Tonic

"Named after Hank Williams' 1949 radio program, the Health and Happiness Show – led by Barone's former partner in the Bongos James Mastro – combine country's penchant for sloshed-up losers with Irish music's defiant, inebriated pride. The result is music that confesses its sins while slipping out the back gate to party. Though Mastro writes the songs, the band's versatility brings them fully to life. Kerryn Tolhurst switches among mandolin, lap steel guitar, tiple and dobro, while Todd Reynolds fires up his fiddle until the music climaxes.

Against this backdrop, Mastro tells the story of a man who, smitten by love, sees his femme fatale "Slip behind the hill/Just always out of reach/Leaving him stranded and washed up on some beach" ("The Man Who Married the Moon"). On "Sinner's Lullaby," a man delivers his song, and his lover "falls asleep to the same old lies."

James Mastro evokes a time in which the rules of the game were clearer, even if the outcomes were as unpredictable as always. Richard Barone faces today's truly scary shit. One's a little bit country, the other a little bit rock & roll. But on these two heartfelt albums, they're both on the mark where it counts." -Rob O'Connor, Rolling Stone