REVIEW: Museum Mouth -- Sexy But Not Happy

One of my favorite places in the world is Southport, NC, a small fishing village at the mouth of the Cape Fear River. It’s still a working seaport, but during my lifetime it has become known more for catering to tourists. In fact, Southport became so successful that the rest of Brunswick County got jealous, and fifteen or so years ago they stripped it of its county seat status. Now the county seat is a town of about 150 people called Bolivia, which I think was named by Mike Tyson.

Southport has a lot to brag about, including a great 4^th of July festival, shrimp burgers and coldbeers on the dock at the Provision Company, and, pertinent to this post, being home to a very fine rock and roll band called Museum Mouth. Drummer-vocalist Karl Kuehn and bandmates Kory Urban and Graham High will make you think of No Age with a little more pop and a little less dissonance (which, by the way, does not mean less loud). Their new album, Sexy But Not Happy, is one of my early favorites of 2012. Check out the title track below and see if you don’t want to play it about 15 times in a row:

And the tune below, “Blood Mountain”, is not the missing title track from a Mastodon album, but is no less awesome for it.

The album was released a couple of weeks ago, and is available for free download at the Museum Mouth bandcamp page. So grab the record and repay the band by spreading the word. For good measure, here’s the pensive album closer, “Kitchen Floor”, serving as a soundtrack for a nice home movie montage of the band.

Museum Mouth on Tumblr, and at Beartrap PR.