Welcome back to my comically belated, week-long roundup of non-local music favorites from 2009! Though in fairness to myself, this is appearing a full week earlier than it did last year. Maybe next year (this year?) I can actually do one of these things before the end of the year. Baby steps.

Anyway, before we go on I should note that not all of the music we discuss this week was necessarily made in the past twelve months. Most of it was, of course. But some of it is merely music that I found, or that found me, last year. For example, Joe Pug.

I was introduced to Pug’s 2008 debut EP Nation of Heat earlier this year and fell head over heels pretty much at first listen. But I admit I felt a bit late to the party as I read up on the Chicago tunesmith and encountered all manner of glowing music hack hyperbole, including numerous instances of that most unforgivable of rock scribe transgressions, Dylanpomorphism. And then there was this nugget from Paste magazine’s Deputy Editor, Jason Killingsworth, who employed a fiendishly clever way of drawing the connection without ever explicitly doing so, writing, “Twenty years from now, lazy journalists will compare every halfway decent songwriter to Joe Pug.” Well played, sir.

I won’t waste your time overselling Pug with foolhardy comparisons to Dylan — he reminds me more of Bobby Bare Jr. anyway — or predicting that he’s the next great American songwriter. I’ll just tell you this. Joe Pug writes some of the grittiest and wittiest music I’ve heard in the last year. Aaaand, according to my sister, Ariel, who caught him live in Chicago recently, “He’s so cute.” So he’s got that going for him, which is nice.

I’ll also tell you this: if you like what you hear in the video below, you can download his latest EP for free on his website. The new quickie, entitled In the Meantime, was released to sate fans until his first full length album, Messenger, hits shelves in February.

Nation of Heat

Joe Pug | MySpace Music Videos

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Dan Bolles is a culture coeditor at Seven Days. He joined the paper in 2007 as its music editor, covering Vermont's robust music, comedy and nightlife scenes for a decade before deciding he was too old to be going to the Monkey House on weeknights to...

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