Word Magazine 081 - Now Hear This!
CD, 2009, Heftbeilage, Digipak

The WORD release notes:
15 great hand-picked tunes
1. Loudon Wainwright III - High Wide & Handsome
Charlie Poole was a banjo player and singer from North Carolina who enjoyed success during the brief period at the close of the 1920s when there was a market for roots recordings in the USA. Come the Depression it was all over. This belated tribute to his work is the latest work of the always-reliable Wainwright repertory company (includes Rufus, Martha et al) and can be traced online in an excellent accompanying documentary.
From the album High Wide & Handsome

2. Idlewild - Readers & Writers
The fact that leader Roddy Woomble has been putting some time into his own endeavours has not meant the end of Idlewild as a band. Their departure from EMI has left them free to deal directly with their fans and they have offered people who pre-ordered their record the chance to have their name inscribed on the accompanying booklet.
From the album Post-Electric Blues

3. Zeep - Ghost Town (Isso Não Da)
Zeep are London-based musicians Nina Miranda and Chris Franck (formerly of Smoke City and Da Lata) and Ghost Town is the old Specials song relocated to the exploding conurbations of Brazil and sung, appropriately, in Portuguese. This version has earned the enthusiastic approbation of its author, Jerry Dammers.
From the album People & Things

4. The Young Republic - Black Duck Blues
The five members of The Young Republic met up while at the Berklee School Of Music, an establishment that invariably comes preceded by the adjective “prestigious”. Since then they’ve relocated to Nashville, a city whose central location seems to make it as much a magnet for musicians as its country heritage, and recorded two albums in their own studio.
From the album Balletesque

5. Dan Arborise - I Live
It provides some background on where Dan Arborise is “coming from” if you know that he took his young family to north Devon to live in a yurt, where the only water came from a well and the only heat for cooking was furnished by a wood burner. Unsurprisingly, he used the long winter evenings to write songs that reflected this special environment. This is one.
From the album Of Tide & Trail

6. Mariachi El Bronx - Slave Labor
Mariachi bands generally have a line-up as formal as a string quartet and tend to perform in outfits decorated with silver studs. The Bronx are a three-piece punk-rock band from east LA who, in deference to the all-pervasive Latino culture in that district, have developed a sideline as a Mariachi band. Hence this album.
From the album Mariachi El Bronx

THE BRONX aka mariachi el bronx
THE BRONX formed 2002 , Los Angeles, CA
Members: Matt Caughthran (vocals), Joby J. Ford (guitar, Mexican vihuela), James Tweedy (bass, 2002-07), Jorma Vik (drums), Ken Horne (guitar, 2006-present), Brad Magers (bass, trumpet, 2008-present), Vincent Hidalgo (guitar, guitarrón mexicano, 2008-present)

7. Fryars - The Ides
In the crowded annals of awkwardness there cannot be many names that require more explanation than frYars, whose middle capital is not the result of a cat landing on the shift-lock but an executive decision on the part of Londoner Ben Garrett, the solo masquerading as the collective. He did it as a tribute to KanYe.
From the EP Dark Young Hearts

8. Cymbals Eat Guitars - ...And The Hazy Sea
A four-piece from New Jersey, Cymbals Eat Guitars are fronted by Mr and Mrs Ferocious’s little boy Joseph and have had a sympathetic reception in the febrile world of East Coast indie for their debut waxing. They have nonetheless discovered that in the straitened circumstances of the record business in 2009 this means getting on the phone yourself and persuading record shops to have your album in stock. They won’t be the last.
From the album Why These Are Mountains

9. Hope Sandval & The Warm Inventions
Mexican-American Hope Sandoval sings in both Mazzy Star and Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions, while also collaborating with artists like The Chemical Brothers, The Jesus & Mary Chain and Bert Jansch. Nervous onstage, she prefers to perform with the minimum of lighting. This is her second solo record.
From the album Through The Devil Softly

10. Dot Allison - Paved With A Little Pain
There are untold thousands of people in the music business beavering away in the background, writing songs for other people, trying to get their own career on track, whom you rarely hear about. Dot Allison was a member of One Dove in the early ’90s, released her first solo record at the end of that decade and has collaborated with the likes of Death In Vegas, Bobby Gillespie and Babyshambles.
From the album Room 7 1/2

11. Polly And The Billets Doux - Don't Trouble Trouble
Literally translated as a “sweet letter”, billets doux are generally love letters. Polly is the front person of this four-piece from the Winchester area who sport a double bass, which generally denotes some sort of jazz/swing/roots music activity. This is their first long-player.
From the forthcoming album Fiction, Half-Truths and Downright Lies

12. Tinariwen - Tenhert
Further exploring the songlines that connect African music with American blues and Jamaican reggae, this great act from the Tuareg region of Mali adapt a poem by Mohammed Assori Ahmed (which translates as The Doe) and discourse upon the beauty of camels and the likelihood of rain in the desert. But you knew that already.
From the album Imidiwan: Companions

13. Kings Of Convenience - Peacetime Resistance
From beautiful Bergen they come, in chilly Norway, and they specialise in low-volume lyricism after the style of Belle And Sebastian and, from an earlier era, Simon & Garfunkel. This is their third album and it follows a prolonged hiatus during which their fans speculated that the duo’s collaboration might be at at end. The title of the album could be a clue as to why they decided to stick together.
From the album Declaration of Dependence

14. The Temper Trap - Science Of Fear
The Temper Trap come from Melbourne, Australia and have relocated to the UK in order to try their luck in a bigger pool. So far they’ve managed to wrangle Radio 1 sessions and have even extended their reach across the Atlantic to SXSW appearances. This, their first album, was completed in the UK with British producer Jim Abbiss.
From the album Conditions

15. BJ Cole & Lushlife - Cristo Redentor
And finally, to play us out so to speak, here’s BJ Cole, Palmers Green’s gift to the pedal steel guitar, vibraphonist Roger Beaujolais and bassist Simon Thorpe playing Donald Byrd’s immortal classic in the style that they unblushingly describe as “loft-jazz”. It’s rather lovely.
From the album Lushlife