While England isn’t exactly the hills of Tennessee, our former oppressors have produced some solid acts with considerable twang. A recent example of this  would be The Dog Roses (Myspace / Official). Their new EP, Just Another Saturday, is a great little country record.

The London natives produce rootsy-folk that is wrapped rather warmly in a country-music quilt. The fiddle playing absolutely shines in “Kit’s Song” and “Let the Bottle Take the Heartache Away”, with the latter employing  a mournful accordion to produce a Pogues-like barroom lullaby. With the fun-loving and melodius ”Any Day Now (I’ll Be Fine)”, The Dog Roses do a stand-up Everly Brother’s impression without making it look like they were trying too hard to do so. Mike Perret’s accented vocals give each track a vibrancy that many American country acts lack. This is another example of an EP that makes the most of it’s small amount of space and sacrifices the filler of a larger album for a lean collection that possesses a focus and sizzle that never wanes.

Listen: The Dog Roses – “Kit’s Song”

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Tags: The Dog Roses, The Pogues

While many of us blogger-types are trying to figure out what our favorite releases of 2009 are, I have been enjoying what would’ve been one of my favorite records from 2008. Mac Leaphart’s (Official / Myspace) 2008 release, Line, Rope, Etc… is an excellent album, consisting of some country-flavored folk that mixes in dashes of southern rock seamlessly. Literate and thoughtful, many of the tracks possess an irreverence that can easily be spotted throughout much of Todd Snider’s catalog.

The subject matter of the album shines some light on some of the darker themes in life. He is able to do that in some cases while being rather humorous, like with ”White Line Mercy”, where he sympathizes with a man who’s “woman loves cocaine”. Death, adultery and heartbreak takes center-stage in the album’s standout track (in my opinion, at least), “Confederate Roses”. It’s an achingly beautiful song, one in which I must have hit “repeat” 4-5 times before moving on to the rest of the record. It actually took me a couple of spins to get past the pristine melody and to grasp the tragedy that is the tale’s core. Many people can craft sad and morose tales that draw the listener in, but few can do that and make them sound so good, the way Leaphart does here.

LISTEN: Mac Leaphart – “Confederate Roses”

LISTEN: Mac Leaphart – “Losing Young”

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Tags: Mac Leaphart, Todd Snider

Chad Price's new solo album is one of many great recent "discoveries" for me on some other great blogs.

I’ve never hid the fact that I not only peruse other music blogs, but I often get turned onto great bands, both new and old, that I wasn’t familiar with from those blogs. I think that most other bloggers, if they are being honest, do the same thing. Below are some bands that are worthy of your attention that were brought to my attention by some equally worthy blogs. For those of you who are already familiar with the acts and/or blogs below, forgive my ignorance, it cant be helped sometimes (each of the posts below have mp3’s and audio from these artists)…

• Heather over at I Am Fuel, You Are Friends, flipped my switch for Houses, a band out of Denver AND to the Pennsylvania trio Good Old War.

• While HearYa has some seriously top-shelf live sessions, they also review some albums. That’s how I first heard about the Maldives, who hail from Seattle.

• Nine Bullets has long championed the cause of all-things Drag The River. That most definitely includes Chad Price, who has a new solo-album, and he has 9b to thank for spreading the word, for sure.

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Tags: Chad Price, Drag the River, Good Old War, Houses, Maldives

Anyone who has read The Gobb Knob recently likely is starting to pick up on the fact that I have been digging a good bit of E.P.’s lately. I haven’t exactly been quiet about it. An E.P. that has garnered many a spin in the CD player recently has been Paul Masson’s (Official / Myspace) self-titled, debut E.P.

There is a lot to like inside of the 5 songs contained here. Masson’s Lamontagne-esque vocals give the tracks a depth that many current singer/songwriters and other aspiring folkies only hope to carve out for their own material. In fact, now that I think about comparison’s to the work of Ray Lamontagne, even though Masson hails from Baltimore, I can’t help but think that Masson’s disc is what Lamontagne’s Trouble record might have sounded like, had it been recorded in the sunny glow of Laurel Canyon with a pedal steel player that is as skilled as These United States’ Tim Hnatow.

LISTEN: Paul Masson – “My Girl Baltimore”

LISTEN: Paul Masson – “Where Have All the Gentlemen Gone”

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Tags: Paul Masson, Ray Lamontagne, These United States, Tim Hnatow

Living near Denton TX, it isn’t exactly hard for a music-lover to be intimately familiar with the name and work of Will Johnson. The band he is perhaps most well-known for, Centro-matic, is a North Texas icon. He may be spending more time in our state’s capital these days, but that doesn’t keep us from claiming him as our own. The guy has been busy. He played lead guitar for Patterson Hood supporting Hood’s solo album. After that, he has toured as the drummer for the much ballyhooed Monsters of Folk. Now, he and his buddy, Magnolia Electric Company’s Jason Molina, have released a pretty solid disc of mellow-indie gold.

Stephen M. Duesner, who happens to be one of the best writers going today,didnt really care much for the self-titled album. While I have enjoyed the disc, a couple of his points are valid. Duesner informs readers that anyone who is unfamiliar with the work of Johnson and/or Molina shouldn’t use this disc as a primer for their other works. Fair enough, I agree. He also says that the track, “Twenty Cycles to the Ground” is the album’s most accessible track, and I agree with that as well. Regardless, I think the differences between this album and the albums from their back catalogs is where the value lies. When you have two talented artists performing together, why create a mish-mash of reheated material? Molina & Johnson succeeds in bringing something new to their fans who have no problem with the fellas branching out a bit.

LISTEN: Molina & Johnson “Twenty Cycles to the Ground”

Tags: Centro-matic, Jason Molina, Magnolia Electric Company, Monsters of Folk, Patterson Hood, Will Johnson