Catching Up and Looking Ahead

The gentleman pictured above is Andrew Bird, the author of my favorite album of 2009. And that’s almost the last time you’ll hear me reference 2009 on this site. It’s time to move on to 2010.

The end of last year and the early part of this year have been extremely busy for me. I put in some extra hours at both of my jobs, and spent a great deal of time re-listening to music from the past year and the past decade. In fact, I spent so much time working on my year end list, my decade list, and the year end mix CD that my wife and I make every year (complete with six pages of liner notes) that I haven’t taken much time to catch up on any new music that’s come my way or look ahead to anything that’s on the horizon.

I’d like to do some of that today.

My biggest sin lately has been neglecting my inbox over at ReviewShine. ReviewShine is a tremendous resource for bloggers where (mostly unknown) artists can post their music for bloggers to sample and download. I’ve discovered some great artists there including Boca Chica, Madison Violet, Kelly Mannix, and several others.

Recently though, I went roughly two months without listening to anything from the site. When I logged back on last week, I had 40 or 50 albums waiting for me. I’m slowly trying to work my way through them to pick out the best stuff to share. I’ve already found a few that show some promise, and one such artist is singer-songwriter Nolan McKelvey.

I don’t know much about Nolan other than to say he is a singer/songwriter from the Boston area who now resides in Arizona. During his time in the Northeast, Nolan developed a solid reputation in the region, and his bands were nominated for seven Boston Music Awards. He may also have once accidentally stolen songwriter Kris Delmhorst’s accordion.

His new album Matter of Time came out late last year, and is full of catchy folk/pop tunes that immediately grabbed my attention. The song I’m sharing with you here is the lead track on the album, “All We Ever Needed.”

Nolan McKelvey: All We Ever Needed (Buy Album)

The second thing I want to do with this post is take a small look ahead at some of the new releases I’m looking forward to in the early part of 2010.

Several of my favorite artists seem to have plans for the year including the incomparable Patty Griffin. Patty has two releases planned for 2010 with the first being a gospel album produced by Buddy Miller called Downtown Church. The album will be available January 26th, but one track, “Move Up,” is already streaming on Patty’s Myspace page.

Over the weekend, I also alluded to news of a new Tift Merritt album that is in the works. It seems the album has been recorded and is just awaiting a final mix and mastering. Even though it’s not quite in the can, the album does have a title and a tentative release date. Look for See You On the Moon some time in May.

Much closer to a physical release date is the new offering from Austin alt-rockers Spoon. Transference won’t be released until January 19th, but you can listen to the album in its entirety right now at NPR’s website as part of their “First Listen” series. I haven’t heard the whole thing yet, but I have full confidence the record will be another finely crafted album full of insanely catchy indie pop tunes.

Finally, Allison Moorer’s new release Crows is set to hit the streets February 9th. I’ve been listening to this for a couple of weeks now, and it’s beginning to grow on me. Crows is a quiet record overall that features a bit of a departure for Allison as a good deal of the songs were composed on piano instead of guitar. Guitars are still present in places, including the up tempo single “Broken Girl.” Here’s an acoustic version of the album’s lead track.

Allison Moorer: Broken Girl (Acoustic) (Buy Album)