2011 C.D Reviews

2011 C.D Reviews Page

A couple of changes have been made to this page. There is now a drop down menu that gives an index of every album that has been reviewed.

PORCHLIGHT SMOKER

2009 – Self released

4****

            I don’t know why, but the Brighton area pleasingly contains quite a few talented bands and soloists that play music on the folksy side of American roots. These loose genres range from hillbilly blues, alt.country, old time/hillbilly, plus the edgier side of what can be termed traditional country. I’ve only recently become aware of Porchlight Smoker, having seen their tremendous support slot at the recent Southern Tenant Folk Union gig at the Prince Albert, Brighton, but genuinely can’t wait to see them again. I know the album is 18 months old but a good album is a good album whenever you discover it!
            They really are a quality band with an appealing ramshackleness to their live work that tells the listener they are confident enough in their abilities to have fun playing their evocative blend of acoustic music that sits on the boundary between folk and hillbilly! The band is made up of four experienced musicians, Scott Smith on guitar, lapsteel, banjo, harmonica, mandolin, clarinet and vocals. Steve Bell plays banjo, Guitar, Harmonica and Mandolin as well as vocals. Then we have Fred Gregory on Guitar, Mandolin and vocals and finally Darren Reynolds supplying the powerful double bass sound. They are blessed with three excellent singers, each with a recognisable style and accent, with Smith being American, Bell Scottish and Gregory English. An American, a Scot and an Englishman sounds like a cue for a joke, but whilst they don’t appear to take themselves too seriously they are in fact gifted musicians that have an excellent sound that they seem able to take anywhere on any song of their choice.
            This album is made up of five original songs, written by various band members and five covers of songs by the likes of John Prine, Jean Ritchie and Dougie MacLean, with album opener Paradise being one of the best covers of a Prine song that I’ve ever heard. Having said that, the Jean Ritchie penned The L & N is pretty much the defining song on the album which most recordings would struggle to better. It really is superb! As with every song on the album Darren Reynolds tremendous bass playing underpins their sound, allowing the others to play around it with banjo, guitar and in this case the light touch of the mandolin and Fred Gregorys tailor made vocals. These factors in themselves ensure a decent sound, but then you add in the tremendously atmospheric harmonies which seem to include the double bass as a lower register voice! Quite hauntingly evocative. I can find nothing but positives for anything on this excellent album. Every vocal, whoever takes lead, is strong, the harmonies are exceptional and the playing is of a really high quality. Then of course you have the variations in songs suitable for the individual voices, all incredibly well thought out and giving the album diversity whilst not straying far from the common thread. When I said earlier that the album is a blend of folk and hillbilly, you can also add blues to this melting pot. There is even what is basically a Scottish folk song but with a high lonesome sound, on the stunning Dougie MacLean penned, Feel so near, that could have been written for Bells pure, haunting vocals and with the splendid mandolin and excellent harmonies underpinning everything.
            I’m not too sure of the current availability of this album but they are actually working on a follow up. Check their excellent website and go to see them live! They are well worth it!
            There seem to be many bands that play this folksy hillbilly music, most are good, but few manage to instill real soul and feeling into the music in quite the way that Porchlight Smoker do. An excellent album by an excellent band.

www.porchlightsmoker.com

www.myspace.com/porchlightsmoker

SNAKEFARM – MY HALO AT HALF-LIGHT

2011 – Fledg’ling Records

3***

This is a beautiful sounding album of traditional American folk music that despite trip hop treatments, 21st century production techniques and some of the songs at times taking a while to recognise, somehow stays true to the spirit of the tradition. This, despite often having an unsatisfactory feel when the various treatments threaten to go too far. It has much of the hauntingly weird eeriness absolutely essential to get the best out of the songs but never in a contrived way. These two superb musicians are steeped in the old music whilst also being open to modern influences in a way that many traditional folk musicians could never be. Of course, with a vocalist of the quality of the wonderful Anna Domino and the multi instrumental experimentation of partner in life as well as music Michael Delory the battle is half won before going into the studio.
            It still seems strange to me that after their first and only previous album, 1999s even better, ‘Songs from my funeral’ we then had to wait twelve years for a follow up. As is often the case maybe the record industry’s inability to take a chance on something new and different is the root cause, but whatever the reason it has been an indecently long time since we were treated to a recording by this talented duo.
            Although Anna has a vocal style all her own, there is a quite striking similarity to Kate Bush on several of the songs, particularly Omie Wise, although this is probably enhanced by the modern studio treatments that in many ways lessen the folksiness although without actually removing the songs impact. It could also be said that there are echoes of Clannad, but that is probably due mainly to the ethereal quality of the album rather than any direct link!
            The songs on which the experimentations work are stunning, but I’m often left with the feeling that on some, admittedly a minority, they have tried to go too far, with the songs ultimately losing their identity in a melange of sound effects and instruments. The traditional Little Maggie works well with it’s drum machine and sitar leading the way on this sad story of lost love, with Anna’s vocals at times taking on an Asian sound. Staggerlee and Sadie are probably the pick of the tracks with the formers beautifully treated chiming guitars giving a lift to this old blues true story and the latters sinister tale having even more impact due to it’s almost carefree sound and the various treatments. Darlin’ Corrie works reasonably well with it’s starting point a little nearer the tradition with it’s chiming banjo’s, although modernity does gradually creep in and as a consequence removes some of the haunting impact!
            In the end this is a slightly unsettling and at times unsatisfactory album. Much of the experimentation goes too far and as a consequence removes some of the identity and impact from many of the songs. However, if people such as this talented duo didn’t exist in the music industry we would in all probablility be left with the Nashville gloss! I for one am horrified at the thought! If only Snakefarm would record with a little more frequency they would probably be able to more effectively work out where to experiment and where to pull back. Ultimately this is so close to being a great album but just falls short, but better that than the music industry alternative!

MICHAEL AND THE LONESOME PLAYBOYS –
LAST OF THE HONKY TONKS

2011 – Black Water Records

4****

            Michael Ubaldini, with his often sad tales of the fragility of relationships and his pure country vocals and instrumentation is probably truer to the uncompromising spirit of Hank Williams than most have been over the last six decades! That is not to say he sounds or even writes like the great man but there is a similar gritty bluesiness to these all self written songs that have an edgy feeling, even on the more ‘pleasant’ sounding songs. He is a hugely talented singer/ songwriter who really should be a household name by now after his twelve or so years recording career. This is his first album that is not recorded under his surname and it’s easy to see why with the absolutely superb instrumentation and playing of the Lonesome Playboys. The band is made up of Michael on lead vocals, guitars and resonator bottleneck guitar, the brilliant Gary Brandin on pedal steel guitar and electric dobro with ‘Dog House’ Jerry on bass and Mickey ‘Sticks’ Wieland on drums, although Bob Klonel also plays drums on a few tracks.
            These beautifully written songs don’t just concentrate on breakup stories but also include tales of rootless travel on songs such as the excellent Cross Country Ride and the beautifully sad and evocative Highway Ghost, both of which give the listener great sympathy for the traveller irrespective of whether it is actually justified! When a freight train rolls right over you is a tremendous bluesy song with some lovely evocative resonator guitar sounds and Devils Den of Sin is a really good tale of one of lifes unashamed sinners! The album is actually ‘bookended’ by two songs that are a kick against the modern age! Opener The last Honky Tonk is a tremendous song about the demise of these once prolific intitutions and the album closer The World ain’t what it used to be bemoans the modern age, leaving the feeling that perhaps Ubaldini is a man born out of his time! Whilst these are all exceptional songs it is his relationship stories that seem to have a reality to them, with very little redemption for the characters as in Unfaithful Wife another incredibly sad country song with a title that speaks for itself but goes a step further than many with this story of the ex-wife from Hell, again with some gorgeously sympathetic playing. Shambles is a sad song about the ‘victims’ deterioration following a lover walking out on him and if relationship tearjerkers are your preffered listening pleasure then there are plenty of those. None can be described as ‘easy listening,’ thanks to his ability to delve deeply into the effects of either broken or soon to be broken relationships, but despite that it is an easy album to listen to, with Ubaldini’s soulfully evocative vocals and the quite stunning playing of his band really enhancing the substance of his excellent songs.
            Overall this is a tremendous album that falls very much into the ‘classic country’ bracket but without any of the smoothness so beloved by many and with an individuality that many of the major record companies seem to struggle with. A rare talent in this age of sanitised music.

http://www.rocknrollpoet.com/

http://www.myspace.com/michaelubaldini

OLD SLEDGE – DON’T LET YOUR DEAL GO DOWN

2011 – Self Released

4.5****

This tremendous album is not so much a modernised version of old time stringband music, more a continuation of the tradition with Appalachian native Chance McCoy’s lead vocals and peerless prize winning fiddling driving this incredibly ‘musical’ album along. He is more than ably supported by Luke Richardson’s top notch clawhammer banjo playing with the lineup completed by Sabra Guzman on rhythm guitar and lovely evocative vocals. Despite the quality of the three musicians there are no histrionics, although none of them hold back and all are happy to stretch their abilities within the boundaries of the songs giving a display of skill and musicality rarely surpassed. Often when musicians of this quality make an album together there can be a slightly sanitised feel, yet this album is full of the edginess that depicts music in the higher echelons of this loose genre that is ‘stringband’ or ‘old time’ music. This album contains plenty that can be referred to as ‘hillbilly music’ but there is also at times a bluesiness and even echoes of old time jazz, along with some quite incredible ‘hoedown’ instrumentals!
            Most of the material is traditional although one of many outstanding songs is a quite stunning version of Olla Belle Reed’s Undone In Sorrow. This version, with Guzman on vocals, is probably as good as this song can get and I’ve certainly never heard it bettered, in fact it almost sums up the old time genre! Sabra’s vocals are full of heartrending emotion on this eerily beautiful story with McCoy’s crying fiddle adding even more to the atmosphere and with guitar and banjo doing their work the perfect combination is complete. This is by no means an isolated beauty! The traditional Boats Up The River is another showstopper with McCoy taking lead vocals and Guzman’s harmonies blending perfectly to give full view of the emotional content of the song and unusually for this album, the acoustic guitar is to the fore with excellent support from the banjo and no fiddle! Their reading of the classic St. James Infirmary is on a par with some of the best versions of this much recorded song, with McCoy on lead vocals driven along by fiddle and banjo on this jazzy bluesy offering. There is even an example of what used to be known as ‘parlor music’ in the closing track What Is A Home Without Love on which Guzman beautifully handles lead vocals, with her acoustic guitar, the fiddle and banjo for company! The title track Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down is as spirited a version of this traditional blues song as you could wish to hear, with McCoy’s edgy vocals and Sabra’s harmonies being propelled by the excellent fiddle playing and with double bass providing a strong platform. In fact, despite not having much joy with tracking down the bass player it should be stated that on most of the songs he or she provides a really solid base.
            Often, on these ‘old time’ music albums the instrumentals can sound good but often leave the feeling that they are ‘filler.’ Not so on this recording! The instrumentals on here all have an individual power that enables them to stand alongside the strongest of the vocals. Tunes such as A Rose For Polly, Lost Indian and Carroll County Blues have rarely, if ever been played with more feeling or expertise whilst Liza Jane can never have sounded better.
            This really is a superb recording of mainly old folk music that couldn’t possibly sound this good or authentic were they one of the many otherwise pretty good bands that played this music because they liked it rather than felt it. This band are totally authentic, almost as if they’ve made the huge leap from the 1920s to the 21st century and used the modern recording techniques that were missing in those pioneer days! Definitely the best of both worlds and one of the best albums in the genre in this 21st century and possibly even much of the 20th!

http://www.wildhogintheredbrush.com/

http://www.oldsledgemusic.com/

JASON ISBELL AND THE 400 UNIT – HERE WE REST

2011 – Lightning Rod Records

3***

            This is an album of nice melodies and pleasant harmonies, with Isbell’s vocals occupying a similar area to people such as Paul McCartney and Gary Louris. In fact, some of the songs on this album can be placed in a similar alt. country territory to the Jayhawks with the remainder having a slightly restrained roots rock feel. Isbell’s songwriting is strong as is the musicianship displayed by him and his band. The lineup is Jimbo Hart on bass and vocals, Browan Lollar plays guitar and vocals, Derry DeBorja on keyboards, Chad Gamble on drums and Isbell himself on lead vocals, guitars and keyboards. The song tempos range from slow moody ballads to mid tempo alt. country and even in a couple of cases to a soulful pop rock, but it is an odd mix of styles despite many of the songs seeming to be thematically linked, pointing to a life of regrets and missed opportunities.
            Despite all this the albums closer Tour of duty is a song of almost overwhelming celebratory anticipation with a soldier returning home to his love and laying out all his plans for the future! This is one of the songs with strong country elements including as it does the lovely sound of a mandolin. Alabama pines is a slow sad atmospheric song driven mainly by acoustic guitar, violin and Isbells excellent vocals that tells a story of extreme loneliness and homesickness and offers no real solution to the situation. Codeine is one of the strongest songs on this always interesting album and is, in many respects, a quite harrowing tale of the end of a relationship and it’s effects on both parties. The remainder of the album contains other tales in a similar vein with there being several mentions of the subject making poor choices in love such as in Never could believe, but the overriding theme seems to be of regret at having left, only to return at a much later date to find it’s not possible to pick up where you left off, not just in love, but life in general. Overall the best songs are those that have more of a feel of country or alt. country with several of the others, despite good lyrics, being very unmemorable musically.
            This is a good album that does justify Jason Isbell’s decision to leave the Drive by Truckers several years ago and strike out on his own, this being his third album and the second with this band. After listening to the album repeatedly over the last few weeks there are only two or three songs that seem to stick in my mind, partly due to the variety of styles. Whilst the album is thematically consistent it is this variety of styles that lets it down a little for me, although that variety of course is exactly what will hold the appeal for many! In the end it’s not a bad album and I think if he settles on a particular style, preferably for me nearer to country, he is capable of making much better albums in what could be a great future.

