The Unthanks, Here’s the Tender Coming
That doesn’t mean they aren’t infused with tradition, and a song like “Because He Was a Bonny Lad” is tender without becoming maudlin. Already hugely popular in the British Isles, their last album, 2007’s The Bairns, was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize and listed in “The Best Albums of the Decade” in Uncut and The Guardian. This album is already listed by the BBC and Mojo Magazine as Folk Album of the Year, but it seems a bit early to be laying on those kind of accolades. And perhaps the beauties of their lyrical creations don’t completely translate for a stateside public yet to be weaned from its diet of Billy Rays and Kennys who pass for the rural music of this country’s heartland. (Rough Trade)
Radar Brothers, The Illustrated Garden
But on the plus side, it really doesn’t feel like a put-on, not one bit. The band is from Los Angeles, though. And, when the L.A. bands ruined the SoCal scene in the early ’70s it took someone like Canadian Neil Young recording up in Topanga Canyon to maintain any cred in the face of the Eagles’ cocaine-cowboy chronicles. This band is casual yet studied, without much of neither. Anyone who’s been around since 1996 and had the restraint to release one album every two and a half years or so can’t have much of an impulse-control problem. The impulses they do indulge in are well considered. Their radar is steering them right. (Merge)
