Review: The Fox Hunt – Long Way To Go

The Fox Hunt: Long Way To Go (Skull City Records, 2010)

The way things are going and my music taste evolving, I probably end up moving to some abandonded house on the Appalachian Mountains by the time I’m 60 and spend the rest of my days sitting on my front porch listening to string bands singing beautiful songs about broken hearts while digesting more alcohol than my body can safely handle.

The fox hunt as an sporting activity should be a closed chapter in history books, but the band called The Fox Hunt needs to be mentioned in every chapter if I try to write a novel about my new favourite bands. I’m just totally addicted to this stuff. I got their debut Nowhere Bound and this new album Long Way To Go a little over a week ago and I think they are both amazing albums. The only reason to say that they are not completely perfect albums  is the fact that if you would take the best half of both of them and joined them together than that album would be even better and actually pretty much the best album ever. More bands should follow The Fox Hunt and have banjo, fiddle, mandolin and upright bass in their instrument arsenal, but still it’s the singing that I love the most.  Both lead vocals and the harmonies are pure gold throughout the record. The songs often have a heartbreaking core, but they are injected to your veins with such a joyful and beautiful playing & singing that you end up smiling even if the character in the song is trying to pick the pieces of his broken heart from the gutter. Just wonderful stuff altogether if you are into things like string bands, bluegrass, roots music and well country music in general. Think of early Old Crow Medicine Show for example. Well think of great music. This is my favourite album of the year so far.

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Listen to Lower Than I Should Be:
[audio:http://www.onechord.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/10-lower-than-i-should-be.mp3]

Listen to Troublemakin’ Woman:
[audio:http://www.onechord.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/02-trouble-makin-woman.mp3]

The Fox Hunt Website
The Fox Hunt at myspace

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The Fox Hunt and 9b

This is the greatest thing right now. The Fox Hunt’s new album Long Way To Go (well along with The Fox Hunt’s debut album Nowhere Bound, I just got both of these beauties). I can’t support the activity that is fox hunt, but I sure do love this band called The Fox Hunt. These guys have a huge amount wonderful songs. Just go to their website and listen to songs like Lower Than I Should Be and Troublemakin’ Woman from the new album, then go to their myspace and listen to Crack Shot and Good Girl from the earlier album. I’m pretty sure you’ll love them too after that. More detailed The Fox Hunt praising during the upcoming weeks..

The Fox Hunt Website
The Fox Hunt at myspace

… and then little love for ninebullets.net. Actually if you don’t care about finnish music, you might as well stop reading this blog and just bookmark 9b. During the last few months, this is the place where I’ve found most of my new favorite bands/artists like The Fox Hunt, Otis Gibbs, Micah Schnabel, Kasey Anderson (who is also one of the 9b writers). I can fully recommend that website if you love bands such as Drive-By Truckers (the name is taken from Drive-By Truckers song), Drag The River and Lucero and try to find more good stuff.

9b Website

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Micah Schnabel and some random ramblings

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yldl69YDsQE]

Lately I’ve been listening to Micah Schnabel’s (Two Cow Garage) solo album and I like it a lot. Self-released small edition of the album came out last year and was quickly sold out. Thankfully Suburban Home Records fell in love with it and is now re-releasing the album with new artwork. I preordered and got a free download with it. It’s a very fine album indeed. If you don’t believe me, you can stream the whole album on Suburban Home’s new listening station. Oh and if you liked that great video by TCSupergenius, be sure to check out his other videos. There’s some other fabulous stuff. Especially those Austin Lucas videos are pure gold.

What else is new? Well The Fox Hunt. I already mentioned them a while ago. I still don’t have the albums. I should get Nowhere Bound in a week or two, because it’s currently travelling from cdbaby to this household (too bad post from USA to Finland nowadays seem to take longer than before). Anyway, the point I needed to make is that The Fox Hunt has also new album out now and you can order it from their website. I did that some days ago. Check out The Fox Hunt on myspace or spotify if you like things like early Old Crow Medicine Show for example.

If that isn’t a perfect soundtrack for lonely days & whiskey nights, try Otis Gibbs. I recently streamed his new album Joe Hill’s Ashes on his website and because it sounded rather perfect to me, I ordered it.

Last friday’s FOTM was a success as well. Ben’s Diapers and Hi-Lo & In Between were both really good and because it was a record release partee for both, I’ve been listening to their new albums during the last few days. I think both of them are great albums. Ben’s Diapers threw in a couple of surprising curve balls midway through the park, but those new dimensions added more colour and actually made the record work perfectly as a whole. Hi-Lo & In Between’s record is also gorgeous. I’m extremely happy that they were able to make it sound so perfect this time around. It’s totally my kind of country/folk band and I’ve enjoyed their live performances from the start. Still I would have liked to love their debut more than I actually did. There was not much wrong with it, but it still wasn’t able to capture their magic like this follow up thankfully can. Well done. Reviews to follow if I can find the cure for lazyness..

Oh.. and Starflower’s new album came out today. A proper news entry about that in a day or two. Just wanted to get that beauty of my chest. I have to wake up in six hours, so I better continue some other night. Take care and all that..

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