Sunday, April 19, 2009

Mike Hale - Lives Like Mine

You may (or should) remember Mike Hale from his time fronting the mighty Gainesville punk rock triple threat that is/was Gunmoll. They were sort of a Gainesville Jawbreaker and were no strangers to bringing the noise to a basement or house show. They broke up sort of acrimoniously a couple years ago. In the interim, Hale has moved out to California and formed a new band called In The Red that have a record called Volume 2 out courtesy of the good folk of Suburban Home. You can get it here. Look for a review soon on JS-NYC.

In The Red are still a band, but Hale has decided to quit his job and give up his lease to become a full-time musician. It ambitious, especially in this day and age, but he's got a decent record to springboard with.  Lives Like Mine is all Hale, with spartan guitar and/or piano backing. It's nice, if not especially engaging for me personally. Hale has a nice voice and the songs are all better than the average stuff you'll hear. Forgive me, but Austin Lucas has raised the bar improbably high for me as it concerns solo fare in this day and age. It's definitely worth checking out and, as luck would have it, Suburban Home and Vinyl Collective are giving away Lives Like Mine away for free here, so check it out yourself and spread the gospel, if you see fit. Hale has a running series of posts from the road at punknews.org that you can keep up on here. His social networking engine can be found here, if you do that sort of thing.

R

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