Plugging Good Music Without Shame

I feel no shame in plugging the new album Fears & Accusations by two talented musicians, Brent Bowman and Bryan Lisa. While many musicians have talent, it doesn't mean a thing unless they can put together a tight, impressive product. But, these guys have done just that.

Before its release, I had heard that I should expect a brooding, acoustic album inspired by the likes of Iron & Wine, Bob Dylan, and Tom Waits. However, upon my first listen, I realized Bowman and Lisa have created something more. These songs could easily be the calm artful tune in the middle of the kickass album of any of your favorite rockers, like Snow Patrol, Jet, or the Foo Fighters.

Opening with the catchy waiting, the album welcomes you into a genre of music as difficult to describe as Bowman and Lisa have framed it on their MySpace page: "your basic acoustic/alternative/emo/folk/blues/alt-country/rock band."

Bowman and Lisa continue with a dozen more tracks that might at first seem to run around high-five'ing as many influences as possible - Chris Isaak, Waits, B.B. King, Radiohead, and Townes Van Zandt, to name just a few - but, in the end, they take some great sounds from these genres and influences, and put them together to create something excitingly new and yet comfortably familiar.

The haunting exhuming you recounts the mixed emotions of a past relationship that Mark Kozelek of Sun Kil Moon would know well, while on looking back, Bowman channels powerful crooning similar to the Chris Martin warhead of Coldplay's musical arsenal. Bowman, however, infuses it with a strength and grit that Martin could never pull off, making for an emotionally stirring ballad.

Other tracks on the album show Bowman and Lisa's lighter side, with the fun romp, i'm the man, showcasing Bowman's guitar talent and successfully trashing every controlling golddigger ever to think she could latch her hands into a musician, while the blues-infused something in our skies will have even the most mainstream-pop listening whiners stomping their feet.

While the album heads out with increasingly dark tunes, such as the final destructive ballad of a man using prostitutes to dream of his lost love, it reminds me that beneath all the bubblegum pop out there, good musicians are still making good music.

I hesitate any time I think of plugging a certain artist. There are simply too many people out there endorsing absolute crap for all the wrong reasons. So, I thought hard about whether to do so for these guys, but the fact is that I think you'll like their album. It's simply good music, and you'll be humming these songs to yourself long after the closing notes.



Buy Fears & Accusations