Welcome to the fifth consecutive Best Albums of the Year here at Hidden Track. Hopefully, you know by now that we pride ourselves on covering music that spans any genre, any age, any geography and any instrumental makeup. To us, good music is good music. Period.

So, you can rest assured of the one thing that will always make our list a cut above the rest: we consider everything. Our submissions include all styles of music from bluegrass to jazz, jam to indie, electronica to rap, as well as everything in between. At the end of the day, we’re a diverse open-minded music blog. Our writers work here because they have great taste in music, and thus they are encouraged simply to write about what catches their interest. We have no motives, no editorial biases and no strings attached. We hope that comes across in our picks.

So, let’s kick off our week-long celebration of the HT staff’s favorite albums of 2012 with numbers 25 through 21…

25) Old Crow Medicine Show – Carry Me Back

Sounds Like: The modern torchbearers of Bill Monore’s high and lonesome sound

Key Tracks: Carry Me Back, Levi, Bootlegger’s Boy

The Skinny: Long before it was cool to play acoustic foot-stomping Americana music, there was the Old Crow Medicine Show. The Nashville-based band, who have been around since 1998, could arguably be credited with planting the seeds the genre’s current boom – thanks in part to the popularity of their “breakout hit” Wagon Wheel. For their first album since 2008, the band welcomed back founding member Critter Fuqua, and delivered a modern Americana classic steeped in bourbon-soaked bluegrass, dusty country and traditional Appalachian folk sounds. While there has been a question about the authenticity of the newer generation of roots acts, OCMS are undoubtedly the real McCoy.

- Jeffrey Greenblatt

• Spotify Playlist: Hidden Track’s Top 25 Albums Of 2012
  
• Previously On HT: Top 25 Albums Of 2011

24) First Aid Kit – The Lion’s Roar

READ ON

My Morning Jacket teamed up with Band of Horses and Trampled By Turtles at Somerset Amphitheatre in Somerset, Wisc. on Friday for one of our favorite triple bills of the summer. We knew Trampled By Turtles were excited for the gig as they recently shared a video of their cover of MMJ’s Wonderful (The Way I Feel). At the start of My Morning Jacket’s encore, Jim James welcomed out Trampled By Turtles and the two acts collaborated on a beautiful version of Wonderful. Take a look…

My Morning Jacket w/ Trampled By Turtles – Wonderful

It doesn’t look as if Trampled By Turtles have any plans of staying off the road for the immediate future as they support their highly recommended sixth studio album Stars and Satellites. With a summer spent hitting just about every major music festival that will have them – Sasquatch, Bonnaroo, All Good, Firefly, RockyGrass, Newport Folk and Lollapalooza, among them – the rising jamgrass act will spend the majority of the fall gigging both here and an abroad, which will include their first ever-shows in the United Kingdom. The Duluth, Minn.-based band will serve as the opening act for My Morning Jacket and Band Of Horses this Friday at Somerset Amphitheater in Somerset, Wisc., and then head west for an appearance at this weekend’s Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival in San Francisco, Calif.

If your not into a night with Trampled By Turtles, then maybe you’ll be interested in hitting one of these recently announced tours…

• Jackie Greene: Fall U.S. Tour (9/27 – 11/7)
  
• The Mountain Goats: October North American Tour (10/6 – 10/27)
  
• Regina Spektor: Fall World Tour (10/2 – 12/19)
• Freelance Whales: Fall U.S. Tour (10/4 – 11/3)
• Shpongle: Fall North American Tour (9/21 – 10/31)
• The Corin Tucker Band: Fall U.S. Tour (9/13 – 10/13)
• Men Without Hats: Early Winter U.S. Tour (11/20 – 12/1)
• Six Organs Of Admittance: West Coast Tour (9/20 – 10/4)

We love when our favorite bands cover another of our faves, so we were thrilled to see that Trampled By Turtles have just released a video featuring their version of Wonderful (The Way I Feel) by My Morning Jacket. The two groups team up with Band of Horses for what’s sure to be an amazing show at Somerset Amphitheatre in Somerset, Wisc. on August 10.

And it’s not only that Trampled By Turtles covered MMJ, it’s that they did a spectacular job with the Circuital tune. Take a look and let us know if you agree with our assessment…

Trampled By Turtles – Wonderful (The Way I Feel) 

We’ve been fans of the bluegrass stylings of Trampled By Turtles since Ryan first wrote about the Duluth, Minn.-based act all the way back in December of 2009, as they were gearing up to release their “breakthrough” studio album, Palomino. The record debuted at number one on Billboard’s bluegrass charts, and remained in their top ten for well over a year, while also charting not only on the industry reporting rag’s Heatseekers’ chart, but also on their Indie one as well, peaking at number 11 and 46, respectively. That’s quite a feat for any band, let alone one that plays bluegrass music.

