A Year In December is a series of notes in which I talk about a song a day until the end of the year, limiting myself to one paragraph. They will be songs that have been part of my aural life this year so most of them are relatively new releases. Today, I talk about something by The Teskey Brothers.
Most songs on The Teskey Brothers’ Half Mile Harvest fit right in the soul resurgence we’ve seen recently in the indie festival circuits. A voice that cracks like a heart, brass for punctuation, guitars that make your shoulders pop. More bluesy than the other cuts, ‘Shiny Moon’ takes me somewhere, right back to when I first picked up a guitar and wanted to learn the music of the Mississippi Delta off YouTube teachers with cheap webcams. I remember trying to learn licks again and again, unable to pull off any of the swagger of the late greats. ‘Shiny Moon’ has two lead guitars: one possibly played with a slide, the other a grittier Stevie Ray Vaughan with restraint, making cleaner double stops than a bus in traffic. It sounds so simple and yet so complete. I don’t think I’ll ever play like The Teskey Brothers, but I’m perfectly content to sit and listen.
Joel Mak 