As a quick housekeeping matter of interest, I’m thinking I’ll stick with this new music theme for my turns on the Friday Mix Tape from here on out. Since we don’t really do a whole lot by way of album reviews, it seems like a good way to help get the word out on quality new releases. Plus, it’s a lot of fun to put together and folks seems to like it. If you ever have anything you’d like to see included, you’re welcome to shoot me an email at ryan@glidemagazine.com. Alright, now to the tunes…

This week, we kick off with one of my absolute favorite songs of the year called When You’ve No Eyes by Alec Ounsworth, one of the driving forces behind Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Ounsworth killed it on his solo debut Mo Beauty with a terrific concept; record an album in New Orleans with a crew of funk legends (George Porter Jr., Robert Walter, and Stanton Moore) and let them spread their wings on a clever and entirely non-funk record. Next, we head to a track off another of my favorites this year, Devendra Banhart’s major label debut What Will We Be called Angelika.

READ ON for more of Ryan’s description of the tracks on FMT…

Next, we hit the title track from Sam Bush’s hot from the plant Circles Around Me. As always, Mr. Telluride wears his heart on his sleeve with this song painting a touching  picture of personal reflection on his music career, his friends, and his life. Keeping it going, we’ve got the adorable Karen O and the Kids with All Is Love from my favorite part in Where The Wild Things Are. For the record, I expected to fall in love with this movie, but ultimately thought it was just pretty good. Over-hyped for sure, but this song rules. Next stop, we have Drew Emmitt and Bill Nershi singing about Costa Rica off New Country Blues, a tune reminiscent of Rocky Top after about seven daiquiris.

Jimkata dropped a great sophomore album and here we have the title track, Burn My Money. I assume they named the album as such to reflect the fact that they are giving it away for free on their website, but with the quality demonstrated here, I think folks might just be compelled to hit that “donation” link.

In our effort to perpetuate the ridiculously early playing of Christmas music, we have one from Bob Dylan’s holiday cheese platter Christmas In the Heart. This Big Pink song here sounds pretty cool from A Brief History of Love. I primarily added this one, because Rolling Stone pimped it out, so wanted to check it out. And last but not least, Bryan Sutton and friends tear through probably the best new bluegrass recording I’ve heard this year off his solo effort Almost Live.