The recent collapse of the Borders Books & Music chain became much more understandable to me when I visited the half dozen or so locations in my area during their last week in business. In each store, I discovered around a dozen compact discs by The Dutchess and the Duke remaining on the picked-over music shelves.

It was puzzling, to say the least. In what reality were the music buyers for Borders living, that they would stock their shelves so deeply with The Dutchess and The Duke? Not ours, unfortunately. If their handling of this particular band was indicative of their general mindset, the people in charge of acquiring music for Borders let their own apparently impeccable taste in music cloud their judgment of America’s taste as a whole and paid the price for that overly charitable assessment.

Speaking for myself, I’d love to live in a reality where Borders’ faith in the American musical preference was justified and where overloading the CD racks with The Dutchess and The Duke’s brand of bluesy psych-folk was a sound commercial decision. But alas, we don’t, and discovering dozens of discs by the band in the emptying shelves of a dying retail chain was a wtf? moment of the highest order. On top of that, not only did Borders go the way of the dinosaur, but The Dutchess and The Duke had actually preceded them into oblivion, packing it in a year before the company that apparently had tremendous faith in their commercial potential did.

If we lived in the reality the Borders music buyers believed we inhabited, it would be headline news that the Duke – Jesse Lortz – is back with a new solo project called Case Studies. The people of America would be hanging on every word Lortz sings on “The Eagle, or the Serpent.” We would all be thrilling to the contrast between Lortz’s vocals, which recall Dylan’s weird Nashville Skyline voice, and the sweet female voices arrayed behind him like a madrigal chorus. Across the nation, Americans would marvel at the skillful arrangement, the way additional instruments are subtly introduced behind the strummed acoustic guitar until there’s a full band playing by the end of the song. “The Eagle, or the Serpent” would be in the mainstream, not a song by a cult project by the survivor of another cult project.

Sadly, the reality in which Jesse Lortz is a major star is not the one we live in, as Borders discovered too late. But mistaking major talent for major commercial potential is at least a noble blunder and the music buyers for Borders should be applauded for that. In a better world, those Dutchess and The Duke CDs should have flown off the shelves and not still been sitting there forlornly as the stores prepared to shutter for good. The advance buzz for Lortz’s work as Case Studies would have been deafening.

It’s not that world, though. But at least we still have Lortz recording songs like “The Eagle, or the Serpent” to dull the edge of that harsh reality.

You can find “The Eagle, or the Serpent” and ten other tracks on Case Studies’ debut LP, The World Is Just A Shape to Fill the Night, out now on Sacred Bones.

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

Unicycle Loves You “Mirror, Mirror”

Alexandra Patsavas. The name may not be familiar to you but if you’ve followed music at all for the last decade, her tastes have likely had some bearing on what ends up on your iPod. Patsavas is the music supervisor behind such network tv shows as The O.C. and Grey’s Anatomy, and in that role she has probably been more responsible for bringing relatively obscure artists to mass audiences than any other person operating during the same time period. While many will likely roll their eyes at the thought of musical montages featuring ridiculously attractive doctors having emotional crises, there’s no denying that Patsavas shined a deserved spotlight on more than a few very worthwhile artists (in addition to countless legions of bland secretary rockers, the inevitable downside of her efforts.)

One such deserving artist to get a boost from featured placement on Grey’s Anatomy is Oxford, Mississippi’s Sanders Bohlke, whose tune “The Weight of Us” turned up on the show a few years back. An ethereal folk tune with echoes of Damien Rice and Nick Drake, “The Weight of Us” subsequently spread from Grey’s Anatomy to other shows in need of Bohlke’s somber gravitas to add the emotional heft the shows themselves were seemingly incapable of generating on their own, such as Smallville and The Vampire Diaries.

Any attention directed Bohlke’s way is a good thing, because as demonstrated by “Quiet Ye Voices,” he’s definitely worth the focus. Bohlke tips his hand with the title, showing that he’s more interested in the timeless and the slightly archaic than he is in being particularly contemporary. One gets the feeling that he wouldn’t be too upset if audiences were to assume that the song was an old ballad passed down for generations in remote Appalachian villages. However, he’s picked the perfect time to be timeless, as the swooping vocal harmonies he constructs to cushion his own voice put “Quiet Ye Voices” squarely in the same camp as the similarly out-of-time Fleet Foxes, and Bohlke proves himself to be just as fleet of foot as that combo.

So a round of thanks ought to be extended to Alexandra Patsavas. As the traditional outlets for musicians to get their work heard by the public began to wither over the last decade, she stepped up and opened a new door via prime time weepies. While a lot of the artists that burst through that door could have remained mired in obscurity with no detriment to the world at large, the occasional emergence of artists with the level of Sanders Bohlke ultimately makes Patsavas’ work worthwhile.

The Quiet Ye Voices 7″ was released in mid-August as a part of Communicating Vessels‘ limited edition vinyl singles series (which also includes an installment from previously featured act The Great Book of John).

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

The Black Hollies “Gloomy Monday Morning”

Although “Bugs” begins with a folksy veneer, it soon reveals itself to be much more than a wispy strum-along. Eschewing the alternative acoustics of acts like Fleet Foxes, O’Death instead opt to craft songs which make respectful nods toward the stringed music of Appalachia but whose wingspan lifts them to far loftier heights. Through a whirl of fiddle, banjo, and ukulele (in addition to more traditional rock’n'roll accompaniment), the New York City quintet showcases intricately interwoven melodies against singer Greg Jamie’s feathery vocals.

“Bugs” opens the band’s new third full-length, Outside, which was released by the Ernest Jenning Record Co. this past April. The tune is representative of the band’s ethos: very approachable yet quite clever and filled with all sorts of little surprises (a rhythmic shift here, a contrapuntal phrase there) which make it a pleasurable game of discovery for the listener. Brevity is another one of “Bugs”‘ virtues; that O’Death manage to pack so many musical ideas and textures into just over two minutes makes the song all the more impressive and amenable to repeated spins.

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

The 10 Best Songs of 2011 (So Far)

The singer-songwriter with an acoustic guitar is probably the most primal form of pop music – anything beyond that is embellishment. But if it it’s the most basic form of music, it’s also one of the trickiest to pull off well – the line between what is simple and powerful and what is sentimental and maudlin is a thin one. On the surface, songs like the beloved “The Blower’s Daughter” by Damien Rice and the reviled “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt might sound similar, but in their depths they are worlds apart.

On “George Square,” New Jersey musician and poet David Berkeley lands firmly in the Rice camp. Superficially, there’s not much that separates the song from thousands of “longing for my lover” songs by thousands of sensitive singer-songwriters, but Berkeley manages to nail the right alchemy in his combination of imagery, melody, and arrangement to make “George Square” a keeper. It could have been cloying and mawkish but Berkeley makes it heartfelt and moving, adorning his song with just enough instrumentation to enhance the mood but not enough to mask the simple acoustic performance at its core.

Sometimes the simplest approaches to art are the most dangerous to attempt. An acoustic troubadour can’t hide behind layers of feedback and sonic trickery – if his songwriting is deficient, he’s got no place to hide. Like Damien Rice, Ron Sexsmith, Josh Ritter, and David Gray at his best, David Berkeley has the talent to withstand the scrutiny.

“George Square” is the lead track on Berkeley’s self-released new album, Some Kind of Cure.

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

Jenny and Johnny “Big Wave”

February 2011 MP3 Rewind

Princeton “Sadie and Andy”