A Bullet for Fidel - Cold Before Morning

This one of my favorite releases on the label, and not just because I had some personal involvement (a couple arrangements, a little guitar, sequencing). It’s definitely an outlier in the catalog - although it has a rock and roll spirit, it’s a largely acoustic, song-oriented affair. Brian DiPlacido has one of those voices that while not entirely perfect, rings like a bell and drips with humanity. Although it’s not explicitly country or folk music, many of the songs evoke Hank Williams to me - there’s a similar familiarity with the darkness of the soul, a deep empathy for the common man, and a longing for redemption. The songs were culled from a large batch, so this is also an album with a high signal to noise ratio. The vinyl edition features a homemade jacket and an uncredited bonus track - an alternate rock band version of “Far Away from Here” where he’s backed by Roaring Third era Prisonshake.