{"title":"Gar Hole","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"good-kid","title":"Good Kid","description":"\u003cp\u003eChris Acker’s sophomore album, \u003cem\u003eGood Kid\u003c\/em\u003e, is everything a country singer-songwriter album should be. It’s lively, honest, and catchy as hell. Acker’s songs deliver heartbreaking punchlines with cheeky pleasantries; a nod at the kind of old country humor found in staples such as Loretta Lynn’s “Fist City” and storytelling and disposition of a young John Prine. While there are traces of these predecessors, the songs remain authentically Acker. It’s clear he has a good time song writing, yet glimpses of darker, more poignant themes emerge in “Aloe Vera” and “Orion’s Gut.” \u003cem\u003eGood Kid\u003c\/em\u003e is a rousing album with a well-balanced dose of pedal steel, bright organ, and infectious rhythm. Ross Farbe (Video Age) recorded most of the solo songs in the studio, while Duff Thompson (Mashed Potato Records) took on the full-band numbers in live recordings.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOriginally released on March 5th, 2020, days before the COVID lockdown began in New Orleans and the rest of the country, \u003cem\u003eGood Kid\u003c\/em\u003e is both a record that was swallowed by the world and one that firmly established Acker’s essential role in the country music landscape.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gar Hole","offers":[{"title":"LP - Green","offer_id":51489408713035,"sku":"R5005-9220","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/unnamed-2025-03-21T091818.438.jpg?v=1742548704"},{"product_id":"refugia-blues","title":"Refugia Blues","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eRefugia Blues\u003c\/em\u003e, the fifth album from Nick Shoulders, is a record of big ideas and small, intimate moments. These nine songs are rooted in the stylings of Southern traditional music. Sparse, timeless, and unamplified, they're older than the sounds Shoulders saluted on albums like 2023's All Bad, with its loud, whooping anthems for roadhouses and sweaty dancehalls. Here, Shoulders isn't shouting over a band. He isn't bringing a crowd to its feet with dance-ready tempos. Rather, he's exploring another side of his craft by stepping up to a ribbon microphone as a solo performer, delivering each song with acoustic instruments and a voice that's equal parts country croon, Appalachian yodel, and high-lonesome field holler. As he explains it, \u003cem\u003eRefugia Blues\u003c\/em\u003e isn't just a call to action; it's a call to rest, too. \"This is my Nebraska,\" he says, nodding to Bruce Springsteen's lo-fi acoustic record from 1982. \"Some people listen to Bruce for the E Street Band and the big radio hits, but I like the intimacy and rawness of Nebraska instead. I'd like to think of \u003cem\u003eRefugia Blues\u003c\/em\u003e as a little window into the heart, as opposed to the drumbeat of a revolution.\" Shoulders' interpretation of American roots music has always been more progressive and punky than the trucks-and-beers conservatism that passes for modern-day country. \u003cem\u003eRefugia Blues\u003c\/em\u003e offers songs about climate collapse, radical anthropology, and generative disruption. It balances the macro with the micro, too, making room for love songs and personal topics, packaging humor alongside heavy insights. At once academic and accessible, \u003cem\u003eRefugia Blues\u003c\/em\u003e isn't just a deep dive into southernness, but also into Shoulders himself. This is a raw, resolute version of American country music, stacked high with songs that go down easy but linger in the minds of those willing to invest the time.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gar Hole","offers":[{"title":"LP - Bronze","offer_id":53229475725643,"sku":"R6197-4898","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":53229477167435,"sku":"R6197-9297","price":26.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"CD","offer_id":53229477200203,"sku":"R6197-1065","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/unnamed-2025-08-22T113041.411.jpg?v=1755858650"},{"product_id":"famous-lunch","title":"Famous Lunch","description":"\u003cp\u003eChris Acker’s latest collection of songs, Famous Lunch, is in his words, a “growing pains album.” When writing the record, the New Orleans' based folk musician found himself hunting for a voice that wasn’t just an imitation of the one he’d been using on the last 30 songs he’d made. “At the same time, I worked hard to find a certain voice for myself over the previous 3 records and I didn’t want to abandon that.” While the album finds him continuing to transcribe life’s fleeting and provocative banalities with refreshing grace, the songs on Famous Lunch are intentionally more absurd, stylizing his lyricism as both poetic and disarming simultaneously— commencing with “Sh*t Surprise”—an earworm with a vernacular that stays true to its title. Inspired by George Saunders and Sasha Pearl (and wanting to make a song that sounds like Eagles saying the word “sh*t” over and over), “Sh*t Surprise” is the most Chris Acker song possible, in that its earnestness arrives in spades and comes varnished with a one-of-a-kind, spectacular gnarliness. “We’d match our breath in the upstairs room and we’d hold together ‘til I smelled like you,” Acker sings, before nose-diving into that unforgettable chorus about stepping in a smelly, disgusting pile of sh*t. More than anything else, Famous Lunch finds Chris Acker at his most sentimental and grateful, as he sings about Bunn coffee machines, gas pumps smelling like “the underside of a fingernail” in August, “10-inching” bread, stealing country club lawn-mower motors, father-son fables, impatient buffet lines, and a broom that “hasn’t been used since the last time I used it.” Acker’s eye for detail remains, and his lexicon includes phrasings that spin out like a hypnotic wash cycle. Seeing the world through his eyes, language remains something worth falling into—growing pains and all.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gar Hole","offers":[{"title":"LP - Orange \/ White","offer_id":56425030123851,"sku":"R3602-3346","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/unnamed-2026-01-30T111326.777.jpg?v=1769771614"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/gar-hole.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}