Basement Birds

Also discovered this record while perusing the Australian charts.  It was released in the USA in July to little or zero fanfare, but let me tell you something, if you want to find the next Mumford & Sons-type sleeper hit to impress your musical friends, this is it.  The four members are all acoustic singer/songwriters well-known Down Under, so they equate themselves with the Traveling Wilburys, which is self-appointed high praise if you ask me, but I get the reasoning behind the comparison.  There is a Little River Band theme running through this album, but without the strong lead vocalist like Shorrock or Farnham.  Plenty of great harmonies, a la CSN&Y, the Rembrandts, maybe even Fleet Foxes.  Here is a video for an example Not the One.  This is Aussie-cana if I ever heard it!  One of the great things about a record like this is it morphs into something else each time you spin it, taking on new meaning depending on your listening environment.  I believe I would have sequenced the tracks differently as it starts out a tad slow but hits its stride about five songs in and is solid the rest of the way.  Don't let the Explicit Lyrics warning turn you off because there is only one "Ducking" in the entire record (damn that Tipper Gore).  The track called "Reasons" contains what would have to be one of the great karaoke stumper lines of all time:  "Only the lonely will tell you they're happy to be on their own when they're singing along to the songs that remind them of times when they weren't quite as happy to be on their own."  Whew, now that was even hard to type!