Dirty Impound

It usually takes folks at least a half hour to totally charm your socks off but Leland Sundries accomplish the task in just 22 minutes on their potent debut, The Apothecary EP (released October 5). Led by the warm, diverse voice and resonator guitar of Nick Loss-Eaton, this Brooklyn-based project grasps antique folk forms and replants them in contemporary soil, nurturing music that’s old-timey and newfangled all at once and more than a touch timeless.
keep diggin’

Unabashedly Southern and raw as a Hell’s Angel’s ass after he upends his hog, Powder Mill are one of the best goddamn bands to emerge from below the Mason-Dixon in the past decade. Like kindred forebears Lynyrd Skynyrd and Drive-By Truckers, Powder Mill mines the South’s rich folklore, inviting drawl and working class ethos to create unshakeable honest, utterly unvarnished music packed with dirty truths and shadowy humor. And these Missouri boys just keep getting better.
a deep appreciation of good times

A tintinnabulous beauty hovers over Bruises & Butterflies (released May 18), the resonant debut from San Francisco’s Elisa Randazzo. This is the sort of record John Peel’s shortlived Dandelion Records would have snapped up, a lovely, emotionally rich soundscape that exists outside of any hourglass. Carried along by subtle, mostly gentle percussion (courtesy of The Mother Hips’ John Hofer) and crystalline acoustic strings, Bruises & Butterflies vibrates sympathetically with revered folk rockers like Linda Perhacs, John Martyn, Sandy Denny and Bridget St. John, who gloriously guests on two cuts here where she and Randazzo’s voices intertwine winningly.
shooting for timelessness

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“Ask someone to feed your cat ’cause you won’t be back soon/ Lock your windows, lock all your doors, and remember your seasickness pills/ We’re going on a trip, so hop onto my ship.” And a total, vibrant trip is precisely what Drink Up Buttercup’s debut full-length Born And Thrown On A Hook (released March 23 on Yep Roc) is. There’s the spirit of a beautifully deranged dance hall, where clowns with ruddy facepaint dance with ladies (bearded and otherwise) in taffeta gowns until something catches fire.
exciting music played in an excited way

Caleb Caudle and The Bayonets

Dreamers don’t have it easy in this world. Reality has a gravity that often leaves us spitting smoke and flames, gathering up the newly wrecked pieces of our lives just as we thought we’d learned to fly. There’s a wondrous mix of cloud high conjecture and down-in-the-dirt truthfulness to Winston-Salem, NC’s Caleb Caudle and The Bayonets. With a rootsy vibe akin to The Jayhawks and The Replacements and a forward surging energy that compares well with Ryan Adams circa Gold, this band, especially as reflected in their bang-up new release Snake River Canyon, is the real deal.

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