These United States

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After releasing three albums and playing almost 300 shows in the last 18 months, the Washington DC/Kentucky-based psych-folk-lit-pop rockers, These United States, are rumbling steadily towards the next benchmarks in a long string of critical acclaim, including dozens of Best of 2008 & 2009 mentions and features on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Mountain Stage,” Spin, Paste, Filter, Village Voice, Brooklyn Vegan, Daytrotter, My Old Kentucky Blog, The Onion, Jambase, KEXP, WOXY, WXPN, KCRW and WFUV.

On their third full length release in 18 months, These United States surrender themselves to unbridled rock and roll exuberance: ringing guitars, thundering drums, desperate yearning bordering on hope. “Everything Touches Everything” came together the week of January 20th, 2009, as four million new friends descended on the city of Washington, DC (one of the two places, along with Lexington, KY, that the band calls home). Laughter, belief, chaos, history, frigid cold w ild mercury winter morning sunshine; it was a good place to be making music.

By turns larger-than-life and disarmingly intimate, the album is 42 minutes of folk in the truest sense; a record of the moment, of the cultural and emotional forces that animate everyday existence somewhere down below the headlines. But never apart from them. Bandleader Jesse Elliott originally had two different albums in mind, he let the November election decide which one the group would record. The band, which is rounded out by Robby Cosenza, J. Tom Hnatow, Justin Craig and Colin Kellogg, plays it the way folk was meant to be played: hard, fast, big, slow, long, loud, loose and at last unburdened. They play like they mean it. Like there’s never been a better time to be alive.