http://www.jasonisbell.com/

BETTYSOO AND DOUG COX – ACROSS THE BORDERLINE: LIE TO ME

2011 – Borderline Talent

3.5***

            It is incredibly difficult to make an album that stays interesting when just about the only instruments used are vocals, acoustic guitar and dobro. Not only that, but to not even use the vocalists own songs makes it doubly difficult. There have been quite a few albums over the years where this process has been used but very few have succeeded as well as Texan singer songwriter Bettysoo and Canadian dobro master Doug Cox do on this lovely evocative album. It’s only really when a singer takes other writers songs that it’s possible to hear if that artist has the ability to be classed as having interpretative skills and Bettysoo has it in abundance! She has already proved to be a good songwriter in her own right so this was her opportunity to interpret the work of others. She has previously recorded several highly rated country/folk singer songwriter albums of her own and true to her burgeoning reputation as someone who likes to experiment she got together with master of the Dobro, Doug Cox to make this album of songs by writers that they both loved. Bettysoo’s vocal skills are such that, whilst she sticks predominately within the broad confines of ‘country’ music, she could just as easily sidestep into other genres including jazz!
            There are several duets with Doug Cox on which his earthy vocals prove a perfect counterpoint to Bettysoo’s, in fact on the Blaze Foley penned Big cheeseburger and good French fries we could almost be listening to 1970s era Guy and Suzanne Clark! There actually is a very good version of Clarks Dublin blues and a beautiful treatment of the late great Doug Sahms evocative story song Lois Riel. Loudon Wainwright IIIs Be careful there’s a baby in the house sounds just as quirky as it’s author probably intended and there are decent versions of songs by an assortment of songwriters such as Butch Hancock, Bob Carpenter, Jeff Talmadge and Jane Siberry. All more than worthy efforts whilst underpinning everything is the perfectly controlled Dobro mastery of Cox, with the acoustic guitar adding a little colour and filling in the spaces!
            It’s very rare for an album like this to hold my attention for long but this beautifully sung and played album certainly manages it! Sparse and beautiful.

http://www.acrosstheborderline.org

http://www.bettysoo.com

http://dougcox.org

WHISKEY FOLK RAMBLERS - ……. AND THERE ARE DEVILS

2010 – Self released

4****

            This album is now a year old but because it is so different to most of the American Roots genre and so well thought out I decided it is well worth bringing to the attention of a few more music fans!
            The band hail from Fort Worth, Texas and in many ways it shows! Texas, over the course of several centuries was gradually populated by immigrants from all over Europe, (as well as Mexico) many in isolated pockets, but with travel gradually becoming easier and radio giving more access the influences started to blend, hence the reason that ‘Texas music’ is so diverse. Their influences on this excellent album seem to range from eastern European gypsy music, across to western European folk, on to epic Ennio Morricone ‘spaghetti western’ and even dashes of the wide open space ‘desert music’ similar to artists such as Calexico and finally even include a little ‘Vaudeville’! Whilst they are at times slightly reminiscent of Calexico this band has more punch and variety, which doesn’t necessarily mean they will appeal to all fans of Calexico. For some it will be just too difficult to tie down their music and put it neatly into a pigeon hole!
            The ramblers are a six piece band consisting of Tyler Rougeux on Lead Vocals and Guitar, Richard Lee Davenport plays Accordion, Banjo and Clarinet, Trey Ownby, Drums and all Percussion, Jack Daw Russell on Bass, Mark Moncrieff handles Guitar, Fiddle and Sitar with Cory Graves on Horns and Tambourine. A real melange of musical instruments all contributing to this highly evocative musical brew!
             The songs are all band originals and cover subjects such as sin, regret, murder, the quest for redemption, and even, believe it or not a little comedy! The opener, the Morricone style ‘spaghetti western,’ with twangy guitar, lovely accordion and haunting atmosphere is a tale of a remorseful sinner, The penitent, followed by the speedier, but still spaghetti western story of the sins of a father and it’s effect on his loved ones on Gambling preacher and his daughter.There is more music in this style throughout the album, most including plenty of ‘twang’ but there is also the ‘vaudevillian’ comic edge of Pies of Old Kylene and the slightly gypsyish feel of Horrors in the kitchen but with a twangy guitar starter, Vaudevillian vocals and a distinctly creepy edge! My rolling wino has an almost nightmarish gypsy circus quality; in fact it is almost impossible to adequately describe most of these songs, but despite the melange of styles everything fits and the songs blend together quite seamlessly.
            The playing throughout is excellent as is the choice of instrumentation and Tyler Rougeux’s excellent vocals enhance the atmosphere of the stories. There are even a couple of songs containing wordless vocals that blend in and help to give an almost cinematic quality to this tremendous album that augers well for the future of this excellent, highly original band.

http://www.whiskeyfolkramblers.com/

http://www.myspace.com/whiskeyfolkramblers

OH SUSANNA – SOON THE BIRDS

2011 – Continental Song City

4.5****

Beauty and the beast would probably be an appropriate description of this tremendous album! Suzie Ungerleider’s vocals are perfectly matched to this brand of alt. countryish folk with her lovely clear feminine sound but with just enough edge to avoid the mainstream, which accounts for the beauty! Most of the songs are not so much beasts as very very dark. This darkness is exacerbated by the brilliantly descriptive writing which when placed up against her vocals and instrumentation can be a bit of a shock! The themes cover wide areas of life including murder, humiliation, alcoholism, forsaken love, the death of love and the horrors of war, all done in a style that gains immediate sympathy for the main characters, some of whom actually come out of the stories with more strength after showing great resilience. It is very much an album that emphasises the need for a moral code despite the general lack of one, with some that show a sense of morality getting varying rewards and yet just like real life there are a couple who despite that same morality pay the ultimate sacrifice. In many ways an album of extremes that actually does reflect aspects of life, however microcosmic. Each song draws the listener into the world that Suzie creates and simply because of the way she paints these pictures, tugs at the heartstrings to drain every last drop of sympathy for her heroine’s in the hope that she will prosper in the end!

This is her fifth and for me, strongest album in a genre in which she is too often compared to people such as Gillian Welch. There are so many differences that any comparison is pointless, especially when bearing in mind that Gillian Welch’s recent album is lacklustre by comparison. Maybe comparing her to someone such as Iris Dement would make a little more sense? Whatever, all comparisons are erroneous anyway! All three of these fine artists have their own style no matter how many similarities, the main one being that none of them are exactly prolific when it comes to recorded output!

The album has a nice full sound without the excellent instrumentation ever being over the top. Included are the usual instruments you would expect of a folksy countryish album such as electric, acoustic and steel guitars, violin, mandolin, banjo, drums and bass, all played with great skill and restraint, making the stories themselves easier to hear. Despite playing the album on numerous occasions during the last few weeks it is still impossible to come up with favourites. Sometimes it is easier to illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of an album with the lesser songs but in the case of this recording there are none! Mention should be made of a few songs so here goes! The title track Soon the birds is a heartrendingly beautiful song about mourning the loss of a loved one whilst the tearjerker, Long black train is a harrowing tale of a young man that goes off to war and death not knowing that he is to be a father. By rope is another harrowing tale of someone who has an outlaw life thrust upon them only to end up at the end of a rope, but there are occasional glimpses of optimism as in Drunk as a sailor where the hope is that love can cure alcoholism! Every song is incredibly evocative of the world in which it is set with all being mini dramas that are believable enough to be based on real life. The true measure of a great album perhaps?

http://ohsusanna.com

LARRY AND HIS FLASK – ALL THAT WE KNOW

2011 – Silver Sprocket

3.5***

            This album can at times sound quite manic thanks to the attack of some of the vocals and the speed of the playing. It’s only after three or four listens that some of the subtleties start to emerge and the all round quality of the playing starts to become obvious. Not that this excellent band are ever going to be known as ‘subtle’; they play with plenty of fire, even on the songs that verge on being ballads! The band was formed by brothers Jamin and Jeshua Marshall in 2003 as a punk rock group and it’s only in the last couple of years that they have expanded into a six piece ‘thrashgrass’ (but with a few subtleties!) band! The lineup is now Jamin on vocals and percussion, Jeshua on vocals, double bass and harmonica, Ian Cook, vocals and guitar, Dallin Bulkley on vocals and guitar, Andrew Carew plays banjo, trombone and helps out on vocals and finally Kirk Skatvold plays mandolin, trumpet and vocals.
            At times their ‘wall of sound’ can become a little overwhelming, which is a shame because on the few songs that do show a little restraint their musicality and instrumental prowess comes shining through, but then again restraint is not what they are about! They are predominately a band that plays live and with the help of youtube it’s easy to see how gigging is their forte! From what I can gather, recording an album was more of an afterthought brought on by their fans demands, than something to which they really aspired! Having said that, not everything is played at 100 miles an hour, there are songs on this always entertaining album that verge on being ballads, excellent ones too, but you always get the feeling these are there just to provide a little diversity and calm before their musical storm!
            ‘Thrashgrass’ will suffice as a description for this almost indescribable band, but there are glimpses that show they are so much more. What prevents them from simply being a punked up bluegrass band is the structure of these songs that at times allow individuals to express their musical abilities, even in the midst of some of their most ferocious playing. Not only do they have to be more than competent to pull this off, but they also need total confidence in their individual as well as band abilities. All of the songs are co-operatively written by the full band and it shows. It would be very difficult for a band sound with such heavy instrumentation to sound so tight if that were not the case. There is the punked up bluegrass sound of the opening song Land of the f(r)ee but this doesn’t really prepare you for the variety that is to follow. Manifest destiny is a really good ‘mid tempo’ song that has an almost ‘hillbilly’ darkness to it with the repetitive mandolin, broken by electric guitars and brass with an excellent piano outro! No life veers pretty close to being a ballad with it’s slower pace and has some nice reprised slide guitar playing at the start, whilst End of an era is an excellent edgy sounding country ballad. Our will be done and Call it what you will are quite extraordinary songs! The former starts off with a slow banjo intro then builds up into an incredible melange of styles drawing in an almost classical feel! The latter kicks off with trumpet, goes manic and is interspersed with harmonies akin to a ‘barber shop quartet’! The finale is Slow it down which does exactly what it says with it’s slightly more mellow tones and its excellent banjo lead.
            A quite literally breathtaking album by a band that despite obviously not being studio naturals, have produced an album that actually does reveal more with each subsequent listen. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if this gradually evolves into a 4**** album!

http://www.larryandhisflask.com

http://www.myspace.com/larryandhisflask

CODY CANADA & THE DEPARTED –
THIS IS INDIAN LAND

2011 – Underground Sound

3.5***

            I’ve always quite liked the modern country rock of the now deceased Cross Canadian Ragweed, Cody Canada’s previous band. They used a little experimentation and whilst sometimes threatening to topple off the edge of country rock they always managed to pull back just in time! A little diversity and experimentation is a good indicator of artists that are not content to rest on their laurels but want to push on and develop and this album by Canada and his new band is a case in point. The theme that links the diversity of songs and styles on this album is the songwriters, all hailing from Oklahoma, the ‘Indian land’ of the album title, with the styles ranging through country, country rock, blues, blues rock and even a little funkiness! The songs that sound best are those that have more of a country or country rock feel and those on which Canada sounds remarkably like a young Peter Case playing the blues! There is nothing bad on the album, it’s just that one or two of the arrangements don’t seem to work as well as others, always a danger when using a variety of writers and styles.
            This new band consists, fairly obviously of Canada on lead vocals and guitar, but also former Ragweed bassist and singer Jeremy Plato, with these two supplemented by Seth James on guitars, Steve Littleon plays keyboards and finally david Bowen on drums. All, as you would expect, are accomplished musicians, well able to play in a variety of styles as the overall feel of this really good album suggests. However, some of the experimentation goes a little too far but even taking into account the less than essential songs there is certainly never a dull moment on this always interesting recording.
            Obviously Cody Canada wanted a change from writing his own songs and generally made good choices for this album with tracks such as the pleasantly edgy J.J.Cale penned If you’re ever in Oklahoma, a version that is true to the original, the edgy country blues of Gregory Jacobs A little rain will do that sounds almost unnervingly like a young Peter Case and the epic album closer, the darkly haunting eight and a half minute Hold on Christian a Scott Evans composition. Mike Shannons Long way to nowhere is a really good country rocker that is hugely reminiscent of the Eagles ‘Take it easy,’ but a personal favourite is the Randy Pease written Ballad of Rosalie a classic piece of mid tempo country rock.
            The playing is always excellent as are Canada’s vocals that, thanks to the songs being by a variety of writers, seem able to take on a persona of a number of other roots music singers, Peter Case in particular. All in all a good album by an artist who has made better ones in the past and will probably do so in the future, but certainly not one that will be looked on as ‘best forgotten!’ A worthy edition to his catalogue.

http://www.myspace.com/codycanada

RICHMOND FONTAINE – THE HIGH COUNTRY

2011 – El Cortez

2.5**

I can imagine that opinions are going to be well split over this haunting but largely unsatisfactory album, with some raving over it and others, like me, not liking it at all. I’ve been a fan since hearing their first recording, having also enjoyed their live performances, as well as Willie Vlautin solo. Willie has one of those voices that always seems perfect for alt. country and is certainly one of the best song writers around, as well as being a highly rated novelist. If this album was a film soundtrack it might have got a higher rating but whilst the general story is good and holds together very well it is almost too much of a concept with very few of the songs being capable of standing alone.
            The music itself is at times quite eerily haunting in a ‘Twin Peaks’ kind of way. In fact the well put together and atmospheric story is probably set in a similar location to that of Twin Peaks and whilst there is that element of mystery there is nothing supernatural about this album. This is predominately a love story between a couple that exist in a logging community, but also includes murder, drugs and an extreme haunting loneliness. There are male vocals, female vocals, male and female spoken word and short instrumental breaks. Whilst there are elements of alt. country it is certainly not an alt. country album, with it’s nod at times to grunge and a high degree of atmospheric ambient music.
            I suppose that in trying to assess this album it is true to say that the storyline is dark but good, as are the vocals, but the concept seems too difficult to encompass on an album without a film or book to back it up. Much of the music that links the too few songs is inessential simply because it is difficult to relate to the storyline. I’m all for experimentation in music; without it there would be no variety or development, but I do think this particular experiment doesn’t work. It’s almost as if this tremendous band, maybe Vlautin in particular, have tried to go too far too soon with this concept. Worth a try but for me, by some margin their only inessential recording. More acceptable as the soundtrack to the film of the book!

http://www.myspace.com/richmondfontaine

SOCIETY – A CROOKED MILE

2011 – Self Released

4****

Lyrically Society’s first album ‘Songs from the Brickhouse’ hinted at the fact that lead vocalist Matt Wise is not only an exceptional songwriter but also a talented poet. This terrific three piece bands second album ‘A crooked mile’ easily confirms that premise with it’s ‘Band’ (amongst others!) influenced classic country rock for the 21st century. This comparison is at least partly down to Matt Wise’s at times Levon Helm sounding vocals although Matt’s tones are a little more melodic than Levon’s and this band’s three part harmonies are even better! They have similar depths to their music to that which the Band had in their heyday, rather than what could at times be the slightly bland throwaway songs of many of their 1960s and 1970s predessesors and of course there are those lyrics! Whilst they are written in a different style to those of Robbie Robertson and company they nonetheless do take them into a similar territory with the differences probably being Wise’s stronger use of metaphor thus making the songs a little more difficult to unravel and also the huge gulf in geographic and historic locations! Having said all that, no one should imagine this tremendous trio are Band clones. They are very far from it and whilst there are other detectable influences Society actually do have a fully evolved and totally individual style of their own.

