It’s not a surprise to discover that Andrew McAllister, the main man behind the Los Angeles combo Vanish Valleys, is a film editor by vocation. Film editors make their living by taking raw film footage and picking and choosing what goes where – in many ways, the editor has as much say in the final form of a movie as the director does. McAllister brings his editor’s eye to Vanish Valley, mixing elements from different genres into an organic whole.

“Races,” a track from Vanish Valley’s second album Get Good, is at heart an alt-country track reminiscent of The Jayhawks or Wilco at the more traditional minded end of their spectrum. The song’s tempo and harmonica hook are pure Americana, but then McAllister and Vanish Valley wrap the song in indie-rock ambience, awash in rough sonic edges and a guitar line that recalls college-rock greats like Let’s Active or the Vulgar Boatmen if they’d been covered in sagebrush rather than kudzu.

It’s hard to get a handle on exactly what genre “Races” slots into – just when it seems like it’s one thing, it subtly becomes something else. Like a well-assembled film, “Races” builds a sustained mood from disparate pieces but withholds enough of its secrets to make repeat listenings a necessity.

If you liked this song, you should also check out:

September & October 2011 MP3 Rewind

RACES “Big Broom”

Film School “Heart Full of Pentagons”

Somewhere in the great American Midwest, there’s a fortyish-year-old woman with a well-worn and (I hope) cherished t-shirt from Wilco’s first ever gig. I know she has it because I was the one who gave it to her as a token of esteem/pathetic attempt at romantic bribery, and she was not the sort who would ever throw such a thing away. She worked at the only hip record store in the town I lived in at the time and her boss was not letting her off work the night that now-historic show was happening in the nearby big city. To ease her disappointment I promised to bring her back said t-shirt, which resulted in a hug I can still feel 17 years later.

Oh, but she was a lovely thing – skin like porcelain, pale but mischievous blue eyes, raven-black hair and curvy as the Ledo Road. Whip-smart and feisty, she was – she once threatened to kick my ass for buying a used copy of Fugazi’s In on the Kill Taker that she’d meant to set aside for herself – but also sweet and good humored, spending most nights at the store helping her somewhat dim teenaged co-worker with his homework. In her spare time she was a sculptress, taught Sunday Schoo,l and managed (as well as anyone could) the town’s premiere punk band. Had the universe ever given me free reign to design my dream girl, I’d most likely have just pointed the cosmos in her direction and said “No need to bother. There she is.”

Attempts at asking her out were gently shunted aside but never turned down outright. Even at the time I realized she was probably just being nice, but she always seemed careful to not crush my hope entirely. No, that didn’t occur until the day I went to the record store to discover that it had unexpectedly closed overnight, abruptly ending my access to this perfect woman. I didn’t have her phone number (I’d not expected to so suddenly need it), she never seemed to show up at the few cool shows that came through town, and my ad in the personals (which in those days everyone in town read, including her) went unanswered. She was gone from my life forever.

The trigger for this sad reminiscence is “Love Me More,” a track by New Jersey’s Roadside Graves. Its refrain of “couldn’t you have loved me more?” is surely a universal lament for the entire human race. Ah, why didn’t that enchanting creature at the record store love me more? We all have someone we would ask that question of or – probably even more heartbreakingly – ask it of us.

Vocalist John begins his lovelorn list of disappointments at the moment of his own birth, then continues through romantic disappointments to the sad realization that his father was living out of his car because he’d never extended him the invitation to live with him. He recounts this plaintive list over a gentle alt-country backing, which swells into an improbably rousing chorus when the rest of the band joins him in asking that titular question, “couldn’t you have loved me more?”

“Love Me More” is a rare beast that pulls off a tricky alchemy – it’s a downer of a topic for a song, yet it ends up feeling more like a stirring call to action than a stroll through a life of misery. Listening to it reminds you of all the people you wish had loved you and of all the people who you know you should have loved. But the song is more wistful than sad. It reminds the listener of past disappointments, but ultimately makes that listener vow to love more and strive to be more worthy of being loved. That’s not a bad bit of work for a three-minute pop song.

Listen to “Love Me More” and ten other tracks on Roadside Graves’ new LP, We Can Take Care of Ourselves, out now on Autumn Tone.

If you liked this song, you should also check out:

Brooklyn has never been a magnet for aspiring country musicians, but somehow Kansas-bred Jason Rueger managed to gravitate towards that unlikely destination for those about to twang. Even more unlikely, he was able to hook up with three other misplaced hayseeds (I use the word affectionately) and together they formed the aptly-named Country Mice – they definitely would appear to be anomalous bumpkins in the hippest borough on the planet.

But appearances can be deceiving, because Rueger and company are definitely not rubes. First of all, they have the musical goods. “Morning Son,” a track from the band’s debut album, Twister, is a dandy slice of alt-country, full of clever lyrics, catchy hooks, and fine harmonies. Secondly, about three quarters of the way through the song the Country Mice reveal their hidden agenda – they know exactly where they’re living and they can go toe-to-toe with the city mice on their own turf.

Prior to the final verse of “Morning Son,” the Country Mice unleash a squall of Sonic Youth/Yo La Tengo inspired feedback that rides atop the easygoing country lope like Thurston Moore in the cab of a John Deere tractor. It’s a surprising development but one that works better than it has any right to, and it shows that these former farmboys know their way around the city after all.

In the old fable of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse, the titular cousins visit each other’s homes and both end up scared shitless by what they saw, with the moral that people are better off sticking with what they know. The Country Mice prove as well as anyone ever has that Aesop or Beatrix Potter or whoever came up with that parable was full of crap with that particular insight. “Morning Son” shows that sometimes yokels from the provinces can be just as at home in the sophisticated metropolis as the urban natives.

If you liked this song, you should also check out:

Brent Amaker and the Rodeo “Man in Charge”

The Ravenna Colt “South of Ohio”

Or, the Whale “Datura”

To call The Head and the Heart‘s eponymous debut a new release would be somewhat misleading. Although it was made widely available for the first time on April 16th through a re-pressing by Sub Pop, The Head and the Heart was initially self-released by the Seattleites in June of the previous year. (The Sub Pop version carries a re-recorded song here, a new addition there, and remastering throughout.)

One of the album’s highlights is the spacious vista of “Lost in My Mind,” a mellow song that dips its toes in alt-country waters without taking the plunge completely. The cut proffers plaintive acoustic guitar strums and jaunty piano melodies but there is no doubt that the vocals are the main attraction here.

“Lost in My Mind” is driven by Josiah Johnson and Jonathan Russell’s interlocking vocal harmonies; the pair possess an exceptional partnership, their voices seemingly destined to intertwine like many of the great songwriting duos who preceded them. Whether it’s the train whistle “ooh-ooooh”s that lead into some of the verses or the subtle highlighting of phrases throughout, Johnson and Russell give their band’s sound a dazzling polish which is wholly unnatural for a group that had only been together for a couple of years prior to venturing into the studio together.

If you liked this song, you should also check out:

Premiere: Winter’s Fall “In Your Head”

Grand Archives “Silver Among the Gold”

The Ravenna Colt “South of Ohio”