Producer Chris Qualls and singer Lauren Baird make up the Los Angeles electronic duo Electric Valentine. To add perspective, they are the people on our iPods that make us go “Man, they’re so good! How are they not big yet?” On a sunny afternoon in California, Chris was out having a cigarette when all of sudden he was being hit on by some girl. That girl was Lauren. The two of them started making music together and posting their songs on their MySpace page in 2007. The duo's debut EP, A Night [...]
I would guess, without actually doing any searching, that "crisp" and "bright" are not the two most used adjectives here on 9B but they are the first two that come to mind whenever I queue up Left Arm Tan's Altanica . These Fort Worth boys have put together a very well rounded sophomore effort. While their first full length never made my radar Altanica has been in fairly constant rotation on the headphones here at work. While not quite the usual Red Dirt fare Left Arm Tan managed to produce a polished album without [...]
That feeling when magic hits you. When you realize that what you’re hearing is exceptional. Better than you thought imaginable. That feeling is what keeps us going over here at Ninebullets. The discovery of something so special you just have to share it with someone. Shout “You gotta HEAR this. Really listen! LISTEN!”. The brother of Jessica Lee Mayfield, he's got a lot of help from The Avett Brothers on this. The first time I heard David Mayfield, when my friend Jan sent me the video at the bottom of this article, I was dumbstruck. Then I got [...]
Nine Bullets introduced me to Charlie Parr’s music then I mentioned him to a few smarter than average people and they were like, “yeah, I’m surprised you didn’t already know him.” Hearing that kind of bummed me out because I like being the first guy to the party. (My friends also know me as the going home early guy, but that’s another story.) Parr falls into the Piedmont style of blues though on a couple of songs, “Groundhog Day Blues” & “Motorcycle Blues”, he drowns his voice inside his throat and it adds a hypnotic quality [...]
The goal of this review is to see how many times I can use the word surly. That word describes everything about Black Highway by Tyler Keith and The Apostles, whether it’s the opening guitar riff that sounds like a jagged knife slicing through flesh for three and a half seconds or Tyler Keith’s surly snarl, you feel like you’re being assaulted or in jeopardy of being assaulted. And to me the threat is more frightening then the actual beatdown. But it seems I’ve gotten distracted. In case you’re not sure what kind of surly I’m [...]
Hopefully you, dear reader, grasped on to the music of Brown Bird after my review of their 2011 release Salt For Salt . If so, then you, like me must be pleased at the arrival of the follow up, Fits Of Reason . There probably isn’t a release this year that I’ve been looking forward to more. Aaaahhhhh, expectations. Brown Bird has thrown a bit of a curveball, one that without the bit of press information I received would have taken me longer to figure out. David Lamb has dropped off his acoustic guitar [...]
One of my promises to myself was that 2013 would be the year I got caught up on articles I wanted to write. At the top of that list was the latest offering from Doc Dailey, Catch The Presidents . Truth be told, the fact that this album hasn’t found itself featured here on the 9b has been a large source of shame for yours truly. So, I sat down here at my laptop and, as is my process, I started pulling up other reviews to see what folks might be saying about the album only to find that [...]
Pete Quirk of The Cave Singers has a supremely unique vocal delivery. It’s clouded in reverb and word after word is lost in his throat and his willingness to hide words from the listener is reminiscent of early recordings from men named Stipe and James. And even without all the words it’s easy to sing along. I heaped praise on the previous Cave Singers record and the same holds true for Naomi. Without a doubt it’s Essential Listening . For their forth album The Cave Singers added bassist Morgan Henderson and his contributions [...]
Mo Kenney is a singer/songwriter on Joel Plaskett's New Scotland record label. Plaskett also produced this album, Kenney's debut, and co-wrote some songs with her and sings with her and plays guitar with her and took her out on tour. That's an endorsement that you should take seriously. I want to endorse her too! And I did- Mo Kenney was on my best-of list last year. Here's why: her voice is amazing and she writes herself great lines to sing. Her singing and songwriting rank highly in the world of singer/songwriters. This is getting redundant, but [...]
Wild Ways , the new album from Uncle Leon and the Alibis, kicks off with the rousing "Hold On," a jangly road trip song if ever there was. The band doesn't slow down from there, veering wildly from honky tonk rockers ("Don’t Blame This Guitar") to classic county laments ("Cold Dark Night," "Loving A Cowboy") to subversive odes for malcontents and misanthropes ("All My Crazy Friends Got Old and Lame," "Fuck The World"). This isn't so much an album as a dog-eared, dusty map spanning the entire soundscape that defines Americana music and distinguishes it (thankfully) [...]
