A new 7 song ep entitled "Receive" is now available here!

"Spirit of the Sharecroppers" the cd from Good Medicine Band which Nathan was a member of in the mid nineties, is available again here! 

Check out Nathan's blog here! 

LATEST REVIEWS

 Nathan Hamilton - "Receive" (irondust music 2008)
"A little gem from a new voice to me; a quick check on the web reveals that this Austin-based performer is, in fact, about ten years into his career and that Receive will be his fifth release.

Starting from country/folk roots he has apparently moved more towards what Americans describe as an indie rock sound. Well there's certainly plenty evidence of a rock edge and drive here, but his roots are certainly showing, too.

Just seven songs of high quality combine a Guy Clark-like fondness for characters and story-telling with a very twenty-first century musical approach. Three tracks of random radio stuff ("reception#1", etc) don't make too much sense to me; I guess it's an attempt to make the songs seem like random unknown voices from the ether too.

Nonetheless, bags of atmosphere are conjured from some pretty sparse ingredients; Nathan's warm, slightly fractured vocal on Cinders is sung right up against the mike and supported by an arrangement of great delicacy shot through with steel - reminiscent, I suppose, of one of Lou Reed's painfully intimate songs. If Cinders was on your mp3 and popped up out of the blue I think you'd have to stop what you were doing to drink it all in.

Weary World, on the other hand, demonstrates an ability to make an apparently simple, straightforward tune and lyric carry an awful lot of emotional weight, not an easy trick to pull off whilst Change could have come from Nels Andrews' songbook; it has a similar weighty, considered style to the acoustic guitar sound, an echo-laden pedal steel for the atmosphere and an acute sensitivity for the disappointments experienced in real lives - a long way from the vacuous optimism of pop music.


Receive, in contrast, gets the electric guitar brought out and a pretty fuzzy, heavy sound backed by a thumping drum; Nathan's vocals have the edge required for a very good rock voice and the warmth that draws you in for the quieter, folkier songs. It's a slow-burner, this one, and it'd be well worthy buying or downloading what you can and familiarise yourself with Nathan Hamilton's style before you check him out live; there's hidden treasures here and I think the man could be a real find."

                      -  John Davy   www.nessmp3.com/music/biscuitsandgravy

Nathan Hamilton
SIX BLACK BIRDS   (On the Corner Music 2007)
In a word, damn.   Austin's Nathan Hamilton was always “good”- good in the way you would hope any singer-songwriter with a Kerrville New Folk win to their name would be.   But who knew he could be great ?   That's not meant as a backhanded compliment; it's just a real (and welcome) kick in the butt when an artist you think you've got all sized up throws you off guard by quietly releasing a record that rocks on the level of Six Black Birds.   “Even the sweetest of saints/show their teeth sometimes,” Hamilton sings on “Teeth”- a perfect metaphor for the album's secret weapon: Billy Brent Malkus, the Texas Sapphires guitarist whose jagged leads lend the whole record a bite worthy of James McMurtry's Heartless Bastards.   But Hamilton's songs here cut just as deep, and when all the elements- killer rhythm section and B3 included- lock together perfectly on the title track or for the album's five minute, gear grinding, tour de force centerpiece, aptly titled “The Cut”, the result wrecks unholy hell on your CD or MP3 player's repeat button.   Of course, not every track here carries the same undeniable swagger; some of them take a stealthier approach.   But the tension never lets up until the very end. By the time Six Black Birds winds down to its closing grace note, the acoustic guitar strum and quietly reflective tone of “Hanging On” feels like a deep sigh after surviving a thrilling knife fight. Richard Skanse , Texas Music Magazine

"Blistering indie-folk crossover"
Hamilton makes a glorious racket, a sort of indie-folk with guitars careening around like a six-string mosh-pit... What is great about these songs is that whilst you hear echoes of other bands (Jason & the Scorchers, Buzzcocks, Pixies, Richard Buckner) the dominant personality is all Hamilton's.

