“Another Time” – Mimicking Birds. For some reason I have a hard time typing the word “mimicking.” I taught myself to type in middle school and never learned home rows and all that. I can type quite quickly, but my hands are constantly crossing over each other, violating all kinds of typing rules. For some reason that causes me to struggle with certain words. On mimicking my right index finger should hit the second M in the word. But, instead, my left index finger hits C instead. I guess because I’m already thinking about the C that comes up later. Weird, huh? Anyway, this is a nice song.
“Pirouette” – Jay Som. Melina Duterte got all kinds of praise for her debut album Everybody Works last year. It topped, or was near the top, of many of the most important Best Of lists. She’s blessed us with a couple extra tracks she didn’t feel quite fit on the album. This one is buoyant and delightful.
“No Man Shall” – A.A. Bondy. Over the holidays Timothy Showalter, the force behind Strand of Oaks, Tweeted out that A.A. Bondy’s 2007 album American Hearts was an underrated classic that people needed to check out. So I did. It’s a lovely, folksy album indeed. This track has all kinds of influences running through it: Neil Young, Elliott Smith, and Ryan Adams the most obvious to me.
“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” – Laura Marling. Ms. Marling does a fine job with this Dylan classic.
“The ’59 Sound” – The Gaslight Anthem. We’re approaching the ten-year anniversary of Gaslight Anthem’s amazing album of which this is the title track. Steven Hyden just ran an interview with lead singer Brian Fallon – in advance of his new solo disk – on which they spent a lot of time looking back at that 2008 album. Seemed like a good time to bust this classic out for ya’ll.