At this point, I probably don’t have to explain why the Revival Tour is among my favorite things going in music these days. If you need to know why, just watch the video above of Chuck Ragan, Jon Gaunt, Digger Barnes, Frank Turner and the Anderson Family Bluegrass kids (among others). Those kids are fucking awesome. I finally understand why people have children: sometimes they play bluegrass. Somebody get them a beer and a smoke. Welcome to the road, kids. Grab a bitch and a buzz and bring your fiddle.

As if the tour wasn’t good enough, now I come to find that Todd Beene (from Glossary) and Ben Nichols (from Lucero) will be joining Chuck, Frank, and the guys for the upcoming Australian leg of the tour. I believe each of them have played some shows on the tour in the past, but I’m not dwelling on the past, and it looks like this permutation of pickers and grinners may be one of the best possible combos I’ve heard in a long time. Finding out your favorite musicians that all come from different background and corners of the musical world will be playing together and folkin’ it up on tour together is like watching the All-Star game and for some reason giving a shit about a completely inconsequential baseball game.

The Aussie leg of the Revival Tour doesn’t kickoff until April 22^nd, so why am I mentioning it now? I need a way to get there, and that ain’t happening on short notice, and I’m going to need a few bucks from each of you or possibly a corporate sponsorship or tips on stowing away on a boat to Australia. Perhaps I can temp as a pirate. Still working on the plan. For more on the Revival Tour, go here.

A lot of times when someone says “Southern Rock,” I go off on a rant about how it’s a bullshit term because rock n roll is from the South, so the only rock that shouldn’t have a geographical adjective should be Southern Rock. People should call the other stuff “Mid-Atlantic Rock” or “Great Plains Rock” or “that weird shit from Brooklyn.”

However, when you describe Glossary’s Feral Fire, it’s hard to avoid the term. A lot of that comes from the guitar work on the album. At times Glossary even dives head first into some classic, swinging, 70’s Southern-Rock-heyday influenced guitar licks, which so many other contemporary Southern bands avoid or even shun. It’s dangerous territory, like flying a helicopter, if you’re not really fucking good at it, you’re going to make a horrible mess, but Glossary nails it.

That’s not to say this album is a throwback or knock off, far from it.  I could go on and on using a bunch of obnoxious critic terms like “drums that drive and crash all at once,” “sonic slide guitar that dances around the soundscape,” and “yin and yang backup and lead vocals,” that firmly plant this in 2010, but quite frankly, that’s making me want to punch myself in the balls, so just take my word for it that’s it’s really fucking good.

Thanks to Alabama Ass Whuppin’ for turning me onto this one.

Go get it here or here. Or both.

Also, you can download Glossary’s previous album the Better Angels of our Nature, here for free, but if you do that, you better pay for the new one too. (The new one is even better. How much better? Exactly $7.99 better, or $9.99 if you use iTunes, either way, just go get it).