"Hank Williams and Garth Brooks write 'country' music, I write moody little pop songs" - Josh Rouse puts everyone straight in the latest edition of UK indie mag Comes with a smile, joining in what's almost a mini-stampede out of the alt-c ghetto. Jeff Tweedy and Ryan Adams are certainly busy digging their tunnels. Steven Terry, Whiskeytown's drummer circa Strangers Almanac, is now a member of promising outfit the damnwells 'but don't call them alt-country,' warns the Pittsburgh Trib. in a recent interview. "Any time you do anything remotely twangish, you get that alt-country thing," says Terry; "We're just doing what we're doing," adds lead singer Alex helpfully. And what they're doing, aside from producing some decent EPs, is taking support slots with the likes of..er..Jay Bennett...

Talking of whom, Bennett's just given Glorious Noise an in-depth interview into his 'leaving' of Wilco plus a track-by-track run-down of everything he was responsible for on Yankee hotel foxtrot...

Back to Rouse, maybe to reinforce his point, he's spending part of the summer touring the eastern USA in the mildly esoteric company of The National Trust and, most interestingly, precious pop revivalist Archer Prewitt whose new album Three comes out in June...