Mt Desolation - Mt Desolation

Keane's Tim Rice-Oxley and Jesse Quin, who serves as Keane's touring bassist, joined forces over a few pints at a Dublin pub last year with the goal of creating an album of "alt-country" music -- a collaboration that, after a few fits and re-starts, has resulted in Mt Desolation and a self-titled debut album due stateside October 19 via Interscope. Trading songs back and forth, broadening their initial stylistic boundaries to include a variety of acoustic styles, Rice-Oxley and Quin have followed somewhat in the steps of Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody and his Tired Pony side project in finding that hybrid of modern British pub/folk (a la Mumford and Sons) and uniquely Americana influences. Leaning more on Wilco than Hank Williams, Mt Desolaton finds it's best moments in the subtle details of superior songwriting.

The duo wisely called upon Emery Dobyns, best known for his sterling work on last year's Noah & The Whale project, to take the producer's seat in the studio while bringing in fiddle, banjo and pedal steel players to add the appropriate flourishes. Mt Desolation is an album that, despite it's declared focus, stubbornly refuses to be pinned down. Tracks move from moody ballad (the lovely "Coming Home") to jaunty barroom raveups ("Platform 7"). From dusty tumbleweed country blues ("Midnight Ghost") to So-Cal Eagle-ish anthem ("Annie Ford"). Lead track (and free download) "State of Our Affairs" is more Blue Nile than Blue Ridge Rangers, but this beguiling debut album reflects, as their bio states, the "joy of making music without any motive other than just doing what they loved."

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Mt Desolation - "Bitter Pill" (from the album Mt Desolation)

Mt Desolation - "State of Our Affairs" (from the album Mt. Desolation)