After appearing with Wilco, Patty Griffin and Chuck Prophet on Paste magazine's first-ever CD sampler, Josh Cole took a detour from indie success, disappeared from the music scene, and surfaced on an organic goat cheese farm in the Oregon Costal Mountains. Three years on, Cole and his dust-choked vocals and barbed-wire guitar are back with a new band and a new attitude that both figure prominently on his new album, Hypocriticool, a folk/rock/pop disc that corrals 13 punchy, teary-eyed, mystic songs into one household.

Hypocriticool is an eclectic collection of songs that represents a conscious effort on Josh Cole---s part to define himself by bringing together extremes of sounds and words. While there is a lot of good music being made today, when he surveys the horizon Cole sees a great vacancy or rather, a vacancy for greatness. "That vacancy is somebody who pulls together the balls of rock and the lyrical assertiveness of classic folk and country to make original, quirky, hard-hitting songs; songs that awaken people---s imaginations and create new metaphors to cope with a radically shifting world," Cole says. From Woody Guthrie to Bob Dylan to the Clash to Fugazi, Cole believes that ---songs --- not the genres --- dictate what music should sound like.

Makeshift Ego band members Kari and Shane combine their own unique musical styles to create an original and mysterious sound. They write subtle, yet thought-provoking lyrics and use uncommon chord combinations and rhythms that define their sound as a little dark with a quirky edge.