Picking the best folk and Americana records of the year isn't nearly as hard as discarding those great records that just didn't feel right stuck in the category.
Releases by Calexico and DeVotchKa felt far too worldly to pigeonhole as folk or country, for instance, while Blitzen Trapper's fantastic Furr smells more like the Kinks than Neil Young. [Editor's note: That's why we put it on our indie-rock list.] We likewise discarded Shearwater's near-masterpiece Rook, despite the fact that the album
Pam Cantu​
Thanks to Classic Rock Bob Ruggiero for passing along the following bit of happy news. In today's edition of Rolling Stone's "Rock and Roll Daily" blog, the first band listed in the "Hype Monitor" section is none other than Houston's own listenlisten. The Hype Monitor got hip to Hymns from Rhodesia, listenlisten's forthcoming LP due September 22. Here's a little of what Rolling Stone had to say:
"It's the kind of music cowboys might hear in the distance as they stagger dumbly to the