The origins of Trampled By Turtles goes back to 2003, when after most of his gear was stolen while playing a gig, Dave Simonett decided to put together a band that could play live with little or no amplification, drawing inspiration from the acoustic traditions of folk and bluegrass music. With a background in the rock , Simonett’s  new band mates were also relative newcomers to the genre, with a fiddle player who logged time as a drummer in a speed metal band and a bassist who came from the jamband world. All those factors helped Trampled By Turtles find their own take on bluegrass that they have fine tuned over the course of nearly a decade. Last week, the five-piece band released their sixth studio album, Stars and Satellites, which features some stunning plaintive ballads that showcase the band’s fantastic vocal harmonies as well as high quality breakneck picking that would have made Bill Monroe & His Bluegrass Boys proud. Let’s check out the music video for the record’s lead single, Alone…

Trampled By Turtles are currently on the road, and will hit the music festival circuit this summer in a major way, making high profile appearances at Sasquatch, Bonnaroo, All Good, Firefly, RockyGrass, Newport Folk and Lollapalooza.

“Behold the turtle; he makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.”

In releasing their latest full length, Palomino, Duluth’s Trampled By Turtles have not only progressed as a band – complementing their breakneck dexterity with heeding subtlety – but they’ve become integral in the redefinition of the modern string band. Together with peers like the Avett Brothers, Old Crow Medicine Show and Split Lip Rayfield, TxT have joined the seminal ranks of acoustic musicians currently leading the seismic (ok, maybe “bookshelf rattling”) shift in bluegrass music.

While the purists may well prefer singing from a hymnal, focusing intently on technique, and dressing like Abe Frohman, Trampled By Turtles infuse elements of indie rock, punk and folk music while maneuvering their heartfelt, earnest songs without losing sight of the most important thing; picking like wild banshees. In effect, they feel like a bluegrass band, yet with an uncanny ability to maintain the average attention span far beyond an opening banjo run.

Back to chat for the second time in the about six months, frontman Dave Simonett took the time to share his thoughts on the new album and sticking their turtle necks out.

Hidden Track: Let’s get rolling with a question about Palomino. So, most reviews I’ve read so far seem to really dig the album, but I found it a bit odd that most focus on the blazing speed and being shredders and all that. I actually thought right away that Palomino was heavier on the folksy side and almost a departure from the speed. I mean there are certainly some burners in there like Wait So Long, Help You and so on, but did you make a conscious effort to make this one focus a bit more on the lyrics and the melodies by including more delicate material?

Dave Simonett: There wasn’t really a conscious focus on faster or slower songs. I always focus on lyrics and melody in either fast or slow, actually. This group of songs put together is what made the album; the speed of each was just coincidental. Sometimes what I try to express needs a little more energy and aggressiveness and sometimes I try for a mellower approach, depending on the mood I’m trying to convey.

READ ON for more of Ryan’s chat with Dave Simonett…

Legend has it, one of the perks of writing for a blog is that you can speak in the fan’s voice. Well, today I’m taking that liberty to hide the objectivity under my Unabomber hoodie for a chat with a band that has rapidly grown into a personal favorite, Trampled By Turtles.

Behind the muscle of the its most recent pair of albums, the latter a nod to their hometown in Duluth and its precursor Trouble, Trampled By Turtles chipped out a niche for their band as modern string bellwether. With the their terrapin stampede ambushing listeners on songs like Ceiling Slide, The Darkness and the Light, Empire, Stranger, and Valley, they push the boundaries of acoustic music by incorporating diverse elements such as high energy bluegrass (“punkgrass” if you must), thoughtful narrative country, distinctive vocals, and squirrely chemistry.

With a massive Western US tour afoot and what sounds like it may be their best album yet coming in April, it looks like a good time to get these guys on the radar screen. Today, we catch up with guitarist and lead vocalist Dave Simonett to learn more about TxT.

Hidden Track: For starters, I wanted to say I was bummed to miss your last New York City show; ended up stuck at work late. I recall seeing that you were doing a panel discussion about the current state of bluegrass before the show. Could you share some of your thoughts on that topic here?

Dave Simonett: Actually, that didn’t end up happening. I do think bluegrass – and I use that term loosely here – is in an interesting place right now. There are a lot of people taking that old instrumentation and style and doing some innovative stuff with it. I feel like there are two camps here: the traditional bluegrass crowd, which tries to preserve the traditional catalog, etc. – sometimes to the point of musical militancy; and second, a group of musicians borrowing the style to create their own original music. This music is so easily accessible nowadays with the internet that even five guys as far away from Appalachia as Minnesota can get into it. READ ON for more…