I’ve only recently discovered this excellent band and reviewed their first album on this site just a few weeks ago, hoping that their next release would be comparable in quality and not be tarred with ‘that difficult second album’ label! I’m delighted to report that this album, whilst not quite having the impact on me of their first, really is just as good, proving their debut to be no fluke! As on that first recording their sublime harmonies are still intact and whilst there are no bad songs on this album, even those of a slightly lesser quality are lifted by this three part blend that most bands would kill to have such mastery of! Whilst Matt Wise writes all of the songs, sings lead vocals, plays guitar and harmonica, the other two band members are just as essential to the sound. They are Ben Lancaster on bass and F. Scott Kenny on drums and percussion, with both of them adding their superb harmonies, and with the arrangements being carried out by all three these two albums really are group efforts.

You probably won’t have got far into your first listen to this recording before realising that Society has something a little bit special to offer with their excellent songs, tremendous vocals, splendid melodies and exquisite harmonies. Wheels a’ turning is a gorgeous ballad lifted above merely being very good by it’s haunting steel guitar and harmonies, but also by the evocative lyrics that seem to say the bad days are behind us so grasp the future. 40 days is a mid tempo country rocker that sits in similar but edgier territory to songs such as the Eagles ‘Life in the fast lane’ whereas the following Light of the morning’ is another lovely ballad containing that same haunting steel guitar but this time harmonising with Matt Wise’s atmospheric harmonica playing. Roll home sweetheart is a mid tempo love song about a straining relationship, again lifted by their excellent instrumental prowess and harmonies, then on Davey, Matt Wise’s vocals evoke a young Levon again, in fact the song could have been tailor made for the Band, had it been written four decades ago, with it’s tempo, instrumental changes and vocals the equal of their illustrious predecessors quality! And this is how the album continues, one excellent song after another, tremendous playing and singing, but also brilliant arrangements.

Whilst not actually breaking new ground there is a high degree of originality to this tremendous band that falls within the ‘country rock’ format, where there is always room for beautifully constructed songs, excellent playing and almost unsurpassable vocals! Just two albums into their career and producing work of this quality bodes well for the future!

http://www.myspace.com/societymusic

OLD CALIFORNIO – SUNDRUNK ANGELS

2011 - Californio

3***

            I reviewed Old Californio’s previous recording ‘Westering again’ about a year ago and gave it four stars, describing it as an album steeped in 1970s country rock but very much music for the twenty first century and with a slightly psychedelic feel. This new album still holds true to those basic principles but with a few changes. They now have a little of the ‘jam band’ feel and and the psychedelic elements are considerably more pronounced making this new album, to my ears at least, a much less pleasurable listen. The lineup is still the same and the singing is good with the harmonies excellent. There is still a little of the 1970s country rock feel at times, although as with the previous album, more by way of influence than in reality. There is a slight discordancy to some of the music and some of the production seems to at times make it difficult to make out the lyrics but this slightly patchy album also includes some strong melodies and Rich Dembowlski’s atmospheric vocals at time evoke the sound and feel of a young Al Stewart!
            The instrumentation includes the usual guitars, drums bass, steel guitar and keyboards but also makes excellent use of accordion and mandolin giving the songs a little more flexibility and atmosphere. The songs themselves are well written with some good melodies, with the strongest being the easier to categorise songs such as the epic in sound and length title track Sundrunk angels with it’s country ballad feel and haunting steel guitar. Unsatisfied is a good acoustic ballad with excellent harmonica for support, whilst Learn to cheat, Come tomorrow and Allom camarado are all decent mid tempo country rock variations.
            The general consensus seems to be that this album fits firmly into the category known as ‘Americana’ although I don’t really see why. Americana is very much a genre that blends seamlessly many different elements of roots music but this album seems to change tack with each song. Stylistically and generically the songs are all very individual and at times sit uncomfortably next to each other. Whilst the psychedelic elements are more pronounced than on their previous album, I don’t actually feel that it is necessarily the bands best suit with those experiments not always being successful. They seem to hold back a little rather than plunging straight in and the countryish songs all seem to be stronger and have a more comfortable feel. Maybe that is the reason for taking their experimentation on a step, to get a little further from what they are comfortable with, although to my ears that is a step too far.
            This is quite a distance from being a bad album but it is certainly not as good as they are capable of. They were an excellent country rock band with a few elements of psychedelia but seem to have now become a reasonable psychedelic band with country rock elements. Many will probably find the stronger psychedelic feel of this album more appealing than their previous offerings for that very reason. Possibly, if this was the first of their albums that I’d heard I may have liked it more, but it isn’t and I don’t! Having said that, it does throw up some interesting possibilities regarding their future direction, so I await their next album with equal measures of anticipation and trepidation!

www.oldcalifornio.com

http://www.myspace.com/oldcalifornio

JOE ELY – SATISFIED AT LAST

2011 – Rack ‘Em Records

3.5***

            Joe Ely, within the broad scope of Texas music, has managed to carve out a successful career in and around what is probably best termed ‘Texas country rock.’ He has achieved his great individuality and success within the broad scope of this sub genre by absorbing influences from other genres such as blues, punk, rock and even allowing on this album, a little reggae to filter through! His songwriting has always been of a very high standard throughout his entire forty odd year career and when you add this to his hard, full of character vocals his longevity shouldn’t really surprise anyone. Of course he is supported by being part of a small community of Texas singer songwriters from the Lubbock area that includes amongst others fellow ‘Flatlanders’ Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. With Hancock being one of the all time great songwriters in this genre, Ely usually includes at least one of his old friends songs on each of his albums. On this one he includes two, plus one by another great Texas singer songwriter Billy Joe Shaver with the remaining seven compositions all being Ely originals.
            This album, as with virtually all of his previous recordings, shows his mastery of tempo changes, covering all areas from high tempo country rock down to slow moody ballads, all done with equal amounts of skill and feeling. Where this album differs slightly is in the themes used, where he is now showing great acceptance of the travails of life and love as well as accepting his mortality, even bringing a comedic element into how his ashes should be disposed of!
            Not that much has changed is the thoughtful story of a man returning home after years away fighting a war, but could just as easily be a sumnation of Ely’s own career. The song is given an added lift by the gorgeous steel guitar that helps keep the emotional content high. The highway is my home is an excellent Ely original that tells the sad story of a man who adopts a travelling life thanks to a two timing lover, this one driven along by an organs mellifluous tones. Mockingbird Hill is a classically epic piece of tear jerking Texas country music whilst You can bet I’m gone is a summing up of the end of a life and the finality of death but with a little lightness in his idea for disposing of his ashes! The two Butch Hancock songs, Leo and Leona and Circumstance get Ely’s usual high quality treatment of anything written by this Texas great and Billy Joe Shaver’s Live forever lopes along easily with a beautiful accordion accompaniment and talks about leaving something good behind when you’re gone. Something worth striving for!
            No one would ever say Joe Ely is one of the great country vocalists but his voice evokes any emotion that he aims for in a way that many more tuneful singers can’t possibly match. The varied instrumentation brings a nice diversity to these edgy songs making this a ‘country’ album that’s far from easy listening, but is always easy to listen to!

http://www.ely.com/

OLD LOST JOHN – BRINGING DOWN THE SKY

2011 - CDBY

4****

            Tomas Thunberg is Old Lost Johns alter ego and is based in Malmo, Sweden. What does that matter, you may ask? Doesn’t matter at all really! On the very first listen you realise that this music, sometimes referred to as Americana is not from America but more likely from a cold darkly eerie place. And so it is, and yet there are strong links to that ‘old weird America’ of legend where love driven murder was common and there was more actual losing of love than finding it! Maybe Tomas is responsible for inventing a new genre, ‘Scandinavian Americana’ perhaps? His breathy smoothly rasping vocals are not a million miles from some of the edgier ‘Americana’ musicians such as Will Oldham, yet whilst there is a cold, darkness to most of the songs there is something strangely comforting in his voice. Maybe it’s the strongest most stable sound on these sparsely instrumented songs of love, murder, lost love, sin and unrequited love! It’s the haunting instrumentation and huge icy spaces in the sound that evokes Scandinavia and yet most of the instrumentation such as acoustic guitar, mandolin, banjo, violin and even accordion are pretty much staples of ‘American folk music’. There are several songs made even eerier by haunting trombone samplings that seem to draw other songs into that echoing foggy coldness and give a feeling of a concept album where one doesn’t exist!

            Although the overall sound of the album is one of a slow moody mellowness the subject matter is anything but, with the tales that are built around murder and the generally less positive aspects of love all contributing to this excellent album’s lonely haunted feel. The opening track Satan’s got you down sets the scene for what is to follow with it’s banjo, fiddle and Val Aviv’s excellent harmony vocals giving this quite dark song an eerie old time feel in a story that warns a girl against sinning. Tomas and Val’s eerie harmonies are beautifully supported by hauntingly atmospheric trombone tones on Smooth lover, a story about the search for true love. Gallow’s Hill is a gorgeously atmospheric murder ballad that really should become a standard of the genre with it’s beautifully mournful accordion underpinning the evocative sound whilst From an airborne is another atmospheric murder ballad that tells of the flight after the crime but with thunder storm added to successfully enhance the dark atmosphere!

Were Tomas from the Appalachians we would probably be talking about him as throwback to the early folk singers from the ‘hillbilly’ days, although it’s most unlikely that anyone from that area or era would be able to come up with anything as atmospherically blended as this ‘Scandinavian Americana!’ A tremendous and genuinely unusual album.

http://www.oldlostjohn.com/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Old-Lost-John/255462416082

MR. PLOW – JOYFUL IN SONG ARE WE

2011 – PinkBox Records

4****

It’s always difficult with these dark ‘gothic country’ albums to know when the themes of murder, execution, extreme heartrending sadness and any other dark horror filled emotions you can think of have gone too far and plumbed such dark depths as to caricature that same darkness! The good news is Mr Plow does! He manages to blend these murky tales into a quite rivetting listening experience that has a tongue in cheek element, despite some of the emotional depths he takes us to. Mr Plow actually is an Englishman living in Leicester who has fairly obviously been heavily influenced by old murder ballads plus Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Three! His deep but slightly flat sounding Cash like vocals give an added eeriness to these tales of violent death and deep despair that are so dark as to be entertaining!

The album opens with the darkly Gothic murder ballad Tear down the bridges, reminiscent, if not necessarily of Johnny cash, certainly of 1950s country and western in style if not content! Mr. Plow’s inferno is a darkly, almost comic, musing on what to do with his body after death and comes down very firmly on the side of a cut price cremation! There is a little mariachi horns on the tex mex sounding country of La muerte solitariade Hector Velasquez a story of a violent murderer whilst Typhus is a harrowing tale of a father that has contracted typhus and is wondering who will bury his children when they catch it. With it’s unearthly violin and acoustic guitars, a song of more heart rending sadness it is difficult to imagine.

It’s hardly music to lighten the mood but thanks to the feeling that whilst he obviously takes his music seriously that doesn’t necessarily apply to himself. It is an album of dark American murder ballads that is never really depressing and always entertaining. Could well appeal to fans of bands such as the Handsome Family. I’m one and I love it!

http://www.mrplowsplace.co.uk/

THE REVEREND PEYTON’S BIG DAMN BAND – PEYTON ON PATTON

2011 – Side One Dummy Records

4****

I’ve never been particularly fond of tribute albums, always feeling that if the artist is worth paying a tribute to, the chances are that the cover versions are going to fall someway short of the originals. In the case of Charley Patton the fact that he died young and has now been gone seventy seven years does perhaps give some credence to a tribute, but being a fan of Patton’s I wasn’t sure I even wanted to hear this! What swung it in the end was the fact that I’m also a fan of Peytons band! I’ve loved all of the bands albums and having seen them live several years ago am fairly convinced that the Reverend himself is a real blues man and that his and the bands unique style is very much 21st century blues but is also faithfull to the old timers. I now love this album and despite clocking in at just under half an hour it is the best tribute album I’ve ever heard! This is a predominately solo album with minimal use being made of the other two band members. Aaron ‘Cuz’ Persinger shows admirable restraint by just drumming his hands on an old tobacco barrel rather than his usual explosive attacking style, whilst Mrs. Peyton, ‘Washboard Breezy’ adds her extraordinary vocals to the Reverends on the tremendous duet Elder Greene Blues. It is pointless mentioning highlights, all of the tracks being pretty much essential, including the three different versions of Some of these days I’ll be gone. Definitely not overkill as some may think!
Not really a lot more can be said other than the fact that Peytons vocals have a tone and grit ideally suited to do Patton’s songs justice, as does his mastery of the guitar and banjo. The songs themselves are all written by (or adapted by) Patton and as a consequence are not just ‘blues songs,’ but actually define the blues and gospel music. We will never know what the music sounded like in the days before recording but Patton has always been the benchmark by which I and many others measure blues quality. As a consequence the songs are more than capable of speaking for themselves and will still be relevant in another seventy seven years and probably many multiples thereof!

