So far we’ve covered Motel Motel and The Deep Vibration, and now we turn our attention to the third great band playing my first Babystew Presents show next Tuesday at DC9…  Nashville-via-North Carolina band Roman Candle.

To be completely honest, I don’t know a whole lot about these guys. I’ve been hearing their name here and there over the years, but for some reason until recently never got around to actually listening to them.

However, when I discovered last month that they were headed out on tour with The Deep Vibration, I made a point of checking out the songs on their MySpace page, and then quickly discovered that they also had a recent series of free/pay-what-you-want EPs available on their home page. And it didn’t take long for me to find myself becoming a fan.

Then, just this week, the band released its third album, Oh Tall Tree in the Ear, and it’s pretty fantastic. Paste Magazine describes the album as:

part the kind of ragged, sprawling travelogue you’d imagine Paul Westerberg would pen if he was a roadie for Oasis at the height of Britpop, and part barrage of hallucinatory Dylanesque visions vomited up after a boozy, blurry night spent careening down dark, moonlit North Carolina backroads.

I’m not too sure exactly what that means, but I think it means they like it, which is good, because I do too.

Here’s the first track from the album.  It’s actually not my favorite song on the album (that would probably be either “They Say” or “A Heartbeat”, both of which easily could have been written by Stew-favorites The Broken West), but it’s a rollicking and catchy tune that I’m sure is a ton of fun to sing along with live.

Roman Candle, “Why Modern Radio is A-OK”

You can buy Oh Tall Tree in the Ear here, or, even better, you can buy a copy directly from the band when you come to DC9 next Tuesday. You know you want to.