Quick Hits, Vol. 89 (Hayes Carll, Steeldrivers, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, Snarky Puppy)

Hayes Carll - Lovers and Leavers.  I though Carll's last album KMAG YOYO was pretty entertaining, but this one takes the Townes Van Zandt comparisons and grabs hold of them very tightly.  Its a quiet, soulful, well-written, meditative album of kind of sad-sounding songs.  And I like it a lot.  He does a spot-on version of "Sake of the Song," just in case people weren't going to connect the dots to TVZ on their own.  And as a dad of a slightly nerdy little dude, I locked in on "The Magic Kid" after a listen or two.  With the new Sturgill and then this, I'm turning into a sucker for songs for a singer's boy.  "The Love that We Need" was released early, and so the plays of that track outpace the rest of this album by a long stretch, with 150k.

The whole album has that sound - carefully picked, soft-focus, and lyrically solid.  I'm going to keep this disc around for a few more listens over time.

Steeldrivers - The Steeldrivers.  If you are in love with the Chris Stapleton sound right now, then you should hunt this seven year old album up on Spotify and jam out to the bluegrass tornado on here featuring Stapleton's gravelly vocals.  "If You Can' Be Good, Be Gone," "Drinkin' Dark Whiskey," its got some good ones on here.  But the most listened-to track, by far, is "If It Hadn't Been For Love," a bouncing banjo-fied stroll through a harmonizing happy tune.

And then, while searching for that track, I found that Adele covered that tune as a B-Side for "Rolling in the Deep."  No surprise, her version sounds awesome.

Not available on Spotify, but that is a nice track.  Overall, I dig this album, it isn't trying to change the world of classic bluegrass by any means, but they are doing that music well.  I'll probably hold on to this one and add it to the Q for a while.

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros - PersonA.  Odd album, and since I've never gotten into their other music, I'm not inclined to give them much leeway.  "Uncomfortable" is some weird sounding stuff that sounds like it was sampled by Moby 20 years ago. "Somewhere" echos the Beatles in the trippy Sgt. Pepper stage.  The feel is kind of all over the place.  The big song from the album is "No Love Like Yours," with about 1.4 million streams on Spotify (their old hit, "Home" has almost 130 million).

Lot of filler weirdness in that video as well.  I think I'm sensing a pattern with me looking into this album and using the word "weird."  I won't say it is bad, it just repeatedly throws me for a loop to the extent that I have been enable to really find much in there that I like.  I'll let it go.

Snarky Puppy - Family Dinner, Vol. 2.  I have no recollection of how this band crossed my radar or why this album is in the New Stuff playlist, but I do know one thing.  Do not come to me for hot takes on new jazz music, as I am the absolute wrong person to ask.  I have no clue what this music even is - jazzy jam jazz?  Is this jazz?  Are we not men?  Is this in English?  Here is a ten minute video to a song from the album, called "Don't You Know.".

It's like Phish with 128 people in the band.  And $280,000 worth of headphones, or was this just a headphone commercial?  And people in the comments to that video are going nuts for the piano guy, who is apparently Jacob Collier.  He sure seems like he can do his thing well. Honestly, that video just made me like this album more.  That whole crew of people are having the best time of their lives jamming that song out.  And its pretty damn funky when you get into the groove with them.  Huh.  At least check out that video, then you can decide whether you want to go for the album too.