I know some musicians aren't wild about reviews that mention other musicians – they want to think they're doing something so groundbreaking that it exists in its own little universe, defying all comparison – but the truth is that working in a few reference points is very often in the best interest of music-hungry readers. I learned about Josh Turner – back before “Long Black Train” was on the radio – when a fellow Randy Travis fan directed me to the website of this great new artist … [Read more...]

Just a heads up that J.R. Journey at My Kind of Country is reviving a half-baked idea of mine from last year (I think he's going to bake the other half) in the form of a Best Country Blog Posts of 2009 feature. He's soliciting suggestions, so head over to MKoC and throw some of your favorites from CU, The 9513, Farce the Music (namely, the "All White" parody), My Kind of Country, etc., into the conversation. The volume of stuff posted this year has been pretty staggering, so I'm sure ol' J.R. … [Read more...]

So, I contributed my Top 20 Albums of the Year list to a poll of country/alt-country bloggers put together by A Truer Sound - a pretty massive undertaking on his part, since about 30 different blogs were involved. I was probably the odd duckling in this bunch, given that my list was less 'alt' and more straight-down-the-middle country than just about any other. My voting bloc of one didn't sway the overall results much - only four of my picks scratched the overall Top 20 - so there's a lot of … [Read more...]

Hearing "Winter Wonderland" for the 500th time can get a bit tiresome, but on the whole, the Christmas season brings about what I see as some pretty desirable changes in musical sensibilities. When comparing the Christmas output of country stars to their non-seasonal material, a few reasonably fair generalizations can be made:Arrangements tend to be more sparse and acoustically based.In the freshly decluttered musical settings, many singers have room to deliver some of their best, most nuanced … [Read more...]

I don't speak like I write. In fact, through all my years of formal schooling, I always sort of imagined myself as an elderly British man when I put pen to paper. All of a sudden, it became okay (and, as I thought, expected) to fancy things and throw out rathers and quites like the Queen of England. My older brothers, whose spoken and written vocabularies were built around words like “suck” and “gay” (the great all-purpose adjective when you're eleven... or Taylor Swift), weren't shy … [Read more...]

A follow-up to the earlier post about Walmart using their CDs as mini MP3 billboards: Amazon has announced a similar cross-promotion for the holiday season. If you make a purchase of at least $25 from select areas of the site (including - naturally - the music CD section), a message will show up in your email inbox shortly thereafter indicating that a $5 credit for the Amazon MP3 store has been applied to your account. It looks like the subliminal message of the season is "get with the … [Read more...]