http://www.bigdamnband.com/

http://www.myspace.com/therevpeytonsbigdamnband

DEEP DARK WOODS – THE PLACE I LEFT BEHIND

2011 – Sugar Hill Records

3.5***

            This excellent Canadian countryish folk band play music with strong links to the eerie old time music of the early 20th century but with a very 21st century slant. Maybe it’s the Canadian air that they all grew up breathing, but whilst they sound entirely different, they seem to have that sepia tone to their music that was almost copyrighted by that greatest of all Canadian bands, The Band. The music is rich and haunting with some almost choir like harmonies, some gorgeous melodies and consists of a folksy alt.countryish feel that is difficult to pigeon hole. In fact lead singer Ryan Boldt’s vocals do at times have a feel of someone singing haunting melodies in a church choir. The remainder of the band is made up of Lucas Goetz on drums and pedal steel, Chris Mason plays bass and vocals, Burke Barlow, guitars and finally newest member Geoff Hilhorst rounds out the sound with his excellent organ work.
            The overall sound of the album is deep, rich and full and evokes wide open spaces, with the quite sparse instrumentation and yet this is mixed with an at times almost claustrophobic feel that is brought about by the deep gloom in some of the lyrics penned by lead singer Ryan Boldt! The pace never gets above mid tempo but that is really what these songs and the bands style lend themselves to. Rock music, this isn’t!
            There is a beautifully haunting steel guitar on the poignant lost love/murder ballad of Mary’s Gone that starts slowly but picks up as the song progresses. There is also a harrowing tale, The ballad of Frank Dupree, a quite epic song with excellent guitar and organ solos on the story of a man sentenced to die on the gallows tree for murdering his lover and the effect on his distraught mother. Not too much humour there then! There are not a huge number of laughs throughout the whole album but there are often elements of tongue in cheek, particularly on Dear John with it’s vocals, lyrics and harmonies reminiscent of 1950s pop, but with a gorgeous steel guitar break and basic synth patterns!
            Despite these songs not having a lot of joy in them there are quite a variety of subjects that include a beautiful song on the horrors of war and it’s effect on a relationship, the misery of being stuck in a rut, a tale of a man pleading with his love to be faithful whilst he’s away and that he would kill himself rather than be unfaithful to her and then the price he pays for that statement! Tales of lost love, unreciprocated love and even a story with a note of humour about the forbidden love for an older woman!
            It’s probably not an album I’m ever going to love, but it’s even more unlikely to be an album I’ll never bother listening to again! If you like a slightly morose, haunting eeriness in your music but without it being driven by a mainly acoustic open feel this is almost definitely the one for you and even if that’s not your preference you might still enjoy it!

http://www.myspace.com/deepdarkwoods

http://thedeepdarkwoods.com/

PATROLLED BY RADAR – BE HAPPY

2011 - Knitting Factory Records

4****

            This is the first recording I’ve heard by this band and it seems strange that their previous albums were released under the name ’50 Cent Haircut’. That was a name I’m vaguely familiar with but had never actually heard any of their music. On the strength of this tremendous album I may well be delving in to their back catalogue to see how their sound developed into this mainly alt. country, but with more besides, mix of roots music.
            The band has been performing for ten or more years and consists of Jay Souza who is responsible for songwriting, vocals, rhythm guitar and harmonica, Ben Johnson on drums and percussion, BC Coulter plays rhythm and lead guitar and backing vocals, with Bryan Stone on bass and backing vocals and finally Bosco Sheff plays lead and rhythm guitar. The album is produced by Peter Curry of Los Straitjackets, giving a clue to the fact that this recording is not going to stick to the standard ‘alt.country’ format! That is certainly the sub genre in which this album will probably be put, but there are also songs that would have perfectly suited a 1950s Johnny Cash and even a bluesy feel at times.
            Jay Souza’s full of character, melodic, yet rough around the edges vocals are perfectly suited to the music on these tremendously well written songs, in fact at times his vocal inflections are similar in some ways to Mark Bolans! Several of the songs edge towards the general direction of psychedelia, without ever going quite into that genre and there is a detectable feel that is reminiscent of bands such as the Kinks, but always with a leaning towards the edgier side of country.
            In the case of the lyrics, some are quite easy to understand but there is a plentiful use of metaphor. On some albums this can be unattractive and comes across as a little too clever but in the case of ‘Be happy’ it just makes you listen more and find even more depth to this superb collection of songs. ‘Madam you’re a palindrome’ is not a commonly used phrase on any album that I’ve ever heard but it is actually the opening line of the superb twangy alt. country of New fight song. This song probably sums up the whole album with it’s variety and changes, with the twang being reminiscent of early Johnny Cash or even a ‘spaghetti western’, but the tempo and vocals, including the harmonies, are more reminiscent of Uncle Tupelo. It just about encapsulates most aspects of the edgier side of country, a fact that can be applied to virtually the whole album, despite there being several songs that I found to be less than essential.
            Dressed for the drought has a nice edgy acoustic guitar and haunting steel and dobro on a really good alt. country ballad, with excellent harmonica and deep twangy guitar adding to the atmosphere later on, whilst Cost of disappointment is a heartrending tale of a lost love that has a really good walking blues line, in fact a terrific ballad that would have suited Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Three, fifty years ago! Fast life slow death is a really good rootsy ballad with a little steel guitar and organ that veers towards alt.country and Carried away is driven by a gorgeous haunting violin with echoes of a steel guitar in the background. Pachyderm was one of the few that didn’t seem to work as well as others. There is some excellent sax playing on it and the experimental feel of the song just didn’t seem to gel although even this and perhaps one other that I thought were not up to the quality of the majority don’t detract from the overall high quality of this recording. A terrific album whose highlights are stratospheric and even the lesser songs are worth listening to, by a band that really should be and probably soon will be better known!

http://www.patrolledbyradar.com/

THE BLACK SWANS – DON’T BLAME THE STARS

2011 – Misra Records

2.5**

            There is great sadness attached to the making of this album with the death in a swimming accident, in 2008, of the bands tremendous violinist Noel Sayre. His beautifully melancholic sound is what underpins and drives virtually every track on this album so it’s understandable that the release was put on hold for several years to allow some of the pain of his passing to ease a little.
            The band is made up of Jerry DeCicca on acoustic guitar, harmonica, lead vocals and songwriting, Chris Forbes plays electric guitar, Canaan Faulkner, bass, Brian Jones on drums, Jon Beard, organ and finally Keith hanlon, percussion, but with the already mentioned Noel Sayre on violin. All are skilled musicians but the fact that there were seven of them in the band shouldn’t make anyone think there is a lot of sound going on! On the contrary the sound is incredibly sparse for much of this unusual album that meanders along on it’s sad sounding, mournful way. DeCicca’s songwriting is not bad at all but the sound and the lyrics don’t always seem to go together. Some of the stories are not sad and mournful whereas the sound generally is, giving a strange sort of unnerving obliqueness to much of what is going on. It makes you wonder what the album would be like without the hugely atmospheric violin adding substance to these mainly ballads.
            Very few of the songs reach mid tempo although this doesn’t actually diminish the album. Some of them are good, even including a little humour! The title track Don’t blame the stars could easily be quite a decent metaphor for encouraging people to take more responsibility for their lives and the world around them, with it’s mournful violin, drum beat and occasional strummed guitar. Joe Tex is a pleasantly soulful tribute to the late soul singer and Windshield wipers has a distinct country feel with Sayre’s violin coming across as more of a ‘country fiddle’. Others of the songs are worthwhile as well and Sunshine Street and Mean Medicine have a little guitar reverb to round out the character.
            It may be that DeCicca, with his spoken introduction to some of the songs and humourous elements, actually has his tongue more firmly in his cheek with this album than many people realise. If he has then perhaps there could be another half a mark added but if not, maybe he should rethink what he is trying to achieve with his songwriting and music. He obviously has talent but I can’t say it’s fulfilled on this decent but not exceptional album.
            Someone I was playing this disc to told me that maybe I should listen to the bands previous albums to get more of a picture of what they’re about. A fair point, but I feel it’s better to listen to any particular album in isolation, unless it is a multi disc set, for the sake of anyone reading a review. This is the first recording by this potentially good band that I’ve heard and maybe I will listen to their other work and realise they have made some great recordings! Still doesn’t change the fact though that this one isn’t!

http://theblackswans.com

GREG TROOPER – UPSIDE-DOWN TOWN

2010 - 52 Shakes Records

4****

This is Greg Troopers first album for six years and is another tremendous addition to an excellent if rather sparsely populated recording career of ‘adult oriented roots music.’ He has always encompassed most aspects of the genre, with strong leanings towards country, and whilst his recorded output has always been good, in the case of this album the quality seems to have actually gone up another notch.
              He always seems to me to be in that same, almost indefinable field, (possibly best described as ‘Americana’?) as someone such as John Hiatt and with at least as much talent! Many of his songs are of the usual themes in and around life, love and loss but he seems to have the ability to slide his stories into the gaps between the cliches and the cracks between tried and tested emotions, making the songs just that little different from the formulaic similarities of the ‘pack.’ He makes you feel sympathy with the characters that inhabit these gritty songs, sometimes whether they deserve it or not, always giving pause for thought about the complexities of humanity. Add his strong atmospheric vocals and sheer musicality and it’s difficult to believe he isn’t better known!
              The production, instrumentation and playing are of the highest calibre, always allowing Gregs emotive vocals and stories to shine through. Those songs range from slow moody ballads to mid tempo countryish rockers. Not straight country rock, but always with distinguishable elements of country in many, if not all of the songs. On They call me Hank, the gorgeous steel guitar and his raw vocals make this a highly evocative country song that many would have killed for the ability to write and arrange! A stunning story about one of lifes losers, or is he? If he’s come to terms with and accepted his situation maybe all is not lost? First time love is a slow moody country love song with beautiful slide guitar whilst Dreams like this is less country and is a sad tale of unrequited love that John Hiatt really should have written! There are really good mid tempo roots rockers as in the case of Bulletproof heart, a complex song about siblings whilst the opening track Nobody in the whole wide world sums up the quality of the production with it’s instrumentation and production being evocative of Steely Dan’s Do it again but with stronger vocals!
              This is an album that covers a variety of tempos, emotions and is not afraid of using instrumentation that it’s felt (justifiably!) suits the individual songs on this diverse collection.
              I’ve become familiar with Gregs albums over the last twenty five years and certainly, despite an almost unnerving consistency, not all have been of this quality. With this much talent he should be able to point to a back catalogue of gold discs, but there is still time! Maybe like a fine wine he is getting better with age. It certainly seems that way!

http://gregtrooper.com/

http://www.myspace.com/gregtrooper

DAVE ALVIN – ELEVEN ELEVEN

2011 – Yep Roc Records

4.5****

Dave Alvin is one of the most consistently high quality singer songwriters on the ‘country’ side of roots music. He has made more than a dozen solo albums in the twenty five years since the demise of his former band the ‘Blasters’ and every one of those recordings has been worthy of and received at least four star reviews. This album keeps that tremendous run going with it’s variety of subject matter and tempos and even includes several really good duets. His story telling is as usual exceptional with his ability to set the scene and give some strength to and round out the characters in his stories. Whilst his deep, strong voice has it’s limitations it really is a wonderful tool for expressing the emotional depth of these stories that in several cases are based on quite harrowing actual events. His always epressive guitar playing is as usual outstanding.
Of the eleven songs all are credited to Alvin with two being co-writes, one of which is with his old friend the late Chris Gaffney and the other being with ex-Pickett, Christy McWilson on which they share a really nice country duet Manzanita. Harlan county line is an outstanding, driving country rocker about a lost love and includes some tremendous guitar playing by Alvin, whilst Johnny Ace is dead is a mid tempo rocker about the accidental suicide of the 1950s singer and probably explains more about the circumstances than most other songs. Black Rose of Texas is a lovely haunting tribute to the late Amy Farris who was one of the ‘Guilty Women’ on his previous album and whilst both of the latter two songs are harrowing in their way Murietta’s head more thanmatches them in tension. This is a haunting true story about a 19th century Mexican outlaw who, depending on perspective, was either a ‘Robin Hood’ or a ‘vicious killer’. It tells about the lengths a man will go to in an effort to help his family stay alive with the authorities not wanting Murietta alive or requiring his body to pay the $3000 reward, just literally his head. Another version of the story was written by Bob Frank and John Murry for their 2006 album ‘World without end’ and was equally as powerful. On a lighter note and with a considerable comedic element is the duet with his brother and former singer with the ‘Blasters,’ Phil. There were stories throughout and at times since the Blasters short career that pointed to the two brothers always being at each others throats but What’s up with your brother? is their perfect response! Also worthy of mention, despite being far from the best song on the album is Two lucky bums a duet with Chris Gaffney that meanders along with melodic guitar and cheerful sounding harmonica on a song on which two men can rarely have sounded so at home in each others company. Somehow, a more fitting tribute than nice words about him.
It is much too simple to describe this outstanding album as ‘business as usual’ but that’s exactly what it is! It’s an album of exceptional writing, singing and playing, with if anything, even more variety than you can usually expect from this roots music great!

http://www.davealvin.net/home.html

http://www.myspace.com/davealvin

DAWES – NOTHING IS WRONG

2011 – Loose Music

3.5***

            This album grabbed me from the first time I played it simply because they actually remind me of many of the top country rock bands of past years, but without actually sounding like any of them! Doesn’t really make sense, I know, but maybe it’s because they inhabit the Laurel Canyon area of L.A. and some of the musical talent that lived there from the late 1960s seeped into the ground and was soaked up by this band! The band was formed by two brothers, Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith with the former on lead vocals and guitars, the latter, drums and vocals with both contributing songwriting. Tay Strathairn also plays guitars and Wylie Gelber is on bass.
            The songs are well written and mainly paint pictures around the ups and downs of love as well as the desire for a decent relationship. Nothing particularly new but any impact the songs make is helped by Taylor Griffins vocals, which are reminiscent at times of a young Jackson Browne, a man who actually helps out with some of the backing vocals! There are gorgeous melodies, excellent harmonies, good arrangements and instrumentation, in fact sunny California countryish rock, although it’s not actually country rock. It is more the type of music made by ‘singer/songwriters’ such as Jackson Browne, Neil Young, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and any number of others that lived and loved in that area of Los Angeles. That is the reason their sound is so reminiscent of so many others without actually sounding like them, with the possible exception of Jackson Browne’s vocals and at times writing style! The album is produced by Jonathan Wilson, who is steeped, as the band are, in the music of the Laurel Canyon area, having just released his own solo version of the same on ‘Gentle Spirit.’
            The songs are predominately mid tempo with a few pretty good ballads in the mix. The opening song Time spent in Los Angeles inadvertently tells you what to expect from the rest of this album that can be quite uplifting at times, being a big love song ballad with excellent lead vocals, gorgeous harmonies and really good uplifting instrumentation with chiming guitar lead. If I wanted someone is a countryish rock song that says ‘I don’t need anyone, or do I’ and almost has a ‘Witchy Woman’ feel, again with some excellent harmonies. Moon in the water is a quiet, mellow sounding song reflecting on the meaning of love and how some get it wrong whilst the closing track is a piano driven gorgeous big ballad warning that perhaps the desire for A little bit of everything is too much to aim for.
            Ultimately this is a good, if not great album whose influences are more of time, place and feel rather than being evocative of any particular artists. Certainly, as I said earlier, Jackson Browne is an obvious influence, although they are certainly not trying to copy him. Perhaps they are victims of the place and couldn’t really veer away from what seems to come naturally to them. In the end, why should they? Perhaps they and their producer are at the forefront of a new movement that carries their influences on their sleeves without being copyists and by bringing a little of the 21st century to a classic California sound. Should be an interesting bunch of musicians to keep an eye on in the future!

