In trying to decide what to post this morning, I asked Tim O. a few questions. 1) Australian or Canadian? 2) Boy singer or boy & girl singers? 3) “Radiogram” or “Horse Stories”? Radiogram took two of three (boy & girl singers and name, obviously) but I think I’ll post both.
Radiogram’s sound reminds me a bit of Blanche, the first band I ever posted here at 3hive.com. Country noir with a lot of texture, from Vancouver this time instead of Detroit — doesn’t it seem like half the bands we’ve posted this year are Canadian? Check out “Summer Song Summer” for an example of Radiogram’s pleasant if not uplifting calm (“My idea of a perfect day / would be to lie in bed and just pass away.”)
I probably shouldn’t call attention to the fact that this post is very late. Maybe I’d be able to sneak it in at the eleventh hour, literally, with little fanfare. But Sam, Clay, Shan and Joe all know I’m late because we just had breakfast this morning at 
Call it a genetic defect, but I will always be a sucker for a woman who seduces not with sex appeal but with intellect. Shelley Short’s beautifully facile voice sounds like a lullaby, but the kind that you might hear Patsy Cline or Loretta Lynn sing: resolute heartbreakers about women who are clearly smarter than the men in their lives and need to share their blues. Short isn’t all the way that old-fashioned, but her resignation and independence come through thanks to her distinct sense of herself and a recording style that favors echoey live instrumentation to a canned studio sound. It’s precious, yes, but for all the right reasons.
When the tunes are coming out of Salt Lake City, it’s hard to resist a little comparison: “I’m a little bit country, I’m a little bit rock and roll.” Trace Wiren has that in common with Donny and Marie, that’s for sure. However, she’s also a little bit folksinger, a little taken with the blues, and a whole lot fresh. Download “Trouble at Home” now and start preparing your summer roadtrip mix.
Cub Country is Jeremy Chatelain who’s done time with bands like Jets to Brazil, Handsome, and (taking it way back) the SLC hardcore band Lumberjack — a band I interviewed on my first radio show, a little punk rock thing called “Unrest on the Seventh Day.” All-around quality this kid Jeremy. Cub Country began while Jeremy was living in Brooklyn as an outlet for his own songs that had no home. Ironic that a move out east initiated his western sound. It’s 2006 (a new year for all of us, have a happy and safe one!) and Cub Country is now situated in Seattle and should have a new album tracked and ready to go soon. 
I first heard White Hassle on the Grand Life compilation for the Soho Grand boutique hotel…because that’s how we roll in the 2-1-2. I wanted to share “
If you’re wondering where all the mods have gone, Nic Armstrong has your answer. Since winning a songwriting contest in his native England a couple years back, Armstrong has launched a little British Invasion by way of Austin. And that’s not just a fancy classification: Armstrong and his Thieves have circumvented a few decades of Brit-Pop and cock rock and gone straight for the birth of the mod. The result is a roadhouse rhythm and beat in line with the earliest offerings from the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Beatles and, most of all, the Kinks, which in turn was a British working class take on American R&B and Boogie Woogie. Throw in a little country and western and you have something that is reverently old but shakes it as good as new.
While he may share the same record label as pop revivalist 
I’ve been sitting on this one for a while now. Note I say “sitting on,” not “sleeping on,” which is an important distinction because it means I’m more of a jerk than a slacker. Unlike many of the emails we receive in the ol’ suggestionbox(at)3hive.com, I actually downloaded these songs mere moments after 
Where some alt/country bands try to sing and pick like their forefathers so desperately that you can smell their formal musical training a mile away, you get a sense that the Pine Hill Haints (it’s an arcane Southern way to say “haunts†– I looked it up) get their legitimacy not from aping some Smithsonian Folkways compilation or other but from, well, from just making sweet Appalachian porch music. The Alabama skater friends thread together the romance, anxiety, religion, determination, and abandon that makes the American South such an enigma – and such a fertile breeding ground for a band that inadvertently keeps the old traditions alive while creating one all of their own.