Friendship - Love the Stranger
I’ve been digging this Friendship band for a couple of years now ever since discovering them on the Mississippi Records offering list. For the record, everything on the Mississippi Records offering list is worthy of a listen. So I was very excited this spring to hear that they were coming to town with one of my favorite local bands - DEAD GOWNS - opening up. Such a great show that was followed up a couple of days later by an email from our friends at Merge Records asking what I thought of doing the newest Friendship record as a Good Thing. Why, hell yes! We must! Love the Stranger has everything that I’ve come to love about this band - picturesque lyrics presented in a talk-singing fashion that is also somehow very catchy and all of this under the umbrella of the simplest of chord progressions. We’re psyched to be offering this one. Hope you dig it too!
El Mirador - Huehuetenango, Guatemala
El Mirador, which means "the lookout," is a twelve-farmer collective based in the Cuchumatanes area of western Huehuetenango, Guatemala. This particular area of Guatemala contains the highest non-volcanic mountain range in Central America, and is part of why this region is chock full of really amazing coffee producers. Despite the collective El Mirador moniker, this coffee is from a farmer by the name of Ismar Martinez, who is new to us. Last year we featured a different farmer from El Mirador, but this coffee is just as dynamic and vibrant as we have come to expect it. Look for sweet stone fruit notes backed up by chocolate and just a hint of toasted nuts that gives Guatemalas their characteristic flavor.