You'll Never Know How Much I Love You So : My Cousin, The Emperor

Half the country music we call country music today doesn't quite fit. The sentiment is often "throw an alt- on that country and let it lie." Sure, there may be a twang or a heartbroken lyric here and there, but where's the desolation, the loneliness, and most importantly, the barn-stomping, string breaking fury?

Seems like all that pent up country music has been hiding in a band from, of all unlikely places, Brooklyn. The band's called My Cousin, the Emperor; the album is A Long Way From Home, filled to the brim with both alone-in-the-pouring-rain ballads and throw-me-another-whiskey barroom romps. But included in the whole mess is an influence most country bands, alt- or otherwise, would never touch—Nick Drake. Jason Reischel's voice, in his band's more introspective ballads, achieves a solemnity and isolation that hints at Drake's last-man-on-earth ache. Check out "There's Only You" and try not to hear Pink Moon.

Call these Brooklyn boys poseurs if you want — their debut sounds more honest than most of the dribble coming from Nashville, from the slow-paced, hauntingly beautiful "Montevideo" and the fullmoon-over-a-lonesome-highway cry of "I Cried For You" to the gritty, toy-piano hustle of "Broken Bottle Blues No. 2," expect to see the kiddies dancing/swaying/feeling My Cousin, the Emperor.

MP3 : My Cousin, the Emperor - A Long Way From Home

By Justin Jacobs

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