http://www.dawestheband.com

CLETUS GOT SHOT – UNAMERICAN

2010 – Self released

4.5****

            Cletus Got Shot is a three piece ‘string band’ unlike any other working under this banner that seems to be ever expanding in the 21st century! Certainly they can be classed as country, but way out on the boundary that mixes acoustic, folk, protest, a large dose of punk and an edginess that comes naturally to these three excellent musicians who hail from Arkansas. Some descriptions place them within the boundaries of ‘bluegrass’ but the links to this genre are tenuous and probably come about because of the acoustic string band nature of what they play! The band line up is Adam Cox on guitar, vocals and most song writing, Nathan Miller plays mandolin and vocals with Mark Landry on ‘gas tank bass’ and vocals, the line-up being supplemented on this album by Richard Hartrick’s excellent and atmospheric fiddle playing. Because Mark Landry’s old upright bass was falling apart it was decided he should manufacture a sturdier version and consequently the body is an old SAAB gas tank (petrol tank in the U.K!) with the remainder being constructed from ‘native Arkansas hardwoods!’ It certainly works well.
            All four seem to be pretty outstanding musicians and the blend of instruments, whilst fairly common, seems to be a notch above many of their contemporaries with mandolin and/or fiddle more often than not being used as the lead instrument rather than guitar. Their musical skills are also put to good use on the variety of tempos used on this album of powerful songs.
            The song writing is all excellent but several of these mainly Adam Cox penned compositions are truly outstanding, such as the eerie opening song that précis the Jim Crow philosophy with a powerful storyline. This is followed by the chirpy, early Vaudevillian jazziness of Unamerican on which we hear that middle ground is no place for a patriot, but for me the most powerfully evocative story is Union Town. Mark told me via email that as far as he knew ‘Adam wrote "Uniontown" as a sort of generic reference to the early American labour movement. I think it most closely resembles the Ludlow Massacre in southern Colorado in 1914, but it is not directly based on that.’ A quite stunning story that however he came by it shows great thought in coming up with a composition so realistic but with no redemption other than the togetherness of poor people. American dream illustrates that striving too hard to attain this ideal can often lead to a plunge into what is more like an ‘American nightmare’ whilst El Diablo is a quite harrowing twist on the old legend of making a deal with the devil! Business end preaches that whatever the circumstances we should stand up for what we believe in, exactly what this band has done on this recording and apparently at their live gigs!
            As the preceding illustrates the majority of the songs on this tremendous album are what could be loosely termed ‘working man protest songs,’ with several relating to extremes of injustice. And yet the album as a whole gives a feel for the stoicism of the downtrodden and poor with most of the stories being up front and almost poetic in a way, without any unnecessary use of metaphor. This is quite a welcome change as it shows the writer to be truly in tune with and sympathetic to his subject matter. Whilst the strength of feeling and message in the songs is always there, some ‘protest’ albums of the past have sacrificed their musicality to the subject matter but this album is entirely different in that respect. It makes sense really. It is far easier to get the listeners attention if the message can be put across with good original arrangements as well as excellent playing and singing allied to pleasant melodies, which this album has an abundance of. Some of the harmonies are pretty outstanding as well, as can be heard on songs such as Lady Liberty and Work these hands.
            This is the bands second album and whilst I have a copy of their first, I’ve yet toplay it. That will be resolved by the time you read this!
            A thought provoking highly original album!

http://www.cletusgotshot.com/

http://www.myspace.com/cletusgotshot

WILLIAM ELLIOTT WHITMORE – FIELD SONGS

2011 – Anti/Epitaph

4****

            So much of this album is so good! The deep atmospherically soulful vocals will give any song emotional depth and when you add his instrumental skills you should be on to a sure fire bluesy roots music winner. I’ve listened to all of William Elliott Whitmores albums from the very beginning of his career to the present and whilst some are better than others they have all been, at the very least, really good. This album is a strange thought provoking concept of sorts that in the end seems to me to have some slightly naïve themes and to a degree conclusions, that in many ways give a slightly unsettling view of the world as it is and as it could/should be.
            Most of the above makes it seem as if I hate the album. I don’t! I actually like nearly everything about it. In many ways it was brave to write songs on subjects that meant he obviously had to delve into his own at times uncomfortable innermost thoughts to come up with what are at times quite harrowing stories and emotions. He fairly obviously has a depth of feeling for the subject matter and the general ideals and whilst I’ve described the songs as naïve I doubt very much that this exceptional singer songwriter is particularly naïve. In many ways the overriding principles that he projects on this recording are in all probability ideals that we would all deep down like to cling to and whilst he can’t really express everything he feels on these subjects on just one song cycle, he deserves great credit for trying and in general terms succeeding!
            It is quite easy to understand the themes of this album. They encompass great loss, the love of his family, self reliance and a huge desire to ‘get back to the simpler things in life’, even including a history of a farm from the early pioneers to the modern day in just four minutes! This is the title track Field song, an epic story and one that promotes the ideal that a simpler life is what we need. Can’t argue with that, but the line ‘three square meals and a living wage reminds me of the good old days’ does seem to be based on a rather naïve ideal that that’s how life once was, when history tells us that starvation was a fact of life in most nations in those ‘good old days.’ Bury your burdens in the ground implies that we should all put aside our regrets, again a good idea, but I’m sure many of us have learnt great lessons from any regrets we might have. There are stories praising the natural world and suggesting we should work with it, a song of the immense sorrow of bereavement, the difficulties of providing lifes essentials for a family man, the acceptance of whatever life may throw at us, but always with that overriding feel that whatever happens to us the trees will still grow, the rivers run and the mountains dominate all around them.
           In many ways it is an album that delves into the ecology of the world but unlike most other albums that do so, this one balances the natural world with our human world. Ultimately one and the same if humanity could but realise we are as much part of nature as the trees and animals, with our survival depending more on natures intricacies than anything we do. Destroy the forests, the mountains, use up all the minerals and in the end realise we use everything much faster than nature can replenish the stocks!
            As I wrote earlier this is an album that contains some fairly naïve ideology but at the same time it takes guts to write in that manner, especially when you really analyse what he is saying and realise that whilst there is a certain naivety to it, he is also dead right! On first listen the eerily sparse instrumentation and the deep vocals that enhance that eeriness suggests an album that could well be made up of deep dark murder ballads. It is only with repeated listens that a much more optimistic note becomes detectable. The subject matter ensures it remains far from being a light album but there is at times a feeling that there actually could be a light at the end of that long dark tunnel. Some of the songs go too far with their suggestions, but ultimately if the stories make you think, the job is well on it’s way to being done!
            A really powerful and thought provoking album, given more impact by the sparseness of the arrangements and his tremendous deep soulful voice. An album that I guess could well start some philosophical debate amongst many listeners. Ultimately, I suspect this talented musician will happily settle for that!

http://www.myspace.com/williamewhitmore

http://www.williamelliottwhitmore.com

EDEN AND JOHN’S EAST RIVER STRING BAND –
BE KIND TO A MAN WHEN HE’S DOWN

2011 – East River Records/Redeye

3.5***

            This is a tremendously talented duo in the form of Eden Brower on vocals, ukulele, kazoo and guitar and John Heneghan on vocals, guitar and mandolin. Their quality is emphasised by some of the people that help them out, who include multi instrumentalist Don Flemons of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and old-time music legend Robert Crumb who also supplied this and their previous album covers, plus the ‘Otis Brothers’ Pat Conte on fiddle!
            Whilst Eden’s vocals may lack the purity of many singers, most can’t touch her for the character and feeling she brings to every song. In many ways her untutored but always pleasantly atmospheric vocals add to the feel of the old and traditional songs that are taken from the mainly string band and blues genre. With Heneghan’s vocals having similar qualities this makes for some fascinating duets and harmonies, as can be heard on songs such as the title track Be kind to a man when he’s down. This pairing, whilst being entirely different in most respects can be compared to someone such as Frank Fairfield in taking old musical genres and putting their own indelible 21st century stamp on them, but whilst staying faithfull to the tradition. Fairly obviously they love the music they play and Heneghan in particular is a scholar of old 78 r.p.m records, having recently released a tremendous three disc set of music from his own collection titled ‘Baby, how long can it be? Songs of love, lust and contempt from the 1920s and 1930s.’
            Many of the songs they have recorded on this and previous albums are pretty much unknown so will often have a ‘new’ feel to them, but the more familiar Swanee River and Oh Suzanna, both written by Stephen Foster, and The girl I left behind me have a joyous ramshackleness to them that not only emphasises the fun they are having but also gives a feeling of authenticity lacking in other recordings of these famous old songs since the first recorded renditions of them!
            There is nothing that is overtly innovative about the way they play the songs, but this album, as with their previous offerings, is strangely addictive and refreshing because of the sheer joy they seem to share in playing and singing these old songs. It is so reassuring to hear people playing music that they have a feel and talent for, particulary as it means resurrecting and keeping alive many excellent songs that have long been forgotten. Long may they continue to produce albums as excellent as this!

www.eastriverstringband.com

EILEN JEWELL – QUEEN OF THE MINOR KEY

2011 – Signature

4.5****

Singer songwriters, fairly obviously, try to write songs that suit their own needs. Fortunately Eilen writes in many roots styles knowing that she can handle all of them, including country, blues, jazz, rockabilly and, thanks to superb guitarist Jerry Miller, even surf music! Her classy, languid vocals blend her own all original songs into a literally timeless brew of roots music with much of the credit for the sheer musicality being owed to the trio of superb musicians that are her band. This band is made up of husband Jason Beek on drums, percussion and backing vocals, the brilliant Johnny Sciascia on upright bass, and the incomparable Jerry Miller on lead guitar, with all four being involved on the production side and the three men being as integral to the music as Eilen herself. So many artists that perform roots music in a similar vein tend to overdo the instrumentation but there is a sparseness to this recording that allows the emotion and subtleties contained within these tremendous songs to drag the listener into the world that she conjures up.

Eilen has been compared variously to just about every top female singer since Bessie Smith and including Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynne and Billie Holiday amongst others. Certainly these greats have been quite well documented as being influences, but she really has developed her own unique style that covers many roots strands.

Most of these excellent and varied songs seem to be about ‘might have beens’ and the taking of wrong turns, which may or may not be from her life, but certainly don’t relate to her music. She almost seems to be reaching out for something that is just tantalisingly out of reach, that she can’t quite touch but hopefully are just figments of the imagination of a tremendous writer. Whilst many of these compositions are of quite dark themes the arrangements and her slinky vocals give a creepiness to even the uptempo songs such as the title track Queen of the minor key that few can match. The dark Santa Fe, with it’s beautiful haunting steel guitar sound is a real tear jerker, whilst Reckless could easily have been a 1950s Patsy Cline or a 60s Loretta Lynne song!She seems to float through and around her gorgeous compositions with a languid fluidity that has rarely, if ever, been improved upon as on the classic torch song Only one, with the subtle keyboards and Jerry Millers beautifully restrained but melodic guitar. There is even space for an excellent ‘country duet’ on Long road where she has the soulful accompaniment of Rockabilly/Western Swing revivalist ‘Big Sandy,’ and finally closing track Kalimotxo brings a little light to the proceedings with Jerry Millers ‘surf guitar’ dueting with David Scholl’s sax!

