Richmond's Michael Bowling has a winner on his hands with his debut album Uptown/Dogtown. This is really good uptempo/midtempo stuff, reminding me of a poppier Elvis Costello, as well as Eytan Mirsky, Michael Shelley and Chris von Sniedern.
The piano-based "If Anything Breaks Your Heart" is the highlight here, with its Harry Nilsson/Randy Newman vibe, but close behind is "You'll Never Reach Heaven From The Mountaintop", a guitar-based number with a groove that recalls Mirsky along with Michael Carpenter, complete with "doo doo doo" backing vocals. "Apologies to Morrisey" is self-explanatory, and the jaunty "Amelia Believe" closes the disc in fine fashion.
You can stream four tracks from the album at his site, along with a couple of non-album tracks labeled as a single that are pretty good themselves. He has a myspace page, too, which has the "single" as well as a couple of the same album tracks. And you can sample the remainder of the album, including "If Anything Breaks Your Heart", at CD Baby, where you can pick up the album for a cool $9.99. No gutter balls on this one.
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