I got sidetracked on other topics for a couple of weeks and haven't done any reviews, missing a few big releases in the process. Maybe the new Coldplay just put me over the edge, and I needed a break. Hard to say, really. But here we are, together again, looking at what's recently joined the ranks of musical history. I'll warn you right now, it's a boys' club this week for some reason. Sorry. I looked and looked.

Beck's Modern Guilt isn't blowing my mind like Beck sometimes does. There are some good songs in there and some nifty production sleights of hand courtesy of Danger Mouse, but it's a little boring in the overall scheme of things and what Beck is capable of. That's the problem with lifting your own bar so high – sometimes you can't clear it.


John Mayer has a new live set out called Where the Light Is. I hate live recordings, even from someone who's dating Jennifer Aniston; so I'm not even going to listen to it.


This guy Nels Andrews is a raconteur-style songsmith following in the footsteps of legends like John Prine and Kris Kristofferson, except that Nels is actually quite pleasant to listen to, and I don't find that to be true of those others. On Off Track Betting, he writes of his Americana-inspired experiences garnered whilst traveling across the land. You can totally see him hopping into the back of a pick-up truck with his guitar and backpack, setting off down the dusty road to wherever the driver happens to take him... and then writing a song about it.



Listen to Nels Andrews' "Lady of the Silver Spoon" here:

On the subject of heartland songwriters, this may seem crazy and surprising, but John Mellencamp's Life, Death, Love and Freedom has some pretty good tracks on it. I'm not a big fan of the blues, so I could live without the tunes steeped in that tradition. But when he strips it all down and just does his thing as an acoustic-based songwriter exploring the weighty topics that the title suggests, it's quite enjoyable for a guy making his 22nd record. He was even gutsy enough to write a song about and called “Jena,” the small town in Louisiana that struggled through a massive racial uproar a couple of years ago. (I happened to have spent my early childhood in that town, so...)


It seems Louisiana is all the rage on recent releases. The Alternate Routes include an homage on their Watershed EP. These guys are from Connecticut, but they don't really sound like it. I'd have put them in maybe North Carolina to explain the combination of hip and rootsy. It's a decent little five-song collection they've got there.


Another soulful offering comes from Ernie Halter and Starting Over. Does blue-eyed soul apply to boys with brown eyes? (I've only heard it for gals like Dusty Springfield.) Well, that's kind of what you have here, along with some other things. You can't really put a comprehensive tag on him. One song recalls Jason Mraz and another Tony Rich, while still a third is more reminiscent of a jam band that I can't actually name because I don't like jam bands. I wouldn't buy the whole disc, but there are some good tunes on there.