Album Spotlight: Vandoliers - The Native

From the first line of the first song, "I was born September 1st, in a little town outside Fort Worth" to the album closer "Weclome Home" the new Vandoliers album The Native is Texas through and through.

If you want to know what Texas music is all about, this album is a crash course. It takes snippets of Red Dirt, Southern Rock, Tejano, mariachi, Rockabilly, Texas swing, honky tonk, country, 80s pop rock, punk and beach/island music to create a diverse 10 song journey. Some of it may be a bit too inside baseball to resonate with everyone, such as the song "Pantego", but hell, if Cairo, IL can get a couple of songs recently, why not Pantego?

The Vandoliers are self aware and The Native never takes itself too seriously. Sure, there is some introspection and some nostalgia, but all in all, it's just fun summer fare with a perfect release date, the Friday before Memorial Day, which kind of indicates the beginning of summer in the United States.

The Native may not be for everyone, and frontman Joshua Fleming's vocals are unique, but they fit perfectly in the context of these songs.  The instrumentation and playing is spot-on throughout the album. This is just a fun album and these guys sound like they'd be great live.

Album Spotlight: The Dead Deads: For Your Obliteration...

Weaving in and out of and around and through punk, metal, pop, rock, bubblegum, grunge, Americana and all things in between, sometimes in the same song, sometimes in the same verse or chorus, The Dead Deads refuse to be pigeonholed into anything.

The Dead Deads' latest release, For Your Obliteration... is one of the most interesting albums I've heard this year.

Lead vocalist Meta Dead (Leticia Wolf) can go from a sweet bubblegum voice to heavy metal growling to punk attitude to melodic hard rock seamlessly and often. I have no doubt that she could sing in any genre she wanted.

For Your Obliteration... is bottom heavy much of the way through. This is to be attributed to the the heavy pounding of drummer Billy Dead (Angie Lese) and the bass playing of Daisy Dead (Mavis Turner). They lock in together form a formidable foundation for the soundscapes of Hella (Mandy Wolf) and Betty Dead's (Erica Sellers) keys and guitars.

Want a label? Rock. They rock, unabashedly and unashamedly. Enough words, here is some music. "Animals", which is my favorite song on the album: