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…

The term “Texas Country” or “Texas Music” is about as general as a term can be when describing music. The fact is, sometimes I hear a record and think, “man, that sounds like a  ”Texas Record”. Records from Owen Temple, Susan Gibson, Tejas Brothers and Austin Collins have made me feel that way over the last couple of years. A new one to that collection is Adam Carroll and Michael O’Connor’s release, Hard Times. Great folk-flavored country that relies primarily upon acoustic instrumentation, this album just hit me where I needed to be hit, I suppose. I am not the only one…

• Jeff over at Sounds Country has had a lot to say about the album…

• Jeff also asks both Caroll and O’Connor about their favorite albums…

• My friends in Twangville dig the album also…

LISTEN: Adam Carroll & Michael O’Connor – “Bernadine”

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For all of the attention that the Red-Dirt rockers get here in Texas (not that I am complaining), the softer voices that employ their lyrical perspective and vision – not chugging rhythms and screaming solos – to do the heavy lifting are often times over-looked or perhaps ignored by the larger audiences that reside outside of the coffee house acoustic gigs and hill-country campfire festivals.

Houston’s Matt Harlan (Official / Myspace) has recently released a solid, pleasing folk-rock record that places him into the ranks of the latter-day troubadours that share his ability to locate drama in a scenario that would seem bland or dreary to the untrained, naked eye. Harlan’s debut offering, Tips & Compliments (Berkalin), is packed with stories that avoid both somber monotony as well as indulgent melodrama and instead follows a path that has been traveled recently by fellow Texans Owen Temple and Walt Wilkins and is dotted with tales of change, abuse and rediscovery. Harlan has some serious folk bona-fides here. He has won several noteworthy awards, and also has some talented friends helping out, most notably members of Robert Earl Keen’s band and even The Belleville Outfit.

Overall, Harlan’s debut is a shining example of how honesty, skill and heart can be heard just as loudly as the next rocking ode to Shiner Bock surely will be.

LISTEN: Matt Harlan – “Elizabethtown”

LISTEN: Matt Harlan – “Tips & Compliments”