ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS - Forest Of Tears

$100's Simone Schmidt sings tough tales through grit teeth, slipping serious stories into these songs as earthy experience is couched in country music's common concerns.  Sequenced such that the form fully falls away by the time of "Tirade Of A Shitty Mom"'s Moon Pix-ish domestic dirge, Rick White's pristine off-the-floor engineering gives the group a sharper sound that lets Stew Crookes' pedal parts cry out overtop all the clearer. Rapt, packed houses whenever Schmidt and guitarist/co-writer Ian Russell have played cozier haunts like the Tranzac suggest that this six-piece incarnation will win over whatever taverns, roadhouses, and house parties they're bound to play.