the Buzz for June 8th, 2009

8
Jun

 

It’s exceedingly quiet out there in musicland this week, which gives you a perfect opportunity to catch up on some great recent records (Dave Matthews Band and Mat Kearney, to name but two) that may have slipped past your consciousness. If you must go record shopping this week, here’s what you’ll find on the new release wall:

 

Fresh off the brilliant remastering of her 1997 masterwork Blue Roses from the Moons, one of the finest songwriters in the history of music, the spectacular Nanci Griffith, is back this week with The Loving Kind, her nineteenth studio album (and her first of original material since 2005’s sweet Hearts in Mind). Kind finds Griffith delving into some politically charged topics, with a diatribe against Dubya (“Still Life”), an angry rant against capital punishment (“Not Innocent Enough,” a duet with musician John Prine), and, in the lovely title track, a remembrance of the Supreme Court case which made interracial marriage legal in this country. Griffith also takes a moment to pay tribute to her late mentor Townes Van Zandt in the album’s emotional high point,
“Up Against the Rain.”

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