A gorgeous album that mixes haunting beauty with some dark themes to produce a collection of songs that is unlikely to be matched and certainly won’t be improved upon this year. She sings in a line from the title track that she’s Queen of the melancholy; she certainly is and long may she continue to wear that crown!

http://www.eilenjewell.com

http://www.myspace.com/eilenjewell

SLINGSHOT CASH –
FROM AFTERMATH TO EXILE

2011 – self released

4****

It's weird but the artists that came to mind whilst listening to this unusual album were the Rolling Stones and Gram Parsons; that’s not particularly weird I know, but where the weirdness comes in is that I also thought of Souled American! Now, I’m always saying there is nothing really original in music but it does make you sit up when you hear something that does have an odd sort of originality to it and this tremendous album certainly does. I’m not saying this band actually sound like any of the aforementioned but it must have some similarities (other than the Stones relationship in the title!) in some way, for this befuddled mind to think of those artists!
            The whole album at times has an almost otherworldly feel to it on these songs of life's ups and down's and life on the wrong side of the tracks! At times Jon Ackleys vocals are a nasally whine, but a nasally whine that has so much feeling and creates an atmosphere unmatched by many ‘alt. country’ bands. I’ve seen one piece that describes the sound as ‘sleazy Appalachian rock.’ Couldn’t argue with that! This is the second incarnation of the band despite this being only the second album, with Ackley being the only constant but now joined by Christopher Jones and Chris Brusa. I’m not sure who plays what, but there is plenty of harmonica, melodic guitar, some slide and haunting steel on this fascinating album that always has that slight ramshackleness of the early Stones.
            There are plenty of song highlights, with the title track From aftermath to exile, setting the scene with slightly discordant vocals adding to the distorted steel and harmonica on this slow haunting tale about starting over. Fixer is a beautiful, sad, thought provoking song with haunting steel and harmonica, about the hopelessness that many have felt/feel about being owned by ‘the company’ and the need and unlikely possibility of escape. Then there is the banjo driven eerily haunting tale of lost love on Shame, but not all is dark, there is a mid tempo ‘country rocker’ with jangly guitars that preaches the benefits of Barley wine!
            So, it’s not a ‘groundbreaking’ album in the truest sense but it is highly individual and does at times evoke, if not always the sounds, certainly at least the feel and tempos of the above mentioned bands. There is virtually no chance of this recording being accepted by the mainstream but huge credit should be given to Jon Ackley in particular, for going after his musical vision and long may he continue to do so. Tremendous album!

http://www.myspace.com/slingshotcash

JAMES KEYES – DEVIL TAKE THE HINDMOST

2011 - Diy

4.5****

            This tremendous album of generally deep dark songs is interspersed with enough touches of light to avoid the trap that many similar albums fall into, by almost becoming caricatures of themselves! That darkness is complemented by James Keyes deep rich vocals, his prowess on acoustic guitar and banjo, the sparse instrumentation that allows the lyrics space to breathe all contributing to an excellent collection of highly evocative songs. It is an album that seems to sit in a middle ground that links a folksy country to the deep blues, with it’s tales of love, lost love, an acceptance of lifes knocks, the pursuit of meaning and even a song about the devil claiming his dues! His music comes from very similar areas of the roots genre to that of William Elliott Whitmore; in fact the deep powerful almost eerie vocals of the two men have similarities, although in both cases the writing style is highly individual. Whilst the themes have been covered before and will be covered again by others (there are only so many subjects to write about!) James Keyes brings a slightly different perspective, both lyrically and musically, in some ways bringing a conclusion to tried and tested stories. Some of these conclusions have been found in other songwriters work but there just seems to be a different flow to Keyes songs.
            The often told legend of a deal made with the devil at a midnight meeting at the crossroads is a case in point. The story reaches it’s conclusion here in the darkly spooky Old rider when the Devil arrives during the night to collect that which is owed him! The storyteller coldly ruminates on the subjects total lack of choices, indicating that having got what he wished for so long ago he must now make good on the deal, with his soul as payment and absolutely no way out! Eerily scary! The album opener Steel toes and blue jeans has a tempo and instrumentation, including excellent banjo, that could not be bettered as backing for a ‘leaving’ song that advises acceptance of lifes or loves knocks and just keep moving on, whilst Ain’t going down like that has the feel of a song that could have been popular during the 1950s folk revival with it’s pleasantly repetitive chorus, despite also including a gorgeous steel guitar! Wicked night is the most eerily spooky observation of a dark stormy night at sea that you will ever hear, summed up with it’s invocation ‘Devil is coming captain, he's in the wind’ and atmospherically driven along by the haunting tones of a resonator guitar! Summer song, whilst not evoking hot sunny days does bring a little lightness to the dark with it’s more realistic look at what the fates can give or take away, in life as well as the weather! Slow motion blues with it’s repetitive acoustic guitar line is a song that ambles along in a similar vein to early 1970s acoustic group ‘America’ but the deep dark vocals and subject matter are not! The album closer End of the road is a darkly spooky song with a mid tempo arrangement that seems somehow to make it even more threatening with distorted guitars adding to the hellish feel.
            This is certainly an album that contains a lot more darkness than light but because it is never overdone is always highly listenable, with the songs almost literally stripped to the bone with nothing extraneous in either the lyrics or instrumentation. Many sparse ‘singer songwriter’ albums can become tiring and monotonous after a few listens but i’ve lived with this album for several weeks now and don’t forsee that happening any time soon, if ever!
A tremendous album that gives a slightly different slant to ‘roots music’!

http://www.jameskeyes.com

http://www.facebook.com/pages/James-Keyes-Music/166596206702041

SOCIETY – SONGS FROM THE BRICKHOUSE

2009 – Self released

4.5****

            This brilliant album is probably best summed up as ‘classic country rock,’ for the 21st century. The songs tell stories of lifes ups and downs including ambition, love, lost love but all done with almost unsurpassable harmonies. The songs are written by lead vocalist Matt Wise who also plays guitars, mandolin and harmonica and whose always excellent vocals at times sound remarkabley like Levon Helm of the ‘Band’. He is more than ably assisted by F. Scott Kenny on drums and percussion with the three man lineup completed by Andrew Prosser on bass and vocals. The songs are well written and at times deep, but whilst the lyrics are important the listener cannot help but be dragged back to those harmonies that really do compare with some of the great country rock harmonisers of the past such as America, the Byrds, C,S,N and Y and even the more recent Jayhawks. The instrumentation is typical of classic country rock but with additions that bracket them alongside the ‘Band’ with pedal steel, piano, Wurlitzer, organ, accordion and violin. The Band comparison doesn’t require too much imagination either, on songs such as Fools end on which Wise sounds very much like a young Levon Helm. Highlight for me is Back in the woods a song that really does evoke the Band performing ‘Arcadian driftwood,’ whilst Knives is an outstandingly dark ballad with beautiful steel guitar adding to the excellent harmonies. The songs range from excellent ballads with some just as good mid-tempo country rockers, giving the album plenty of variety and keeping the listener interested from start to finish.
            Whilst I’m making these Band comparisons it should be made clear that they are not in that league, certainly not yet, but they are probably as close as anyone has actually got to their brand of ‘Americana’ music in over thirty years. The beauty of this band is that they appear to be doing their own thing and playing the music that comes naturally to them with nothing that appears forced or marks them down as copyists. There is the Helm like vocals but again it does sound natural rather than somenone striving for this affectation.
            As yet I know very little about this tremendous band but find it difficult to believe that a three man group from West Sussex have mastered this classic genre better than many that are born to it in the U.S! A brilliant album!

http://www.myspace.com/societymusic

JALAN CROSSLAND – DRIFTWOOD SOULS

2010 – Boom Chicken Rekkerds

4****

            Jalan Crossland is a man who lives in the giddy upper echelons of guitar and banjo players and with his pleasantly husky vocals out of the John Prine mould has huge advantages over most others in the ‘country music’ field! Oddly, some of the well written songs on this exceptional album are a little overshadowed by his extradorinary playing, almost as if he is competing with the song. This is not a criticism of the songs but a measure of his incredibly dextrous playing on an album that caught my attention as soon as I put it on. There is a fair amount of drama and a considerable dose of humour on this recording that seems to generally relate tales of the trials and tribulations of those trapped at the ‘disadvantaged end of society.’ Maybe I’m just being a misery but I actually feel there is a little too much humour on this, what at times is an absolutely brilliant, album. The brilliance is evidenced by his extraordinary performance on vocals and banjo on the traditional Cumberland gap, a story rooted in the American civil war and a dark throwback to the eerie sounding early ‘hillbilly’ performers, which would be impossible to interpret in the way that he does, without having an intense rapport with the material.
            The song styles cover just about all bases that relate to country music, from the 1950s or 1960s sound of High and Lonesome to the 1970s with the gorgeous Driftwood souls, a banjo driven song about a couple who are just drifting through life! There is the aforementioned and extraordinary Cumberland gap, the tongue in cheek song about the effects on a relationship of the demon alcohol in Nothin’s wasted, which could easily have been transferred from a young John Prine album. There is also the tremendous ‘spaghetti western’ Killin’, a song that tells the tale of a man on the run after killing a deputy and the price that is payable, all accompanied by his superb guitar playing. There are folksy bluesy songs like Wake up slow, Jenny that are evocative of people such as Guy Clark and so the album goes on. One excellent performance after another and although not all of the songs are of the highest calibre there is nothing that should have been omitted and quite a few that are truly memorable. He is more than ably backed by the excellent Shaun Kelley on bass and Andy Phreaner on drums and both help out with harmony vocals, but no matter how excellent they are, what really sticks in the mind is his incredible guitar/banjo playing and the song diversity, but a diversity that always holds together to make a tremendous package.
            The one slight gripe is about the comedic element but please don’t let that put you off. This superb album really whetted my appetite for more and I’m now the proud owner of his three previous albums. Can’t wait to play them!

www.jalancrossland.com

REVEREND JOHN DELORE – LITTLE JOHN THE CONQUEROR

2011 – self released

2.5**

So much of this album, for me at least, evokes the memory of Gene Clark, particularly the period from the late 1960s to early 1970s. His songwriting is, unsurprisingly, not as good as Clarks whereas his vocals are, but the music is very stereotypical of the 70s whilst the production, on my copy at least, is pretty dire, with drums and bass in particular dominating the sound, plus guitars and keyboards sounding a little messy. There may have been other instruments on the album to give a little diversity but I couldn’t hear them on my copy. The dense over production at times almost loses the vocals which are really good and expressive but for much of the time are too far back in the mix. Maybe this is a confidence thing but it is his vocals that should have been pushed forward and are what he should feel some confidence in, his voice being the best instrument on the album.
Whether we like it or not everything has to be labeled for marketing purposes and I guess that ‘country rock’ probably suits this album pretty well. There have been so many albums of this pleasant singer songwriter country rock produced over the last four or five decades that to stand out, something special is needed and this album doesn’t have it. It is certainly not a bad album but not a particularly good one either. The songs that echo Gene Clark are probably unsurprisingly, the best on this patchy recording with Northern Georgia fog having the potential to be a stunning song were it not for the production. The steel guitar is gorgeous as it is on the mid tempo country rocker Love in the 21st century. Done gone and When I think of home are also decent songs and most of the rest are pleasant enough country rock but he really needs to come up with a little innovation to raise himself above the crowd and really make use of his above average talent. Don’t write him off though. His vocals are very good most of the time and there are a few good ideas and most of the songwriting whilst not breaking new ground is decent. I think it’s the instrumentation and production that needs sorting out and with experience usually improving songwriting we could be listening to someone of real quality, particularly with those soulful vocals, on his next album.

www.johndelore.com

HENHOUSE PROWLERS – VERSES, CHAPTERS AND RHYMES

2011 - Prowler Music

3***

Whilst the vocals are not necessarily of the typically high lonesome bluegrass purity they are good and create plenty of atmosphere whilst the harmonies are superb. This album leans slightly more towards Dillard and Clark than Monroe and has more appeal for that. There is at times a little edginess with echoes of old timey rather than the standard bluegrass format, although they are marketed as a bluegrass band and most of the songs fall within that category. This four piece from Chicago is made up of original members Ben Wright on five-string banjo, and Jon Goldfine on upright bass, with Eric Lambert on guitar and Grant Ziolkowski on mandolin.
The songs are all well selected and the singing and playing is excellent but they don’t break any new ground and are on the upper edge of the pack with so many other really good bands. Standout tracks for me were the dark Prisoner of war, that tries to equate religious beliefs and war and the slightly edgy self explanatory Don’t always get what you wanted. Unsteady footing is a dark murder ballad about someone contemplating his own demise as punishment for the murders he committed and Mourning Dove is a sad tale of lost love. There are several really well played instrumentals that help to give a little variety and whilst there is no real filler on the album there are several tracks that seem a little formulaic. Then again if you are a fan of bluegrass it is partly that formula that holds the appeal so hopefully many people will buy and enjoy this classy album that is just a degree or so off the well trodden bluegrass path and as a consequence gives them a chance!

http://www.henhouseprowlers.com/

http://www.myspace.com/thehenhouseprowlers

LITTLE LISA DIXIE

2011 – Another Mile Records

3***

            This is an excellent nine track debut by Lisa with eight of the tracks being written by her. It’s not perfect but it certainly is good and she shows a lot of promise, not to mention a real badass attitude! She has a lazy drawl and at times a few vocal similarities to Lucinda Williams as well as writing songs from a viewpoint akin to the best feminist tendencies of Loretta Lynne! She also has a gorgeous singing voice that really is cut out for country music and would probably be happy to be bracketed in a category with Rachel Brookes, another hugely talented lady who also has a highly individual style.
            We should all hope, for her sake, that it is her imagination that dominates the songwriting rather than life experiences! If it is the latter she is in big trouble, with the songs telling tales of murder, suicide, drug addiction and alcohol abuse. Whilst the subject matter darkens the album her lovely, at times droning, vocals lighten some of the stories and consequently dominates the album.
            The songs certainly have impact as you will hear on the opening track Stop acting like a lady with it’s sassy kick against dominant men and downtrodden women, with some of it’s edges smoothed just a little by twanging guitars. Enjoy the ride includes gorgeous dobro and strummed acoustic guitar with Lisa’s echoing, haunting and haunted vocals on an almost gothic love song, whilst the mood darkens with Bad thang a harrowing tale of suicide. The mood darkens further with the self explanatory tale of a couple, one of whom is a drug addict the other an alcoholic in Stoned again, with what could be the same couple nearing the end in the quite harrowing Blakes song. The one cover on the album is a pretty good version of the Hank Williams classic Hey good looking.
            Whilst most of the songs subject matter is dark and tells tales of ‘lifes losers’ the songs are really well written, almost drawing the listener in to this forbidding world. The instrumentation is arranged perfectly to highlight the stories and get the best out of them whilst Lisa’s vocals are able to evoke whatever atmosphere she strives for in each song. An excellent album by newcomer that should have a tremendous future, if not in the generally bland ‘country pop’ of Nashville!

http://www.myspace.com/littlelisadixie138

http://www.littlelisadixie.com/

CURTIS ELLER’S AMERICAN CIRCUS – 1890 (Remix)

2011 – American Circus Records

3.5***

Hardly prolific, Eller has only released three albums in the 21st century since and including the original mix of this year 2000 excellent debut. At times, probably due to his quirky and literate style, he is a little reminiscent of the late great Warren Zevon on songs such as the banjo and steel driven The bravest of climbers and the title track 1890, although with a lot more of an old timey feel! Songs vary from the modern country of Following the ghost, a gorgeous sounding if harrowingly epic story set in the American Civil war and supported by his own plinking banjo aided by a haunting steel guitar. Then there are songs that may have a serious story but also contain comedic, at times vaudevillian, elements such as Call off the investigation and 1000 feet of throat. No one can ever accuse Eller of keeping to the same style, even including the accapella gospel of Sinner and the strange but true story of the killing of an elephant in The execution of Black Diamond. His influences range from the early ‘Hillbillies’ and Blues artists through to Bob Dylan and beyond, in fact just about anyone in the Roots music genre you can think of. And yet, he is not actually that similar to any of them, having developed a quirky style all his own which includes the way he plays his instrument of choice, the banjo!
If you like your roots music to include dark tragedy alongside comedy and performed in a diversity of styles including old timey and blues, with incredibly well written lyrics, give Curtis Eller a try. A really entertaining musician and thoughtful writer and a truly one off eccentric!

