Good Friday, Good Music

Sweet Talk

From the brain flow of Paste's Editor At Large:

Some nefarious music hounds from Decatur twisted my outsized ego into creating a dialogue littered with opinionated recommendations and myopic rants. Therefore, to put a smidgen of decency back into nepotism, I have stolen the title "Sweet Talk" in homage of my father who had a weekly sports and leisure column of the same in the early 70's that was syndicated in several small town newspapers in the land the gods made great, New England (sans Connecticut of course). Luckily this space will focus more on sporting leisure, my favorite kind.

Browse Sweet Talk

Lately the CD pile has been swelling to unsustainable proportions. Sweet Talk receives anywhere from 50-75 a week and has been lagging behind separating the wheat from the chaff.

Here is what the last few months harvest reaped; in other words these are a few of the albums that I can not bring myself to pull out of the playlist.

Sarah Borges & Broken Singles The Stars Are Out: Everyone knows the woman can flat out bring the Joan Jett rock, and she has all the good parts of Sheryl Crow's sound without the LA pop suckdom. The fact that she is a bona fide Masshole makes her even that more lovable. Rating: Four Wicked Pissahs

Elvis Perkins In Dearland Elvis Perkins In Dearland: Mr. Perkins takes a significant leap forward with this batch of well crafted tracks. A good stew is made from a lot of ingredients and this album is no different. A little sloppy cajun, a pinch of Pete Seeger, dash of Tex-Mex, som and a box of lost Kink's demos. While all the songs are worth inclusion the true standout is "Hey". Much like his peer M. Ward's recent sound with She & Him, this track is timeless. A Roy Orbinson tinged banger floating in a dusty crate of lost 45's from the basement. Go grab it.

Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears Tell 'Em What Your Name Is! : Ladies and Gentlemen welcome the soul of Wilson Pickett... not wait....Sharon Jones...uuum, James Brown... hell it's the soul of Joe Lewis. Yes the comparisons are easy, and his wattage at SXSW was white hot, but it ain't hype if you can make hips roll and ankles slide the way these boys do. Blazing down the road alongside the likes of Eli Paper Boy Reed and The Dap Kings, BJL&TH can make listeners break out into a sonic sweat just by listening to tracks like "Boogie" & "Gunpowder." The great Paul Pena would have been thoroughly impressed.

PS - If you can find a copy of the advance, check out "Bitch, I Love You" for some heavy and hard and "Cousin Randy" for some front porch Lightning Hopkins which were left off the official release. Some down and real dirty. Kids beware.