the band on Ramseur Records, the small North Carolina-based indie label that has been home to the Avetts’ music since their career began.  The group recently announced that they have signed on with Columbia/American Records and now have a Rick Rubin produced album in the works for 2009.

It is indeed a crossroads moment for the Avett Brothers and over the course of The Second Gleam’s six songs (eight if you purchase the vinyl or the iTunes expanded download) Scott and Seth Avett, armed only with their voices, a banjo, a guitar, and some of their finest songwriting to-date, take a stripped-down to the soul look at the distances they have traveled and the miles ahead yet to come.

“Park the old car that I loved the best / Inspection’s due and it won’t pass the test / It’s funny how I have to put it to rest /And how one day I will join it”

Listen:
MP3:  The Avett Brothers–”Tear Down the House”

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Popularity: 24% [?]

Keith Morris is the pied-piper in reverse.  His music takes you into town, not away from it.  He leads the parade.  He is the grand marshall of a procession of song.  And behind him his band plays in time with clocks that have the most magnificent hands. 

There’s Jeff Romano who has his own float outfitted with guitars, a piano, an organ, and a string of sleigh bells.  There’s Jennifer Morris with angelic voice and Morwenna Lasko with her own angel-voiced violin.  Paul Curreri strums a guitar and sings in tune while Devon Sproule throws candy-coated verse to the folks lining Main Street.  Spencer Lathrop plays drums, Brandon Collins on cello, Sandy Gray on electric guitar, and a choir of singers in robes clap hands and shout in key.  And there’s a rabbit in a human suit or is it the other way around?  And at the end of the line, which is only a glass half-empty way of saying: at the head of the line, is a princess with ruby cheeks and a magical wand who plays the role of Santa Claus in this Macy’s Day parade. 

This is the scene on the cobblestoned streets of Candyapolis, a town where there’s a celebration every day and reverance by night, and it’s Keith Morris who leads us all through the Songs from Candyapolis. »Read More

Popularity: 67% [?]