www.curtiseller.com

TRENT MILLER & THE SKELETON JIVE – WELCOME TO INFERNO VALLEY

2011 – Bucketful of Brains

4****

            This is probably how ‘country and western’ music could/should/would have sounded had the Nashville money men not got their hands on it many decades ago! It is well written, played and sung and at times is very dark and moody and traceably descended from the eerie old ‘hillbilly’ days of the 1920s (or their western counterparts!). Much of the album has an almost cinematic quality in a similar but more restrained style to someone such as the also excellent ‘Crazy Mountain Billies.’ It is hugely evocative of the wide open range and deserts and really is a modernisation of country and western that could have been associated with any number of ‘B’ picture westerns of decades gone by. So much of this feel comes from Millers haunting and haunted nasally vocals, that at times have a quality similar to the late great Gene Clark, but also from the violin (rather than fiddle!) playing of Shou Jie Eng. Maybe these songs sound as if they might have suited ‘singing cowboys’ such as Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, but as soon as you hear the lyrics you can tell they have much of the realism and darkly gothic ‘country and western’ that was missing from those far off times (that probably never really existed anyway!)
            His excellent band is made up of the tremendous already mentioned Shou Jie Eng on violin, Anders Dal plays drums, guitar and backing vocals, Jim Taylor is on bass and Jason Collins on mandolin and backing vocals. Listening to the album makes it likely that this is not just a ‘backing band’ but a group of people who contribute greatly to Millers musical vision.
            The album kicks off with Inferno Valley a song that could have come out of a western film and is about a man who in a drunken haze shot his girl friend, but with Miller’s straining vocals driven by mandolin and violin giving added eeriness to this dark theme which continues throughout much of this highly listenable and unusual album. Down in the lonesome valley is a song that lopes along and evokes a cowboy riding his faithful horse through a western landscape but when you listen to the lyrics is actually a murder ballad that in it’s own dark way invokes the ghost of Ophelia! It really is that dark! On the Ballad of the Gospel Oak our anti-hero is contemplating his own execution in a neutral tone that just seems to add to the haunting atmosphere. Whilst the whole album can be listened to, as an at times loosely linked concept, the songs are all strong enough to stand alone without giving the links a thought. For me the highlight is the tremendous Fear of flying that is very reminiscent of the late Gene Clark, with the chorus having a little of the sound of Tried so hard and, importantly, not being put in the shade at all! It’s quite unusual that such a darkly themed album has so many gorgeous melodies, but these it has in abundance with very few exceptions. Not everything works perfectly but the two or three songs that don’t quite feel right only add to the strength of this formidable piece of ‘filmic, modern, gothic country and western!’
            This is Millers second album and could/should point the way to a tremendous future as an excellent off centre, country singer songwriter. Tremendously dark but at the same time uplifting album!

http://www.trent-miller.com/

http://www.myspace.com/skeletonjive

THE BLACK LILLIES – 100 MILES OF WRECKAGE

2011 – North Knox Records

4****

            The first time I heard this album I thought it was a pleasant, well sung, well played recording of country music but nothing that others hadn’t done at least as well. How wrong can you be? It is certainly well played and sung and does qualify as country music, but most definitely not of the Nashville variety, which I at first thought it to be. There is an incredibly dark undercurrent to many of these songs that are stories not so much of lost love, but sheer blinding heartbreak, as well as the standard formula of tales of love violence and death! Listen to it and like me, you will feel that songwriter Cruz Contreras has visited some incredibly dark places over the years. Possibly some of this darkness comes from his breakup with ex wife Robinella and their band ‘Robinella and the CC Strinband’ of which he was founder member and the CC in the title! That Cruz managed to get himself back on track and form such an accomplished band, one that at times puts his previous excellent band in the shade, deserves enormous gratitude from those of us that love ‘real country music’! His singing alone, singles him out from the crowd. Whilst I am not Dwight Yoakams greatest fan, the fact that he is a tremendous country singer is beyond dispute. That Cruz at times sounds remarkably like him should be seen as a compliment, but he has so much more than Yoakam. Cruz seems able to change the texture and style of his vocals to suit any particular song, at times making this album sound as if it has several excellent male vocalists! Talking of excellent vocalists! Trisha Gene Brady on harmony vocals would probably be lead singer in many other bands. Her voice blends perfectly with Cruz’s and where necessary brings a softness to the song, at others they have an edgy discordancy that cannot be attained by lesser singers. The band is made up of a team of excellent musicians with Tom Pryor on pedal steel, Jamie Cook drums and Robert Richards on bass, plus the already mentioned Trisha Gene Brady and finally Cruz Contreras is responsible for songwriting, guitars and lead vocals.
            Of the excellent songs, quite a few standout, such as Two hearts down, a banjo and fiddle driven song about the ‘demon alcohol.’ Three in the morning is a track that I still find difficult to believe doesn’t have Dwight Yoakam on lead vocals, but the highlight for me is Shepherds song. It isa heartrendingly sad story about an innocent man blamed for a murder he didn’t commit, who runs away to avoid the noose, only to find years later that the guilty perpretator had been caught, with his wife meanwhile having remarried a new father for his children, leaving him as a man for whom there is nothing but blackness at the end of the tunnel. Quite harrowing in it’s way. Because of these dark themes that contrast Cruz’s exceptional vocals there is an appealing discordancy to the album that draws the listener in to these highly evocative stories and somehow gives it more strength and impact.
            However, not everything on the album works. Tall trees clocks in at 8.42 and is a good song that tells of an epic search for love and despite seeming over long and not quite working out was probably worth the effort with some excellent guitar work holding the song together! I couldn’t help feeling that it could have been shorter and consequently better. The arrow, a duet with Jill Andrews,despite being a little spoilt by the addition of strings is a lovely lost love ballad, with a gorgeous melody and steel guitar, but these slight reservations are probably nit picking and shouldn’t detract from what is an exceptional album.

www.theblacklillies.com

http://www.myspace.com/theblacklillies

DEAD ROCK WEST – BRIGHT MORNING STARS

2011 - Burnside

4****

Musically it’s always dangerous to make an album that contains nearly all traditional songs especially when most are religious or gospel themed and are mainly associated with some of the great blues players of the past. When you add in just three non traditional songs that are written by artists as diverse as June Carter Cash, Jesus and Mary Chain and a co write by Peter Case, Bob Neuwirth and Tom Russell you know that these are no ordinary musicians and are people that have put a huge amount of thought into what they are trying to achieve. And achieve it they do with huge credit going to Cindy Wasermans incredibly evocative vocals that fall somewhere into an area inhabited by great modern female blues singers such as Rory Block and Bonnie Raitt. Exalted company. I know, but she really is that good with her ability to interpret various strains of roots music. She is more than ably abetted by Frank Lee Drennen who also handles some of the vocals as well as mandolin, guitar and harmonica.
            Many of the songs are given their own highly individual interpretations of what is predominately blues, with a little R & B and several quite tremdous country songs, often with a little ‘punk’ edge! Gary Louris adds his not inconsiderable talents to some of the vocals, along with the backbone of legendary L.A. punk band ‘X,s’ John Doe, Exene Cervenka and D.J.Bonebrake These ‘guests’ are certainly not there just to add their names to the credits, bringing their own unique skills to give an edginess to most of what they touch. Another huge component is Peter Case who adds his vocals, guitar and production skills to this swampy blues, roots melange, helping to make it a roaring success! In fact several of the songs almost have a Daniel Lanois moody fogginess to them, albeit with a harder edge.
            The album is not in your face blues rock although it does rock quite nicely when required and would probably be easiest to categorise as ‘swampy blues’ were there such a genre! At times it has great subtlety in the respectful way they cover these songs, such as on the excellent William Reid (Jesus and Mary Chain) penned God help me with Frank Lee Drennen on lead vocals. June Carter Cash’s Wings of angels with Exene Cervenka on dual vocals with Wasserman is an extraordinary song that has never been bettered! What are they doing in heavan comes close to ‘country’ with it’s sparse instrumentation and gorgeous harmonies whilst the calmingly sparse Angel band can easily be imagined to be a song that the locals sang in church in an isolated hollow of a century ago. God don’t ever change and Ain’t no grave both have an eeie almost sinister feel to them, although the same applies to many of the songs on this notable album that really does stand out from the pack.
            This is Wasserman and Drennens second album, the first being the good if patchy ‘Honey and salt’. That mainly consisted of their own original songs, some of which were a little lightweight although it was by no means a bad album. This recording has the feel of an album that perfectly matches their talents, with their sound really gelling, containing as it does a little punk, a little swampiness, a dash of country and a lot of blues, making an excellent listening experience for anyone that has a liking for any strain of roots music! Certainly it can be called a ‘covers album’ but a covers album that has rarely been bettered!

www.deadrockwest.com

JAMIE FREEMAN – JUST YOU

2011 – Union Music Store

3.5***

When listening to a new album by an unfamiliar artist it always pays to listen for signs of copying a style or person, to hear if there is anything original in the blend of instrumentation, if the songwriting is any good and finally vocal qualities. In some ways the vocals are the least important element, always assuming you can tell the singer believes in what he, she, they are singing about. Whilst all music is derivative, there is still room to bring an element of originality to proceedings and we are probably fortunate to live in an age when technology gives people the opportunity to develop their own style and feel within the various genres. Maybe this has happened because so much, if not all of the mainstream music is manufactured purely with sales in mind rather than musicians being able to experiment or simply play the music that they feel, which brings us to this excellent debut by Jamie Freeman. He is certainly no copyist and fairly obviously has blended his numerous influences to a rootsy style that suits him down to the ground, the instrumentation is exemplary, he is a really good expressive vocalist and last but by no means least, no mean songwriter! When I look at an album and see that the artist involved has written all of the songs themselves that is always a huge plus, irrespective of the individual merits of each song. This goes back to the musician recording the music they feel. On this album of a dozen songs I can’t say that every song works as well as the next, but they all deserve to have been included and none are put to shame.

            Jamie’s instrument selection, arrangements and production could not possibly have been improved upon, always allowing his pleasantly expressive vocals, that are at times reminiscent of Paul Simon, space to be heard on these excellent songs, whilst at the same time allowing the instruments enough space to breathe. If the song appears to start flagging a little there is always something going on with the instrumentation to give it a lift, creating exactly the right mood for each of the songs.
            The album kicks off with the title track Just you, a quite hauntingly dramatic love song with superb instrumentation that includes banjo, perfectly complementing Jamie’s evocative vocals. Lillly’s boarding house is an excellent country story song that seems to take on some of the quirkiness of early David Bowie when Jamie’s vocals come into play, giving it an odd but appealing feel. It’s your lucky day is a good song that is lifted an extra notch with it’s perfect selection of instruments and Louise Gledhill’s gorgeous harmony vocals. Thou shalt not kill, is a topical song that sadly has relevance to just about any age of man, whilst the following gentle paen to love, Picture of you with it’s stunning mandolin and fiddle is a complete and welcome contrast, which is then followed by a walking bass line that evokes the ‘Tennessee Three’ on Go and tell Laura. An album that sits firmly within the country genre, with maybe a slight leaning towards folk, but with a lot of diversity and contrasts that should keep any listener interested from first note to last!
            We are so lucky in Brighton and the surrounding area to have so many talented musicians that can produce such high quality country music as this. They cover such a diversity of styles within the genre, from hillbilly blues to country rock and on to a more modern reading of traditional country albums such as this excellent first and hopefully not last solo effort.

www.jamiefreeman.co.uk

YOU CAN’T TEACH AN OLD DOG NEW TRICKS - SEASICK STEVE

2011 – Play it again Sam

3.5***

            Steve is one of the breed of excellent singer songwriters in and around the roots genres that cultivates an image that seems to almost make the music a secondary consideration. In his case it is the lifelong ‘hobo’ that has seen and done just about everything, even making his own instruments from junk! None of this really matters and although this persona helped him to get noticed in the first place he (and/or his management) are beginning to grate when every time he is interviewed we have to listen to his interminable stories, almost making him a caricature of himself, when what most people want to know about is his music! I can certainly understand, despite what I assume to be considerable wealth, him still wanting to manufacture his guitars himself; he obviously has great ability and the different sounds do contribute greatly to his overall sound.
            He also has a pretty fair ability as a songwriter and atmospheric singer as he proves on this and to my ears probably his best album so far. The attack of old that has sometimes been overdone, is still there but many of the songs on this album have great subtlety and as a consequence make the recording the most varied of his career. There are quite a few ballads, a variety of tempos and a much greater use of other lead instruments such as banjo, which shows up brilliantly on the gorgeous countryish ballad Treasures, with acoustic guitar and haunting fiddle adding to the atmosphere. The also banjo led Underneath a blue and cloudless similarly has country leanings and it is songs like these that help the albums diversity. Whiskey ballad is just Steve and acoustic guitar on a tongue in cheek ‘ode to booze’ following which, Back in the doghouse is back in familiar territory, a real rock out, whilst the final vocal track, It’s a long long way is evocative of a folk singer such as Dave Van Ronk with it’s communal sing-a-long chorus.
            In essence, this is a really good, fairly diverse album of, at times, quite elemental strains of roots music with a large slice of blues. It may have even been awarded an extra half star were it not for the awful track thirteen that is Seasick Steve talking about his own legend for nearly thirteen minutes, something that most have heard at least several times before and I for one have no desire to ever hear again! I suppose the good thing about the album is the first dozen tracks and it’s easy to ignore the unlucky thirteenth!

