i’ve never been much for release dates. i don’t stand in the rain to see movies on opening weekend. i don’t pre-order ipads. i don’t buy albums the day they come out so i can be the first to post about them. i buy them when i remember to and post about them when i get a chance. and usually, i’m totally fine with that. but every once in a while, i’ll completely miss a project that is so right up my alley that i can’t help but feel slightly disappointed in myself. this is that. come on, seriously? a G. Love album produced by the Avett Bros? how did i not even hear about this until 3 weeks after the release date? i mean, i…i…sigh. i guess all that’s left to do is to post the song, apologize profusely and promise myself and everyone else that this will never, ever happen again. hm. i think i’ll start by just posting the song. -d

man. these guys are joining edward sharpe and the magnetic zeros and mumford and sons on tour across the american southwest starting next month. they’re calling it the ‘railroad revival tour’, and they’ll actually be travelling in vintage railroad cars. to be honest, the whole woody guthrie setup sounds a little contrived. but at the end of the night, it won’t matter. it’s still going to be a ridiculous concert. i just hope they come through town in my next life when i’m not poor. -d

*on a side note, i’ve never been able to figure out if this is a cover of an old spiritual or something. anybody know if this is an OCMS original or not?

from a sweet new orleans trio led by a girl named Alynda Lee Segarra. she ran away from home at 17 and made her way to new orleans by stowing away on freight trains. how rad is that? and the style of the music and texture of her voice fit perfectly with the backstory. i feel like if they’d given Natty Gann a banjo and a song to sing, it would have sounded just like this. -d

*which, i just realized, sounds a WHOLE lot like Fiona Apple.

elsewhere in land of genre-bendres, this LA duo also tends to make songs that sound like they came from about 10 different bands. sometimes within the same song. like this one that starts out at newgrass night at the 930 club, then moves on to a little dance club tucked away in notting hill, and wraps up somewhere in between. plus, that first line is pretty spectacular. -d

been listening to these guys a lot lately. i think the initial appeal came from presence of more than a little frightened rabbit in here. (and it’s not just the accent. he’s got that same plaintive yearn lodged somewhere between his heart and his larynx.) but their influence reaches well beyond the basic guitars and drums of scott and friends. there’s some shoegaze fuzz, plenty of electronics, even a banjo from time to time. i mean, it’s really interesting stuff. one of those bands you can’t really get a grasp on with just one song…

present by virtue of banjo rule outlined yesterday. also because it sets a really weird, interesting tone. often i think of songs in terms of what kind of film scene it would underscore well, and with this one i have absolutely no clue, and i sort of like that. -d

as most every autumnal notion i have comes pre-painted with an appalachian backdrop, banjos will always equal fall. consequently, while this starts out as a mediocre (and downright pitchy) cover of the beatles’ standard, it ultimately finds a short but very sweet groove (about 2/3 of the way through) in a 4-part, backcountry hoedown of a rendition of the ‘boy you’re gonna carry that weight’ refrain. plus mumford and sons are, like, pretty hot right now. -d

*this is from a live set the sons did at BBC radio 2. you can download the track for free right here.

well, it’s certainly not ‘I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose’ but that’s alright. the club has pared their sound way way down since the last one (which i loved). and the result comes off as something of a one-trick pony. a quiet, pensive, almost entirely acoustic pony who only knows how to stomp out the answers to basic arithmetic problems. it is still, however, a very lovely and talented pony. and one very good trick is still better than none at all. -d