My Week Beats Your Year

James Jackson Toth returns, or has always been here, recording these tracks in lonesome sundown evenings alone or with maybe a pet or a bottle as companions between 2000 and 2010. This is the type of record (like his refuge-seeking songs on "Born Bad") that reveals Toth's coherent conception of low-down, lo-fi folk in its starkest form. Light electric meanderings hang out with late night strummers and Toth sings himself right out of the songs. "Sloppy Drunk" is the essential; booze and reminiscing on the blue yodeler. "Tribulation Fear" (also appearing on Toth's forthcoming release with the Kentucky-based Good Saints) should be sung at every campfire, every time. "I Feel Like Emmett Kelly" is a song that mentions feeling like Emmett Kelly and "sweeping up the spotlights", which is really really awesome. "I Feel Like a Blade of Grass" talks on playing "a little ball high school" and then the road turned to a ribbon of "electrical tape in the cold black rain." Every nuance of these songs are quotable. Recommended for those evenings.