Ever since their ‘comeback’ eight years ago, America icon band, The Outlaws, have been mining such a hard rock, southern-grown resilience their fans have taken to calling them, ‘Southern Rock’s Last Band Standing.’ Along with bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Charlie Daniels Band, The Allman Brothers, and Blackfoot, the Outlaws carved their own way up into the hearts and minds of popular rock, laying out more of that southern sound so unique to all these bands who could mix boogie woogie, swamp and downhome blues in such an American fashion.

Gathering together a 10-song collection made of sounds from field recordings taken after a large snowstorm mixed with a set of sample-based instruments, Jonathan Eads’ presents Under the Veneer. An accomplished musician who studied classical and jazz guitar extensively, “Jeads,” as Eads calls himself here, recently moved to a forest outside of Bellingham Washington, the new location providing as much a fresh source of inspiration as a ‘cacophony’ of natural sounds for him to capture. Using these, with his main instrument an old rusty music box, the ten ambient pieces are certaintly unique.

Parisian-in-London Zilla reveals an unmistakable singular vision across the dozen songs that make up her new Zilla With Her Eyes Shut. Sampling bottles, hairpins, blowing through the pages of a book, this is an interesting mix of arpeggiating soundscapes mixed with Zilla’s high warble.

Seneko’s new Soul Numbers, is the 3rd EP release in four years from the rockin’ folky singer/songwriter Stan Olshefski and his band; Tim Denbo on bass, David Dorn manning keys, Dave Racine on drums, and Jon Conley playing guitars. The stellar backing vocal support from Kendra Chantelle, Nicole Boggs, Maureen Murphy (really making this music unique, I feel) infuse these five tunes beautifully, rendering the entire little collection perfect.

The title track here starts off this dozen. It’s a lilting, acoustic guitar-led ode, sweet single note electric guitar lines from Roberto Diana and backing vocals from Leah Hart and Nicole Stella filling it out. The acoustic guitar leading weaves through the Latin-like shuffle of “Little Cobra,” while Moore manages his sweetest picking of the first half of Path Overgrown on the wonderful ballad “Buildings.” I like this one especially, again Moore mixing his expression-filled voice with his backing vocalists and weaving some strings into the sadness

Chicago’s Magical Beasts band (the core of the band is Nathan Paulus, John Herbst and Josh Miller) has just released this 6-song, Yes, My Love, I Am Reaching. Claiming what we get here are “the dynamics between Love, Sex, deep Yearning, and various forms of Union…” what certainly comes clear is that this trio, with some solid musicians backing them, have the laconic modern-folk thing down.

The pulsating “Brawler” is next, once again featuring Alexander Brown’s horn, on this certainly sly and sexy groover, while the title track is even slower and low down. Here we get lots of Michael Kavalerchi’s jazzy guitar interplay, again Brown blowing his lines, Mark Hundervad popping along on drums and Schubert vocally strutting across the cool backing.

Rob Alexander might be a physician anesthesiologist, but the last thing he’ll do is put you to sleep on his new full-length album, Being Myself. Here’s a 15-song bunch of tightly woven adult contemporary pop/rock, with the main man in fine voice, being backed by some wonderful players.

A single electric guitar line with a “clip-clopping” rimshot-sounding backing beat, plus some sweet harmonies from Addie Herbert, start us on our way into Eric George’s Where I Start. This Vermont-based songwriter, performer, and sound engineer presents a sly folky rock collection of 11 here.

A well-established NYC-based musician, Chasolen is highly sought after for session work and also plays in the well-known Pink Floyd tribute band, The Machine. On Living In Limbo, we get an intimate peek into the solo work of this talented player/singer/songwriter.