Biting Other Blogs: Patterson Hood & Holly Williams

Biting Other Blogs is an occasionally occurring feature that will direct your attention to a specific blog post or two that, most likely, I wish I had posted myself. Giving credit where credit is due, I typically wont blab too much, except to encourage you to get up on whatever blog I am highlighting…

Two recent discs have really gotten all up in my skin, and for very different reasons.  One is a relatively mellow take on Country-tinged Americana from an heir to the Country Music throne, and the other is a rocking, sweaty solo-disc from an artist who shares the lead duties in his full-time gig and really – I mean really- loves singing about murdering people. Since many of my favorite bloggers/writers have already discussed this disc much better than I likely would have, I’ll let them do the talking form here:

 Patterson Hood - Murdering Oscar (and other love songs) :

Hear Ya was the first review I read on this and they dig it…

The ever finicky Pitchfork didnt think it was half-bad…

An as usual with the big names, The Aquarium Drunkard snagged a sit-down with the man himself…

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Holly Williams - Here With Me:

My buddies over at The 9513 didnt think it sucked…

C. Eric Bannister, handling some guest-writing duties over at Country Standard Time, liked it A.O.K. as well…

As I said earlier, these records couldn’t be more different. The smokey, yet velvety smooth voice of Williams is as diametrically opposed to the Jack Daniels-laced strains of Hood. Hood’s tales of small town fools and authentic life on the fringes sticks in your grill a bit more harshly than Williams confessional thoughts on growing up, moving on and in certain cases, holding on for dear life.