Mike Hale’s excellent solo release Lives Like Mine is the perfect example of an album that I passed on for way too long. Hale is the frontman for In The Red and was formerly in the great Gainesville punk band Gunmoll, this album was released by the wonderful folks at Suburban Home, and was (gasp!) made available as a free download. Tell me how I missed the boat on this for so long? I dunno.

But now that I’ve found Lives Like Mine all I can say is that I’m thoroughly and totally impressed. The music is essentially just acoustic-based singer/songwriter stuff but actually way more than that. It’s played very quietly and very slowly in contrast to Hale’s other projects and might (on the surface) seem to lack any real punch, but wait! The album is gorgeously simple and hauntingly downtrodden in both the tone of the music and the lyrics. It is an album of intimate and sad songs that flows so well from start to finish it’s difficult to not get wrapped up in listening and forget about what you were doing beforehand. Boring? No way. The addition of a lonely piano and some beautiful harmony vocals from Allyson Seconds on a few songs is just icing on the cake.

Lives Like Mine is (without a doubt) one of the finest releases of 2009 and also one of the most captivating. When playing the album for my wife, she immediately said she loved it. My advice to you out there is simple; if Suburban Home releases a record, no matter what the genre, it is almost certainly going to be good. Go pick this up on some beautiful vinyl now!

MP3 | Mike Hale – Lives Like Mine Lives Like Mine
MP3 | Mike Hale – Red Tide Lives Like Mine