Various Artists

Our Side of Town: A Red House Records 25th Anniversary Collection

2008-03-31

As you might suspect, these 18 previously released tracks by current Red House artists are a pretty solid bunch of songs. Overall, the sound has an informal, acoustic roots aura about it, but on closer inspection the songwriting and playing on each song are impeccable and well-thought out. Within this acoustic roots context there is still variety. There is the grittier, edgier stuff (1, 3, 11) The more country based stuff (2, 4, 17) The more wholesome sounding stuff (5, 8, 9, 16) To top it off, there is this string of extraordinary songs that are none of the above and perhaps worth a first listen: Jorma’s awesome fingerstyling (13) Guy Davis’ driving blues (14) Peter Ostroushko’s Midwest Worldbeat sound (15) -Pete Lewandoski