The Wild Feathers’ Medium Rarities is a mix of covers, demos, B-sides and a few new songs they collected after their tour with Blackberry Smoke was canceled due to the COVID outbreak. Left with a lot of time on their hands, drummer Ben Dumas started listening to the music found on one of the band’s hard drives and realized they possessed quite a bit of unreleased music. Ricky Young (singer/guitarist) was quoted as saying “Medium Rarities opens up the possibility for future volumes….We thought it was a cool thing to do for ourselves, and especially for our fans. We’ve always been one of those bands that talks about having a true catalog, by every definition: live albums, box sets, double albums, B-sides, and rarities albums—being music fans, and that’s what we are, that’s what you want from artists you like. You want anything you can get your hands on. This is one more step we’ve accomplished.” Album highlights include: a remarkable cover of The Jayhawks “Blue”; the Tom Petty-esque rocker “Heartbreak”; the excellent cover of Crosby Stills, Nash & Young’s “Almost Cut My Hair”; a boozy Americana rocker “After the Bottle’s Gone”; and a trio of mellow new songs the band recorded during quarantine, “Fire,” “Goodnight” and “My Truth.” Medium Rarities may not have happened if not for the quarantine, so this release is a nice consolation prize for their canceled tour. – Written by JFelton
SIMILAR | Band of Heathens, Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors, Jamestown Revival, Langhorne Slim, Shovels and Rope