COYLE GIRELLI, MUSEUM DAY

English singer-songwriter Coyle Girelli has done a little bit of everything. He's fronted two bands, co-written songs for two French musicals, written hit songs for a diverse group of artists from Macklemore to BTS, he's collaborated with other hit-making songwriters such as Linda Perry, and he's released two solo albums. He's done...just a bit.

Girelli now calls New York City home and on his latest album, Museum Day, he draws inspiration from living and loving in the Big Apple. He also tips his hat to some of the bands that have inspired him over the years...The Smiths, The National, The War On Drugs, and even New Order. Yet these songs are all Girelli. 

Standing alone, each of the ten songs on Museum Day are fantastic with melodies and lyrics that capture moments in time beautifully whether they are ones filled with love, joy, sadness...or all of it. Put them all together and you get one of the most enjoyable and best albums of the year. 

DYLAN LEBLANC, COYOTE

LeBlanc was in Austin, Texas, climbing the face of a 100-foot cliff, gambling with 'Mother Nature’s good graces' as he pulled himself up by tree branches. Once he reached the top, all that laid ahead of him was a lush treeline. There was a breath of stillness, then the sound of a thunderous rustling that drew closer and closer to him. In a blink, LeBlanc watched as a frenzied raccoon came speeding out of the treeline, trailed by an animal that stopped and stared at him with striking intensity: a coyote. 

As LeBlanc describes the moment, “We’re looking at each other dead in the eyes…and I’m saying -- out loud -- ‘If it’s you or me, I am going to kick you off the side of this cliff. I’m not going down.’ LeBlanc recalls that it was an intense, human-animal moment. A moment that he's never forgotten. 

Living on the edge of danger with its many consequences is the theme woven throughout the songs on Coyote, LeBlanc's fifth album. LeBlanc has said that that it's an autobiographical and concept album built around a character named Coyote, a man who is on the run. Set against a moody and atmospheric folk rock musical backdrop with a tinge of psychedelia, LeBlanc's songs have a cinematic feel to them, like the closing scene of a movie where the protagonist is last seen walking down an empty Texas highway on a cool clear night reflecting on his many trials and tribulation while his camp fire is left smoldering, crackling, and popping in the distance. It's a highway where I want to be. I just love this album and I think that you will as well.

CREEPER, SANGUIVORE

Love, life, death, and vampires. Is there anything more appropriate for a Friday the 13th in October? Leave it to Creeper to put it all together. More theatrical and over the top than either of their previous two studio albums, Sanguivore is a kind of Rocky Horror Picture Show meets Bat Out of Hell mashup on steroids. But make no mistake, this Southhampton band is not trying to be cheeky or cute. They are a deadly serious about their intentionality and craft. They fully own their space and what they do and there is simply not another band doing it better today.

Sanguivore is just about the most fun that I have experienced listening to an album this year. Bravo to Creeper for their album and music and for ringing in Halloween a few weeks earlier this year.

BRENT COBB, SOUTHERN STAR

I have been a big fan of Brent Cobb's music since I first listened to his debut album, Shine On a Rainy Day in 2016. Over the past seven years, Cobb has continued to grace us with albums and songs that celebrate and spotlight his southern roots and the rich musical heritage of the south. Given all this, one would think that the naming of his latest album, Southern Star, is a kind of omage to those things that have been a guiding light for him and his music. They are in a way. But Southern Star is an actual place. 

Southern Star is a small,'seedy' little bar, as Cobb describes it, about 45 minutes outside of Nashville. It is here where Cobb would hang out with guitarist and mentor 'Rowdy', Jason Cope. Cope passed a way a few years ago, but he is always with Cobb. In an interview, Cobb said about his friend, "I often thought about my buddy as someone who sort of behind the scenes had a lot of influence on a lot of people, but they may not even be aware of it. He never got to be a superstar, but if nothing else he was a Southern star.....I miss him everyday." 

Southern Star is a kind of love letter to Cobb's home state of George which from the outside looking in might be a bit eye-brow raising given much of the state's history. But Cobb has a response to those raises. "Where I’m from, every school I went to, we’re all mixed in together down here. We’re living and praying and learning and working all together. It’s easy to be on the outside and look in, and go, ‘Man, the South, what a terrible place.’ And there are some terrible things that still happen to this day, and historically that are terrible, but for the most part we’re all living and working and eating and breathing together. You don’t hear about that side of the South so much. But I think that’s why the music from here is so influencing and so profound – it isn’t just one way. And you got people that obviously have had to struggle and people who still struggle to this day, but that’s where the good shit comes from. That’s where the great art comes from, for better or worse.

Cobb is a wonderful artist makes wonderful art and Southern Star is a wonderful addition to his ever growing and celebrated body of work.