Hit List

Matt Munisteri and Brock Mumford, Love Story.

Although he and his cohorts hail from New York City, Matt Munisteri's music could perhaps best be described as "midwestern swing." There's a pastoral quality to Munisteri's Cole Porter-influenced songs, delivered in a warm, "regular guy" voice, and the band's front line of lightly amplified acoustic guitar, trumpet, and accordion make it the perfect replacement combo should the Prairie Home Companion house band ever have a run-in with a dodgy batch of tuna casserole. Munisteri's wit is prodigious (he seems to have swallowed a rhyming dictionary) and his antecedents can be gleaned from a look at the songs he covers on Love Story. Choice selections from Willard Robison, Hoagy Carmichael, Bob Dylan, and Van Dyke Parks sit comfortably among Munisteri's own. He's also a talented and original guitarist, alternating funky fingerpicking accompaniment, which often doubles his vocal melody, with pungent, jazzy single-note solos, and his midrangey, lo-fi tone is more reminiscent of blues guitarists than any of the standard jazz models. (Old Cow, www.brockmumford.com)

—Scott Nygaard

Alice Stuart, Can't Find No Heaven.

On Can't Find No Heaven Alice Stuart proves that she deserves mention in the same breath as Bonnie Raitt and Rory Block as a blues interpreter. Her guitar work is sweet and salty on electric cuts like Willie Dixon's "Big Boss Man" and Fred McDowell's "Drop Down Daddy," and she shows a deft touch on fingerpicked acoustic numbers like Furry Lewis' "Turn Your Money Green" and Skip James' "Hard Time Killin' Floor." Her soulful vocals, tinged with road weariness, should draw more than a few comparisons to Raitt's. (Burnside, www.burnsiderecords.com)

—Ian Zack

Eliades Ochoa, Estoy Como Nunca.

First heard on these shores providing smoky lead vocals and masterful tres-guitar lines for Ry Cooder's Buena Vista Social Club, Eliades Ochoa has collected 11 ballads covering nearly a century and woven them into his most emotionally satisfying album yet. On Estoy Como Nunca, Ochoa's playing and singing is always relaxed, even when delivering upbeat numbers like the title track, which practically commands one to dance and smile. "No Me Preguntes Tanto" features a vocal duet with the honey-voiced Raul Malo, and Ochoa's new take on the standard "Siboney" is flawless. On "Sus Ojos Se Cerraron," he accompanies his vocal with just the tres, displaying a beautifully understated mastery of the instrument. (Higher Octave World, www.higheroctave.com)

—Danny Carnahan

Ani DiFranco, So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter.

Culled from recordings of full-band concerts from 2000 to 2002, Ani DiFranco's double-disc live set So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter adopts the same warts-and-all approach the folked-up, punk-jazz funketeer took on her first live CD, Living in Clip, which includes both thunderous applause and periodic screwups. (DiFranco opens the new set by cursing and giggling about her acoustic guitar's wily refusal to comply with the program.) So Much Shouting is a testament to DiFranco's magnetic and political stage persona, taut picking, and speed-of-light strums. Older fans will appreciate such vintage material as "Cradle and All," and recent converts will delight in "Self Evident," a spoken-word poem inspired by the events of September 11, 2001. (Righteous Babe, www.righteousbabe.com)

—Karen Iris Tucker

Mose Scarlett, Precious Seconds.

With a rich voice that recalls the Mills Brothers and a fingerpicking style that blends country blues and ragtime with swing jazz chords, Mose Scarlett makes even the two post-1940s tunes on Precious Seconds—Steve Goodman's "Don't Go Lookin' for Trouble" and Scarlett's own "Muscatel Tale"—sound like early jazz/blues standards. Amos Garrett, Jeff Healey, Colin Linden, and other stellar pickers back Scarlett on acoustic guitars, enhancing such tunes as "Darktown Strutters Ball," "She's Funny That Way," and Big Bill Broonzy's "Good Liquor Gonna Carry Me Down." Scarlett's treatment of this material is witty, laid-back, and always reverential, with great guitar work throughout by Scarlett and his venerable guests. (Borealis, www.borealisrecords.com)

—Ron Forbes-Roberts

Ellis Paul, The Speed of Trees.

On The Speed of Trees, his first studio release in four years, singer-songwriter Ellis Paul uses his filmmaker's sensibility to create lyric portraits of uncommon intimacy. After framing the scene with a novelist's eye, he peppers it with details, guitar-based flourishes, and an atmospheric tenor that arcs across the instruments. Four of these songs appeared on two earlier releases, Live and Sweet Mistakes, but here producer Duke Levine uses a variety of guitars, mandolin, sitar, lap steel, organ, and harmony vocals by Lucy Kaplansky and Jennifer Kimball to give Paul's songs a radio-ready feel. The surprise here is "God's Promise," Woody Guthrie's poignant, unrecorded lyric, which Paul found in the Guthrie archives and brought to life with a sweet melody. (Rounder, www.rounder.com)

—Kathryn Rutz

Harvey Reid, Dreamer or Believer.

Dreamer or Believer is a two-CD retrospective of singer, songwriter, and fingerpicker Harvey Reid's 20-year recording career. Each disc contains 20 tracks, one from each year of his career, with the first disc devoted to instrumentals and the second to vocals, most of which are original songs. Reid is a masterful picker who plays six- and 12-string guitars, bouzouki, and Autoharp with equal skill; his repertoire ranges from Appalachian fiddle tunes to blues and even a bit of Bach. He is known primarily as a guitarist, but selections like the introspective "Circles" and the bittersweet "The Flower of Loudoun County" prove that Reid is also a talented songwriter. (Woodpecker, www.woodpecker.com)

—Michael Simmons

Buddy Miller, Midnight and Lonesome.

Recorded in the spare moments between his many other projects (playing guitar with Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, and Lucinda Williams, and recording and touring with his wife, Julie Miller), Midnight and Lonesome is the best work Buddy Miller's ever done, an album that's playful one minute and heartbreaking the next. He takes an unlikely set of coversÐthe Everly Brothers' "The Price of Love," Percy Mayfield's "Please Send Me Someone to Love," and Jesse Winchester's "A Showman's Life"Ðand makes them completely his own, topped only by the songs that he and his wife have written. "Wild Card" is hard-lived honky-tonk, "Little Bitty Kiss" is straight-ahead country, "Water When the Well Is Dry" is true rock 'n' roll, and "Quecreek," about last year's rescue at a Pennsylvania mine, is pure mountain soul. This rich collection is a watershed for Miller, its songs beautifully arranged and deeply rooted. (Hightone, www.hightone.com)

—Kenny Berkowitz

Excerpted from Acoustic Guitar magazine, March 2003, No. 123.

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