Album: Todd Snider, Live: The Storyteller (Aimless)

Some aspects of the music business can't just be magicked up via the interweb.

Todd Snider has the kind of audience rapport that comes only through years of one-night stands and the confidence that builds in one's character – even if that character is of an inveterate ne'er-do-well peacenik, wryly proud of his inability to grow old gracefully. It also helps that he's a great polemical songwriter blessed with the gift of making issues entertaining, whether it's the wage-slave blues of "Stuck On The Corner", the establishment's penchant for folk-devil dis-tractions, roundly skewered in "Tension" and "Ballad of the Kingsmen", or the midlife crises of "Rose City" and "Greencastle Blues", which find him asking: "How do you know when it's too late to learn?".

DOWNLOAD THIS Is this Thing Working?; KK Rider Story; Rose City; Ballad of the Kingsmen