If you can somehow manage to combine the backing track of ‘Angels’ by The XX with dialogue from Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ and your own cover of TLC’s ‘No Scrubs,’ chances are you may be a genius. After all, who could really think to do that, right? Well, London-based indie pop band Bastille could. In fact, they’ve come up with many a mix that are so far out there - Lana Del Rey and ‘Requiem For A Dream’ for example - it leaves listeners wondering how they could possibly come up with it, [...]
Dubl Handi does everything exactly right on their debut album Up Like The Clouds . The name is pronounced like double handy and takes its name from a washboard company dating back to the 1800’s. Dubl Handi is a folk/traditional duo based in Brooklyn. Banjo is the most prominent instrument but Dubl Handi uses a pile of them to recreate the mostly traditional songs on Up Like The Clouds . Each of the 15 songs here sound fresh though all but three were written in a by gone time but what attracts me most to Dubl [...]
Can I coin a new genre? I propose we create a new genre called "Heavy Americana Metal". Tin Horn Prayer would fall under this moniker. Those Crosstown Rivals are there and so is the Alabama 3 piece that calls themselves Fistful of Beard . If you like your Americana pretty and intricate and full of thoughtful lyrics that resemble prose more than songs (think Joe Pug) then Fistful of Beard is not for you. That said, if you’re a fan of PBR, Old Crow and guitars. If you’ve always loved Two Cow Garage [...]
Caitlin Rose gathered a lot of love for her debut album Own Side Now . And rightfully so, I might add. It’s a beautiful album, where her mostly acoustic songs use her voice to stand out. In The Stand In , that acoustic folky sound is replaced with a bit more electricity, a bit more instrumentation and a lot more intensity. Her fantastic voice is still the focal point of the music, but this mixes folk, rock, alt. country and traditional country into something I choose to call “Caitlin Rose”. This albums just snags [...]
In defence of 'i will do this for the rest of my life' taken from their just-released debut album to be close to you, Julia Brown basically told everyone who thinks their music needs to somehow be aurally repaired that they have a “superiority complex” and a “lack of creativity”. We’re gonna have to agree with that. to be close to you was eloquently produced with a tape recorder they’ve used since 2010, laptop microphones and a boombox. To do so, Sam Ray, Alec Simke and John Toohey got together soon [...]
The Henry Girls are from Ireland, The Fox Hunt is from West Virginia and they teamed up in January of 2011 to record the mini album Mountains To The Ocean . It was released in the last part of 2012 but we’re just getting to it now. Sue us. If you’ve been reading Nine Bullets for a while you’re no doubt familiar with The Fox Hunt. I hold them in high regard and consider the couple of times I’ve seen them play as highlights. They’ve been rather quiet of late so any new music from them is [...]
Local news personalities could do a darn good fluff piece about Grabass Charlestons : the kind of band becoming increasingly rare in these days, hometown heroes, touring for a decade, day jobs, then-triumph! Modest southern-style triumph! Dale & the Careeners is the best thing they've ever done. Listening the this album, the spirit never leaves you. You put your faith in Dale from the first song " Stormy Weather " and it lifts you over any inconsistency or crack in the album (not that there are many!). It's a [...]
I know I checked out The White Buffalo back when Once Upon A Time In The West was originally released, but I must have been hopped up on stupid pills that day ‘cause I passed on the cd in the most decisive way possible...I deleted it. Shame on me. A couple of weeks ago I was watching Sons Of Anarchy when this completely awesome song starts playing. So, I fire up Soundhound and learn that it’s “The Whistler,” a new single from The White Buffalo. I immediately buy it and [...]
Since one day in the real world equals about one week in the internet world, there is a chance there are people finding this music scene who’ve never heard of Suburban Home Records . Despite how things played out at the end of SHR, the story of this musical scene can not be told without SHR being mentioned repeatedly. It should be. Virgil Dickerson gave a lot of bands a voice they would have struggled to achieve otherwise and brought them a fan base that was, at one point, willing to throw money at anything bearing a Suburban Home [...]
Holly Williams has quite the legacy to follow up. She’s born into one of the most legendary country music families in America, and with Hank Williams Sr. as her grandfather, Hank Williams Jr. as her father and Hank Williams III as her half-brother, it can’t have been easy start singing and playing for herself. In her song “Without You”, where Jakob Dylan duets with her, she addresses this: «I got here on crowded trains With old guitars and a famous name Running like a [...]
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Nine Bullets
HAERTS – All The Days
iTunes Leaks Kanye West’s Yeezus tracklisting??
PREVIEW: Hyperbits – Karekare (Original Mix)
