Tift Merritt See You on the Moon

Texas-based singer-songwriter Tift Merritt made some noise with her third album in 2008, Another Country, which featured the popular Americana Radio Chart single "Broken." For her new CD, she switched producers to work with Tucker Martine, a Grammy Award-winner who has worked with R.E.M., the Decemberists, and Laura Veirs, among others. Merritt recorded the CD in North Carolina at Durham's Overdub Lane studio and told Charlotte News & Observer that the record will offer some conceptual unity, like on her last release: "The story is more in the music this time,” she said. “(Band members) Jay [Brown] and Zeke [Hutchins] and I all had grandmothers die last summer, within a week of each other. Those kinds of ties that bind each other and our families all made their way in there."

Abstract by Tony Sclafani