Yeah, we know it’s Monday, but Ha Ha Tonka‘s Death of a Decade was going to be our tip-off tomorrow when we were tipped-off ourselves to this little tidbit of info.
You can get Death of a Decade today, 24 hours early, exclusively at Amazon MP3. Suck it linear time. This is the internet. Read our thoughts on the album, see some sweet vids of the band (including one of them hanging out with Anthony Bourdain) and get that hot link to grab the album early.
In our minds Ha Ha Tonka has always been tied to the group J Roddy Walston & The Business. Part of this is surely because we discovered both bands right around the same time, but also because both update classic southern influenced rock and roll, even if they call Baltimore (JRWATB) and Missouri (HHT) home. Whereas JRWATB build upon the groundwork first laid out by Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, Ha Ha Tonka take the expansive country rock of The Band (also not from the south) and infuse it with an energy not unlike some of Ryan Adams better projects. But there’s more to it than that. DoaD has the emotionally uplifting quality of the best classic r&b singers. It’s an infectious record that sounds simultaneously like a Saturday night out with friends and the following Sunday morning in the church pew with family. Call it soul music for the alt.country set. We call it one of the best albums we’ve heard in a long time.
Grab the album today from Amazon MP3 here: http://tinyurl.com/3tr86m3
Here’s the boys performing the lead track “Usual Suspects”
And here’s the boys featured on a recent episode of No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain.
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