A vote for pure talent

Today was a day of Albums I Haven't Heard In A While.  I started the day off with a couple of albums from the '90's that sounded just as amazing today as they did when I first got them: The Sundays' Reading, Writing and Arithmetic and Sleater-Kinney's Dig Me Out. 
 
After a brief fling with the great new album from AC Newman, I fired up the second Mull Historical Society album, Us, and was reminded again how much I love Colin McIntyre's songs.  They mostly all follow the same songwriting pattern, and there's something cocky about the MHS website and his presentation, but the melodies and song structures and odd lyrics are strong enough to trump any conceipts.  I love the stuff.
 
I noticed on the MHS website that Colin McIntyre had made a list of the albums that influenced him as a songwriter on the Amazon UK site, and I had to take a look at what had formed such an amazing songwriter.  What I found was a collection of albums that, while great, seemed almost generic.  It's a list of undeniably classic albums, and none of them is a surprise or anything bold or unusual.  Nothing wrong with that, but it almost seems to me proof that Colin McIntyre's talent is just pure, simple talent, almost like the '00's version of Evan Dando.  Whatever thinking and studying and listening he does, it's just the talent inside him that allows him to create such fantastic music, not any musical theory or thought, which is exciting in and of itself.
 
Now if I can only find the US release date for the new MHS album, I'd be happy...