Middle Brother

This singer-songwriter summit — John McCauley of Deer Tick, Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith, Delta Spirit’s Matthew Vasquez — is an alt-country round robin, with raw harmonies and punk-rock sentiment as unforgiving as a prison shiv. “I know my days are numbered, but I’m bad at math/I got a dick so hard that a cat couldn’t scratch,” howls McCauley on “Middle Brother.” Half the songs on Middle Brother involve drinking and the rest hangovers of the heart, and on Paul Westerberg’s “Portland,” everyone chimes in on the line “It’s too late to turn back, here we gooooo” — they’re certain of trouble ahead, and relishing it.

Listen to “Me, Me, Me”:

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