Mike Johnson - Year of Mondays

Johnson's second solo album is a total treat -- anyone who loves Mark Lanegan's solo work or The Walkabouts will find something really grand here. With his then-Dinosaur Jr. employer J Mascis doing a fine job on the drums, playing with brushes as skillfully as with sticks, and a rotating crew of supporting players on other instruments, Johnson lives up to his bold but straightforward album dedication to Charlie Rich. There's plenty of slow, exquisitely sorrowful country-tinged misery here, too gently pretty in its melancholy to pander to the freaked-out/f*cked-up wing of alt-country, all too out of place to score anywhere with Nashville's cult of the hat in the '90s. Read More