The Best Of 2010...Artist Discoveries

We'll kick off our Best of 2010 coverage with our favorite artist discoveries today and continue with the best studio records and best live shows later next week.

Thanks to our friends over at Review Shine, we discovered a little more in terms of new artists in 2010 than previous years.

Sara Petite (site)
Redeye Junction (bandcamp)
Otis Gibbs (site)
Tim Harwill (site)
The Tallest Man On Earth (site)
Mat D. (site)
Mike & The Moonpies (more of a rediscovery) (site)
American Aquarium (site)
Wrinkle Neck Mules (site)
james Keyes (site)
Jacob Jones (site)
Kasey Anderson (site)
Overmountain Men (site)
Tim Barry (site)
The Fox Hunt (site)

The Best Of 2010...Official Releases

2010 was an interesting year for us here at the alt512. Lots of our favorite traditional OKOM powerhouses are in between records (some moreso than others - Slaid, Hayes, Corb, Charlie Robison) which really allowed us to focus on some more of the truly independent and self-produced music that came out this year.

Our favorite individual track was a toss up between Roger Alan Wade's "Deguello Motel", JTE's "Harlem River Blues" and Josh Ritter's "Folk Bloodbath". Great fucking songs.

It's hard for us to narrow the best of 2010 down to a single favorite because all of these records are so good but Hyland's Celestial Navigation really blew us away.

Alt512's Top Eight:
James Hyland & The Joint Chiefs Celestial Navigation
Shinyribs Well After A While
Red Eye Junction Better Days
James Keyes Ruminations
Sara Petite Doghouse Rose
The Fox Hunt Long Way To Go -- Late addition to the list, like 12/31 late
Tim Harwill The Wander Man Revisited
Mike & The Moonpies The Real Country

The Best Of The Rest:
Roger Alan Wade Deguello Motel
Buchanan Suit Of Lights
Josh Ritter So Runs The World Away
Various Artists Broken Hearts And Dirty Windows: Songs Of John Prine
Tim Hus Hockeytown
Justin Townes Earle Harlem River Blues
Overmountain Men Glorious Day
Adam Carroll & Michael O'Connor Hard Times
The Tallest Man On Earth The Wild Hunt

Alt-512's Monthly Album Reviews & Recommendations [Condensed Version]

March sped by and we even though missed the bulk of the SXSW craziness between traveling and (real, bill-paying) work, we have hardly had time to listen to the submissions from our friends at ReviewShine. When the month started, we had downloaded a bunch of records but only one caught our ear this month and that one ended up in continuous rotation on the alt512 iPhone. The record we're pumping this month is Sara Petite's Doghouse Rose.

Sara Petite's voice is classic country. The songs themselves, all written by Petite except for one co-write and a Harlan Howard cover, remind us of the best of the best stuff that Chip Taylor wrote for his collaborations with Carrie Rodriguez a few years back. But it's more than that. The songs themselves run the gamut from bluegrass ("Bootleggers") to singer/songwriter ("Souvenirs", not the Prine/Goodman song) to straight country/honky-tonk ("Doghouse Rose", "Baby Let Me In") and even a little pop.

"Crazy" embodies the element of Doghouse Rose that we identify with most: honesty. We find all too often that artists tend to veil emotion or action at the risk of offending god-knows-who or in the interest of art or poetry (not that there's anything wrong with that). We kinda like things frank sometimes and Sara Petite delivers on the bad-decison-making-romp of "Crazy":

We made love in the church, we made love on the bar

The hotel, the motel, the love in the car

And we were crazy, oh so crazy

He had me swinging from the tables to the chandeliers

And whiskey was a-grinnin' from ear to ear

After the first few listens something really struck us: that this sounded like a Nashville record. Of course, we're not the biggest Nashville fans but what we came to find after a few more listens was that these songs, the things that can make or break a record before it's even recorded, were SPECTACULAR, regardless of the arrangement and Nashville-y production. Like the Tim Harwill record we latched onto back in January, we're definitely going to be buying the rest of the Sara Petite catalog as soon as humanly or digitally possible.

Between this and Harwill's The Wander Man Revisited, we have our early front-runners for the album of the year. [Yeah, I know Doghouse Rose was released in 2009 but I didn't get a heads up about it until this year, so there you go.]

We cannot recommend this record strongly enough.

Alt-512's Monthly Album Reviews & Recommendations

Recently started getting some records to preview (and subsequently review) from ReviewShine. Given the amount of records to preview/review from ReviewShine, a full write-up is out of the question. I guess that means that I'll just write up a few records each month (or so, as time permits). So, we gotta start somewhere. And that somewhere is...

The first record up to bat is Kevin Anthony's North Star (buy). I enjoyed the feel of this record. Had a bit of a cajun feel with the snare drums and fiddle starting out with "Hurricane Ike". The second track, more straight up country fare, "Texas Skies" was a bit peculiar to me in that it's a song about leaving Texas (gasp!). I really found the ending odd in that there's an uncertainty about returning to Texas (Anthony now calls Minnesota home). An odd twist on the ages-old theme of loving home and longing to return there. Worth a listen or download of a few songs from iTunes.

The next record that caught my ear was Tim Harwill's The Wander Man Revisited (buy). Harwill's tag on his site is "too folk for country, too country for rock 'n roll." That tagline really sets the tone for his music. The whole time I listened to this record, I was trying to determine who or what it was reminding me of. There are lots of elements, musical and thematic, that remind of a less country version of Merle Haggard or Dwight Yoakam. The thing that it most reminded me of was a full fledged country version of Jimmy Buffett. Imagine if Jimmy Buffett has stayed on his country path and never gone to Key West with Jerry Jeff back when. I imagine it sounds a lot like this. Having just seen Crazy Heart (and listened to the soundtrack), it strikes me that many of these songs would fit right into Bad Blake's catalog. Get this record. For now, I gotta go order Tim Harwill's other records.

While so not well known States-side, Manchester's Buchanan offer a solid piece of traditional country fare with Suit of Lights due out in February. With traditional, straight-ahead classic country of this sort, the comparisons are often obvious. This record lives up to many of those would-be comparisons while at the same time preserving it yet, somehow, without going into too many of the age-old themes. Something about this record really grabbed me in a way that this sliver of OKOM doesn't normally. I particularly enjoyed the history lesson of Jim Todd's Blues. Buy this record.

I'll throw in a few other notes on the new records from Ray Wylie Hubbard, I See Hawks In LA and Adam Carroll & Michael O'Connor.

--If you enjoyed RWH's Growl or Snake Farm records, go get A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment (Hint: There Is No C) (buy).

--I See Hawks In LA's new record Shoulda Been Gold (buy) pulls together some of the bands' best tunes from the last decade as well as several new/unreleased numbers. This is a great record for old fans and new fans alike. It strikes a great balance that old fans will feel like they're getting their money's worth with the remastered and remixed older tunes and of course the new tunes also rock.

--Adam Carroll & Michael O'Connor have a new record out called Hard Times (buy). I caught the streaming version on bandcamp and so can you. This is a really enjoyable record about the denizens of Texas Gulf Coast and the particular kind of people you find there.

--Finally, the soundtrack to the Jeff Bridges film Crazy Heart has some outstanding originals penned by Ryan Bingham, T-Bone Burnett & Steven Bruton. This one is also worth your money.