After spending some time with the Pandora stations we play at home through our Sonos system, I have finally honed one station ("Bluegrass and Chill") into a lean, mean relaxing machine that even the wife enjoys. As with any Pandora station, it will stumble once in a while, but so long as I stick to it and thumb songs, it has gotten pretty dang good about sticking to the right mood. The other day at lunch, I got a string of texts from my darling lady who had tapped into a great run of good music on that station, while getting some work done at the house. I had never heard of 3/4 of the people she mentioned (Dawes, who rule, was the lone exception), so I thought I'd check them out.
Peter Bradley Adams - Leavetaking. Pandora played "The Longer I Run," from 2008's Leavetaking, and its a fantastic song. I understand why it caught the wife's ear.
Simple beauty in the music, along with really great lyrics. Go check the lyrics on this one, and maybe you are made of stone, but I just got goosebumps reading along while I listened. It's lovely and well done. The rest of the album is similar stuff - understated and soft spoken but really pretty. "Los Angeles" is also a great tune. Apparently, this guy was half of a band called eastmountainsouth that was popular during the early oughts and had music on about 30 shows during that time frame. Never heard of them, but all of this album sounds like something that could easily be used on a TV soundtrack. Really good disc.
Mindy Smith - Long Island Shores. I got super excited when first hearing her, thinking this was the vocalist for the Sundays who had started making her own music. But nope, she is a Long Island raised gal living in Nashville to make really nice country-tinged folky tunes. The title track sings about leaving Tennessee to go back home to a family reunion. According to the Wikipedia, she came to prominence by covering Dolly Parton's "Jolene" for a tribute album. It's a pretty boss cover:
However, that song isn't on this album (although it is familiar, I think it was on a soundtrack somewhere). Even without that tune, this album is good. A little more straight Nashville sound than I would normally cotton to, but its got enough bluegrass, folk, and strong vocals to pull me in anyway. Check "You Just Forgot" for a slow burning beauty.
Teddy Thompson - Up Front and Down Low. Has the sound of Lyle Lovett and Chris Isaak. Check out "I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone" and tell me that doesn't sound just like a track from Isaak's Forever Blue. This is a 2007 album, and "Down Low" is the track that Pandora played:
Another smoldering Chris Isaak-y sound there. Nice, strong voice and good harmonies with a simple country shuffle. Cool song. He also does a handful of covers on the album - "Walking the Floor Over You," "She Thinks I Still Care," or "(From Now On My Friends are Gonna Be) Strangers." I like this find.
Dwight Yoakam - Second Hand Heart. I like ol' Dwight. I wasn't listening to country music back in his true heyday, but I got his 1989 greatest collection, Just Lookin' For a Hit, in college so that I could have his duet with Buck Owens on "Streets of Bakersfield," which is a kick ass tune. And that whole album of hits is good classic honkey-tonk country stuff. 1993's This Time also had some hits on it, but I feel like Dwight hasn't done much of note in 20 years. I say that, but then a look at the charts shows that an album called 3 Pears peaked at #18 on the US Charts in 2012. So maybe I'm just not paying that close of attention to the guy.
This one sounds like the old classics, and is pretty dang good. He rocks a little harder than normal country, and his version of "Man of Constant Sorrow" is fun as hell. Here is the title track:
I think I like "Made of Clay" better, but all of this is a fine extension of the classic Yoakam sound.
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