Frank Turner - Lost Evenings IX

Frank Turner is aware of the passage of time, of the influence of days that drag and months that gallop can exert on what he would probably never dream of calling his body of work. After all, it has been a number of years now since the hardcore troubadour transformed himself from The Boy Who Surely Could Not, to The Man That Did; it has been years now that his name has appeared in the largest type on ticket stubs that permit entry to such venues as Wembley Arena, or the Royal Albert Hall; just as it has been years since the sound of his voice projecting itself from a digital radio was anything like a surprise, let alone a novelty. From the ferocious, sweaty box venues of rock band Million Dead to starting from scratch with an acoustic guitar in pubs and bedrooms in 2005, Frank’s popularity grew with his artistry. Selling out gradually bigger venues – Camden’s Barfly, King’s Cross Scala, Shepherd’s Bush Empire and Wembley Arena (both captured for posterity on DVD); four albums in England Keep My Bones ends up selling 100K copies and rising; performing in front of millions worldwide before the official opening ceremony of London 2012 Olympics.

(Alt-country) An alt-country band with punk roots, Vandoliers formed in 2015, bringing together a group of Dallas-Fort Worth musicians who'd already logged more than a decade in their own punk and folk bands. Together, the guys make a different sound, mixing raw, rough-edged roots music with the focused, fiery storytelling of front man Joshua Fleming. "We wanted to approach country music from a rock perspective," says Fleming, who fills the band's debut Ameri-Kinda with anthems about hitting the highway, draining beer bottles, rallying against your opponents and, occasionally, dropping acid. Behind him the guys kick up plenty of fast-moving dust, filling the songs with train beats, gang vocals, blasts of brass, and bursts of guitar. Rounded out by bassist Mark Moncrieff, drummer Guyton Sanders, fiddler Travis Curry, electric guitarist Dustin Fleming and multi-instrumentalist Cory Graves, Vandoliers pay tribute to Texas by putting their own spin on the state's musical history. Ameri-Kinda is exactly what its title suggests: a twist on a familiar sound, delivered with a wink of the eye and a bang of the head. It's twang and tattoos, grit and guitars, honky-tonk and horns, Tejano and Telecasters. It's Vandoliers.