#Volume Two

29 May 2002
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The Sid Hillman Quartet Receives LA Weekly Music Awards Nomination

Los Angeles, CA – The Sid Hillman Quartet has received a nomination in the Best Country Artist category (a broad category also encompassing alt-country and Americana) for the 2002 LA Weekly Music Awards.  Also nominated in the same category are Dave Alvin, I See Hawks In L.A., Buck Page, and Kathy Robertson.  2002 marks the fourth annual event, celebrating the best of music in Los Angeles.  The awards are being held on June 26th, culminating a week of concerts, shows, industry seminars, fundraisers and more.

Hillman has been honing his creative edge in the trenches of the L.A. music scene for the last eight years, and he and the Quartet released their second album, “Volume Two,” earlier this year on Innerstate Records.  In addition to the Quartet members (Sid Hillman, Jack Faith, Jim Cheydleur, Mike Taklender), the album features guest players Jaydee Maness (Byrds, Beck, Desert Rose Band) on pedal steel and Matt Devine (Possum Dixon, Medicine) on baritone guitar.  Dubbed “moody” and “atmospheric” by the NY Post, “brooding, stark…enthralling and mesmerizing” by the Vancouver Courier, “a minimalist mirage of psychedelic twang” by No Depression, and “quintessential Americana” by ESP Magazine, Hillman and his quartet craft music that Billboard says “transcends any narrow stylistic boundaries.”  The Durham Independent Weekly proclaimed it “music to daydream by.”

A four-week U.S./Canadian tour opening for Neil Halstead (Mojave 3) in April saw Hillman bringing his solo show to music fans across the country.  Press praised Hillman’s solo show, calling it “music for when the bars are closed but you don’t want to go home. With his burnished, straightforward voice and long, flat vowels, he sounds as straight and lonely as a desert back road.” (Variety)

30 Jan 2002
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“Volume Two” Reviews

“‘Volume Two’ is a pretty, mid-tempo collection…. It’s the kind of record that would make a fine soundtrack to a road trip through rural Texas. The moody, atmospheric music sounds simple on the first spin, but it’s really multi-layered.” — NY Post
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Hillman–like Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch, and precious few others–strives for Art over image-conscious mass appeal. Lyrical imagery of clouds, storms, and darkness place Hillman next to country’s stark forefathers. — Fort Worth Weekly
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“…[Hillman] crafts brooding, stark and moody high-lonesome music custom made for late nights and ugly mornings. An immediately enthralling and mesmerizing album, remarkable for its dramatic range of dynamics, unique song structures and the occasional freeform freakout… ‘Volume Two’ not only eschews but transcends the belaboured alt.country tag.” — Vancouver Courier
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“…LA’s Sid Hillman makes independent country rock from a singular perspective.” — Boston Phoenix
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“Singer-guitarist Hillman intensifies and abstracts trad-country’s melancholy…” — Washington Post
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“Sid Hillman knows a thing or two about smart, sad folk rock. ‘Volume Two’ (Innerstate), the new album from the Sid Hillman Quartet, is full of such pensive songs.” — Time Out NY
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“Far from alt-country, grounded in folk, and inspired by country, The Sid Hillman Quartet is best described as well-written songs from a well-worn band that knows the score. I give it an A.” — InMusicWeTrust.com
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“Sid Hillman has retained what’s most appealing about the unpolished, sing-from-the-hipster side of psychedelic twang. Like Clem Snide or the Willard Grant Conspiracy, Hillman writes elliptical, exquisitely sad songs, images of melancholy hope and decay; delivers them in an untutored, sometimes Stipean voice; and sets them afloat on a minimalist mirage of atmospheric twang.” — No Depression
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“See the beating heart of Americana yet? It’s there, obscured by the dust of an old, sleepy town with clapboard houses and the sound of the Sid Hillman Quartet. …Hillman is the quintessential Americana, crooning cowboy, crafting songs that slice like paper cuts and ache with all the lonesome, scuffling intensity of a freshly broken heart.” — ESP Magazine
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“The lightest of brush strokes of country invade the sound of ‘Volume Two’… but the muted melancholia of Sid Hillman’s singing and playing transcends any narrow stylistic boundaries.” — Billboard
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“…On his second album with the Sid Hillman Quartet, ‘Volume Two’ (Innerstate Records), [Hillman] writes Quaalude cowboy music, parched ballads along the lines of Sparklehorse and Giant Sand, music for when the bars are closed but you don’t want to go home. With his burnished, straightforward voice and long, flat vowels, he sounds as straight and lonely as a desert back road.” — Variety
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“…lingering, ambient twang” — Tucson Weekly
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“…darkness-on-the-edge-of-alt-country heroes…” — St. Paul Pioneer Press
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“Music to daydream by.” — Durham Independent Weekly