This is a well-balanced set - he doesn't rely too much on any one element. He's just managed to arrange everything into the correct pattern and what a pattern. Just sit back listen and watch this one go. David Cowling for Americana UK, 05/05/07

"... Nathan has always gone back and forth easily between the rock and folk camps. He did, you may recall, win the Kerrville New Folk award in 2000. But, as if to erase any doubt about which side of the fence he’s now on, Six Black Birds jumps out of the gate with a straight rocker, “Sooner or Later.” This song displays some beautiful guitar work, and the subtle, but unusual, background instrumentation makes me think that Nathan may be exploring new ground with this record. And he is. The second tune, “Enough,” features strong percussion as the primary musical accompaniment to Nathan’s haunting vocal. “Teeth” then takes us back to straight rock. It has a subtle organ backtrack and gives us Nathan’s best guitar hook since Tuscola’s “Two-Penny Vengeance.”

But lets stop right there. I don’t want to do a tune by tune breakdown. Instead, let me answer a few questions that may have arisen in your mind about this record. Is this a different kind of Nathan Hamilton album? Yes, it is. If you’ve been a Nathan Hamilton fan, though, and followed his solo career, been to his live shows, you had to expect this was in him. Musically it’s quite different from his previous releases, but lyrically it’s really an expansion and extension the broader themes he began exploring in All for Love and Wages. Is there any sign of the folk-y Nathan Hamilton on this record? Hell yeah! In “Green & Gold” Nathan sings: "I saw a broken, black umbrella, just like a fallen newborn bird. Lying in the street, just as useless as a song gone unheard." Nathan the poet is alive and well.

Musically, the album’s last song, “Hanging On,” is a beautiful acoustic number. There is a longer than normal gap between the previous song and “Hanging On,” as if to signal that it should be considered a stand-alone. Perhaps he put it on there to show his more laidback fans that he hasn’t totally abandoned his folk roots. What’s the best song on the record? That’s always a hard one to answer, because it really takes many listens over time for the songs to age properly, but, gun to my head, if I’m picking just one, it’d be “Teeth.” It’s the kind of song that I think will still sound as fresh ten years from now as it does today. Six Black Birds is Nathan Hamilton with attitude. In “The Cut” he explains: "I don’t mean to be so angry. Truth be told, I am just scared. Lashing out at anybody That has the bad luck of being there." I can’t say I felt “lashed out at,” but Six Black Birds grabbed me from the first guitar lick and didn’t let me go until the last note almost forty-five minutes later. And then it left me wanting more. Steve Circeo, Texas Music Times

Nathan Hamilton's first album in 2000 was undoubtedly Texas-roots country, but the soulful songwriter's fourth CD titled Six Black Birds has shifted into the rock realm.

“I did actually tell the band ‘No twang' on the first day in the studio,” Hamilton said. “ I knew that I would be drawing a line in the sand for many people with this record. If you listen to it back-to-back with my first record Tuscola, then it sounds like a drastic shift. However, for those who have been coming to the live shows in the last few years, they should not be too surprised.”

It is Hamilton's first studio album in five years. While satisfying the urge for something new, the album still is classic Hamilton with his deep and reflective songwriting. The  CD has the insightful and vivid lyrics that Hamilton is known for — such as “While they're offering you riches/they'll be stealing your ass blind” from “Teeth” — coupled with the raw, aggressive sound of his band, No Deal. Hamilton swings between a country sound with the folk tunes he is known for when playing solo and a heavier or indie rock feel when he's with the band.
“Musically and sonically, I was partly drawing on earlier influences and bands I was listening to in high school like the Teardrop Explodes, the Replacements and Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. I also have been influenced a lot in the last few years by many of the Euro-pop bands like the Frames, Radiohead and Elbow,” he said. Hamilton also credits influences from his band members — all of whom have played in punk bands — and called this album “a natural progression and not a calculated choice.” 

The title track is commanding and abrupt, and is reflective of the entire album that Hamilton calls a “slow burn.” “Frame to Finish” shows the softer side of the album. A slower love song, it shows the range of Hamilton's writing ability while offering up smooth, but not weak, harmonies and accompaniments. With Billy Brent Malkus's guitar riffs and Hamilton's powerful lyrics, “Burn” is like a call to arms, protesting corporate America.

The album wraps up with the lone acoustic track “Hanging On,” a slow, rhythmic ballad played solo but as rich as the other nine songs.

With Six Black Birds, Hamilton shows, he's grown more complex and evolved as a singer and songwriter. He this album is his most personal.
.‘The Cut' is probably the most personal song I have ever written. Many times in a song, even if I am singing in first person, it is still about someone else. In that one, I am not hiding behind a character at all,” Hamilton said. Amanda Reimherr, 210 SA