(Being an occasional playback of great revelations in tiny clubs)

The Tall Pines, National Underground (159 E. Houston St., NYC) 6/23/09

If the roots of country-rock and urban pop had been allowed to snake up through the decades rather than stunted by early deaths and fickle fashions into their own small period-piece plots of the music landscape, they’d be towering over us, entwined, as the Tall Pines. The Pines twist the laws of sonic spacetime so that the mythic geographies of C&W trailer parks and soul chanteuses’ mean streets are right next to each other, bumped and ground together for a critical mass of heartache and release. The Tall Pines’ songs and shows are a renewable cycle of sustained-twang lamentation and cathartic Roger Corman-flick hipster communion. Tyrannies of style overthrown, they are torchbearers of immortal groove, taking leisurely victory laps around the outskirts of history. A promised land where Cloud Nine is balanced on the bouffants of sundressed sirens and the pearly gates are guarded by stubbled, charcoal-voiced apostles of Kristofferson. The Tall Pines are the house band of the back of my mind.

[New disk and download: Campfire Songs, www.myspace.com/thetallpines]