www.seasicksteve.com

http://www.myspace.com/seasicksteve

FOGHORN TRIO – SUD DE LA LOUISIANE

2011 – Self released

4****

            Foghorn Trio are another of the modern ‘old time stringbands’ that are sometimes accused of being derivative or copyists, but they simply play a variety of music in a style they have come too quite naturally due to their love for the music contained under the very loose genre of ‘old-timey’ or ‘trational country’. You only have to listen to this album to hear that they are actually enjoying themselves and if you get a chance to see them live, take it, it is like being transported back many decades thanks to their ability to interpret old songs and blend them seamlessly with their own originals. They are part of the seemingly floating aggregation that is the ‘Foghorn Stringband’ although due to work constraints for various members they sometimes play as just a trio. Nothing is lost though. They are a trio of highly skilled musicians who can each sing and play a variety of stringed instruments, with Caleb Klauder also having a career as a singer songwriter, with the linewup being completed by the excellent talents of Stephen Lind and Nadine Landry. The instruments they share are the standard stringband fiddle, guitar, mandolin, banjo but with Nadine Landry also adding her upright bass to the mix. All are highly accomplished musicians as they need to be, to make such a good album, although I’m starting to think that Nadine’s vocals are responsible for a lot of the character of the recording!
           Whilst the album is termed ‘stringband music’ it actually borrows from a much broader soundscape, with songs taken from such diverse artists as the Carter Family, Kitty Wells, a couple of Klauder originals, several ‘bluegrass’ and even a Cajun song in the title track Sud de la Louisiane. All are performed in the Trio’s own inimitable style and whilst in the main not a million miles removed from some of the originals, still with their own stamp on proceedings. There are several excellent fiddle and mandolin driven instrumentals and where there are vocal harmonies they all have a necessarily edgy discordancy to them, with the lack of smooth edges adding to the strength of the album. The Kitty Wells penned I don’t claim to be an angel is given an extraordinary twist with Nadine Landry’s raw keening nasally vocals making it sound as if it came from a time decades before Kitty even thought of writing it! The two Carter Family songs, Hello central and Let’s be lovers again lose nothing of the otherworldliness that the Carters possessed and Doc Watsons I’m troubled is not put to shame by the original.
            All in all this is an excellent album that brings together and blends incredibly well several strands of country music, played and sung with style and respect for the tradition it comes from.

http://foghornstringband.com/

http://www.myspace.com/foghornstringband

GOOD LUCK MOUNTAIN

2011 – LLC/IODA

4****

The word ‘reflective’ could actually have been invented to describe the music on this disc, with it’s haunting eeriness added to by Mike Ferrio’s hugely evocative, always excellent vocals. Sometimes you hear singers in a particular genre and can’t help feeling they are in an area that doesn’t suit their voice. Mike was a great singer with Tandy in that loose genre known as alt. country and whilst this album will appeal to fans of that particular strand of country music, it does veer towards a slower folksy version of it, an offshoot that again perfectly suits his vocals and enables him to get every drop of feeling, and there is a huge amount, out of each and every song. Thematically the albums subject matter seems to be a reflection on both the fragility of life and the inevitability of death but whilst always being believable never comes across as depressing.
            It is not a hook laden album and whilst the music is beautiful you won’t find too many hummable melodies, despite being melodic; and yet because of Mikes vocals, the feel and the tasteful instrumentation it is an album that is in itself memorable, it’s quality towering miles above most other albums of a similar style. It is so easy for a recording that has the ‘reflective’ label attached to it to sound a little boring and lack the ability to draw the listener into it’s intricacies, but where many fail this succeeds beautifully, in part due to the qualities already mentioned, but also hugely responsible is the standard of the musicianship in this band whose members have cut their musical chops in some of the best alt. country bands to ever grace the music business. Along with Mike Ferrio who handles most of the lead vocals and plays guitars there are Ana Egge, Konrad Meissner (The Silos, Matt Nathanson), Jason Mercer (Ron Sexsmith, Ani DiFranco), Sibel Firat (Pavement, Giant Sand, Fab Faux), Matt Mays (The Guthries, Matt Mays and El Torpedo), David Chernis (Star City, The Damnwells), with Eleanor Whitmore who plays violin and Lucy Hollier on viola also making a huge contribution to the sound. Not exactly a who’s who of the genre but all of these high quality musicians play with an incredible amount of sympathy for the subject matter always showing admirable restraint on this generally quietly ‘reflective’ album.
            Several of these excellently written songs actually remind me of Paul Simon’s Graceland album but I’m not sure why! Certainly Mike Ferrio’s vocals at times bear strong similarities to Simon’s and possibly the almost perfect instrumentation and the conceptual feel of the album without actually being a ‘concept album’ add to the feeling. Who knows? In the end it is a high quality, unusual and heartfelt recording by all those involved, that deserves to succeed as an excellent piece of musical art!

www.goodluckmountain.com

FRANK FAIRFIELD – OUT ON THE WEST

2011 – Tomkins Square

4.5****

            It was fairly easy to label Fairfield as a copyist with his playing of traditional old-timey and blues songs and his old as the hills ‘hillbilly’ sounding vocals, all supplemented by his almost peerless guitar, fiddle and banjo playing. He wasn’t trying to modernise the songs, more playing them as they had been played many decades ago but without the background noise of the early recordings! His first album, which was with a few reservations, excellent, consisted entirely of covers of old songs. One of the problems as I saw it was that he seemingly took this old ‘hillbilly’ persona a little too far, almost making himself a caricature of times gone by. His style of dress echoed an old timer dressed in his best finery, ally this to what appeared to be an ‘aw shucks’ uneducated shy hillbilly persona and I was finding it all a little too much! I’m still not entirely convinced that what we see on stage is the real Frank Fairfield, although if it is it won’t be the first or last time in my life that I’ve been happy to be proved wrong, but what is undeniable is his quite incredible musical talent and genuine love of this old eerie style. I say ‘style’ because the ‘copyist’ comments can be consigned to the past thanks to this tremendous new album. There are only a couple of covers, with the remainder all being written by Fairfield and all of an equally high standard. I still keep thinking that the songs are so authentic sounding that perhaps they are completely obscure old tunes that somehow only he has access to! Having spent far longer than is really healthy researching and listening to old timey/hillbilly I know this to not be the case. He really has written these ‘old songs’ in the 21st century! There are several excellent instrumentals, including the gorgeously evocative banjo solo on Winding spring. There is the banjo driven Someday you’ll be free a song confirming that despite sinning one day freedom will be attained! It’s a song so eerily atmospheric that you can imagine it being sung in the hollows of the 1920s to frighten children despite it actually being written in the 21st century! The ‘old time’ title song Out on the open west with it’s sawing fiddle and slightly discordant vocal harmonies really does invoke the wide open spaces that must have been far more prevalent in the days that this tremendous song summons up and the gentle banjo driven Ruthie is quite haunting. These are not necessarily the best songs on the album; just examples of what can be heard on this tremendous album that almost calls up the past!
            Whereas his first album was completely solo, this new one is augmented by several other excellent musicians who include Willie Watson of Old Crow Medicine Show and Jerron ‘Blind Boy’ Paxton, both helping out on guitars and harmony vocals. The support is never sufficient to make it a ‘band’ album, allowing just enough variety to give the songs an occasional lift or a little more of an edge to keep listeners on their toes! His vocals are just incredible! There is something in the totally untutored nasally whine that really is an echo from the 1920s. There were quite a few vocalists 80 - 90 and more years ago that sounded similar to this but it is still a shock to find someone who grew up in a west coast city in the late 20th century having such a feeling of authenticity!
             Fairfield seems to be endowed with an innate instinct for this old sounding ‘hillbilly’ music, with his ability being genuinely exceptional, as is the spirit that he evokes and his instrumental prowess. You can never call a man that plays this music in the 21st century ‘original’ but I’m pretty sure that if he could be transported back 90 years he would be and in all probablility would be accepted alongside some of those old legends!
             The man is a complete ‘one off’ and a reflection of the past rather than a copy and as far as I’m concerned if he wants to dress as and develop a hillbilly persona he is more than welcome. Ultimately it’s the music that counts for me and so it should for you! Quite brilliant!

http://www.myspace.com/frankfairfield

EXENE CERVENKA – THE EXCITEMENT OF MAYBE

2011 – Bloodshot

3.5***

            Her punk days with John Doe in that greatest of all Californian punk bands ‘X’ have now been consigned to history and those fiercely gritty edges that incorporated rockabilly and ‘cowpunk’ as well as punk, have been smoothed off somewhat, but Exene is still a long way from the mainstream. On this excellent recording that is being promoted predominately as a country album, her delicious, quivering feminine vocals still have that odd otherworldly feel that gives her songs a uniquely edgy atmosphere. There are some excellent catchy melodies on this album of all self written songs that tell tales of lifes trials and tribulations that include falling in and out of love as well as unrequited love. The playing is always good as you would expect with Dave Alvin contributing some of his excellent guitar work, some gorgeous steel guitar courtesy of Maggie Bjorklund and Brady Blade on drums but for me what gives the album an extra lift is the harmony vocals of Cindy Wasserman. On some of the songs the blend of the two womens voices almost gives that eerie feel that was conjured up five or six decades ago by (presumably!) multi tracking the voice of Peggy Lee on ‘Siamese cat song’! Exene has a slightly discordant but highly atmospheric voice that seems to drive it’s way through songs whilst leaving the instrumentation to do it’s own thing. Her vocals would have been at home in the high Appalachians of the 1920’s and 30’s where feel rather than purity was the most vital ingredient in a voice. This is not exactly a country music album but has country influences in as much as she has probably listened to plenty of old Appalachian ‘hillbilly’ music as well as modern alt. country. Consequently the recording has a fairly original sound and feel to it without having the groundbreaking quality that ‘X’ had! The album incorporates many aspects and atmospheres of that old catchall ‘Americana’ with the slight emphasis being on country plus folk, pop/rock and even a little punk sensibility!
            The one minor complaint is that I can’t really see what was brought to the album by the addition of a brass section, but as it is only included on a few tracks it doesn’t really detract from the overall feel of what is generally an excellent album. You always know that each Exene Cervenka album is going to sound different to it’s predecessor, with each of her solo albums being excellent in different ways although always being covered by that ‘roots music’ umbrella.
            If you like music that is predominately an edgy version of country and far from the mainstream you could do a hell of a lot worse, and not too much better, than buying this highly individual album!

www.exenecervenka.net

THE REDLANDS PALOMINO COMPANY – DON’T FADE

2011 – Clubhouse Records

4****

            It almost seems too glib to describe this bands albums and live shows as ‘classic country rock,’ but that is just about as accurate a description as there is to sum up this collection of excellent musicians and their music. Husband and wife team of Hannah and Alex Elton-Wall are the lead vocalists as well as songwriters, whose partnership provides the main impetus that drives the bands music on to hopefully the huge success their work deserves. Alex has a pleasantly melodic, yet raw vocal style whilst Hannah’s appealingly emotional voice is simply gorgeous; add them together and you have tremendous and at times quite edgy harmonies!
            In actual fact the classic country rock tag is in many ways a misnomer, simply because it has long been used as a catch all phrase to describe (particularly around the late 1960s/1970s) music that doesn’t exactly fit into the country or rock genres but has elements of both, sometimes even including strands of folk or at a pinch, R ‘n’ B! Redlands, however, really do blend in an as near as dammit 50/50 split, country and rock, to finish up with their classic blend of the two.
            They are a six piece band that master just about every tempo and emotion change in this loose genre, with the lineup being completed by David Rothon on pedal steel, Dan Tibury on drums, Tom Bowen on electric guitar and Rain on bass. They are certainly not in that edgier genre that has become known as alt.country, but country rock really can’t be played much better than this. They compare favourably with aspects of bands such as the Parsons led Flying Burrito Brothers or the Jayhawks with their strong, melodic, harmony driven tales built around love won, love lost and love unrequited! Six of the songs are written by Hannah, three by Alex plus a tremendous version of the Dillards One A.M. with Alex on lead vocals. The songs range from the excellent mid tempo country rock of Call me up and Sirens with their jangling guitars and pedal steel, and ballads such as the tremendous tale of love winning out in the end with it’s Eaglesque guitars and Alex on lead vocals on 1879. Then there is the steel driven heartrending country ballad of the title track Don’t fade, with Hannahs simply gorgeous vocals getting every last drop of emotion out of yet another excellent song. And so the album goes on, with one tremendous song after the other, making this album an essential purchase for anyone with even a passing interest in ‘country rock’ or the edgier side of ‘country’!
            In the end, perhaps there is nothing that breaks new ground on this outstanding recording but country rock has rarely, if ever, sounded better!

www.redlands.moonfruit.com

www.myspace.com/theredlandspalominoco

SOUTHERN TENANT FOLK UNION – PENCAITLAND

2011 – Johnny Rock

5*****

The scope of the music on this album is almost overwhelming, making it difficult to know where to start reviewing such a tremendous and unusual recording. The fact that most of these impressive songs could easily be related to the harsh realities of life in and around the poorer Scottish communities and at an indeterminate time, is probably what gives the album a conceptual feel, especially as others by extension, could just as easily relate to early ‘country music.’ Some of the stories are almost cinematic in quality and when you add in the generally mournful atmosphere of some of these songs, the predominately Scottish vocal accents and the occasional use of Scottish small pipes you get a strong feel of rural Scotland in times gone by.
            Their last album, the superb ‘The new farming scene’, managed to garner me some criticism for having the temerity to suggest that much of the content of the disc could easily be translated to early country music (or hillbilly or old-timey!) It’s not as if I was suggesting that was exactly what they were playing, merely that it was a period that the songs evoked for me. Even I’m not quite old enough to remember the late 19th or early 20th century and as there were very few, if any, recordings made of this genre in those far off days any comparisons are purely subjective anyway. I couldn’t see then and still can’t see now why this comparison would upset anyone. It was, and is, simply based on the fact that the south eastern U.S is populated by many people whose forefathers came originally from the British Isles and as we all do, carried their influences with them, passing on those same influences and developments by simple osmosis! My feeling was that much of the albums music could easily have preceeded the early days of recording (the 1920s) by perhaps a generation or two. If you assume that is correct (I know this requires imagination, but that is exactly what all of the best music stimulates!) then ‘Pencaitland’ goes back perhaps several more generations, with its slant more in the direction of the Scottish folk music that the immigrants would have been playing. They didn’t suddenly acquire an American sensibility or accent! Of course this album is much more Scottish than the bands first two albums and probably shows a little more of those Scottish roots than ‘The new farming scene’, but with the banjo and mandolin still in heavy use there is always going to be a little of that haunting and eerie ‘high lonesome sound’. Maybe the concept has as much to do with the unique blend of acoustic instrumentation and the predominately Scottish vocal accents as it does the storylines, making an album and a band that are completely unlike anyone else.
            The one constant in the setup of this band, apart from leader Pat McGarvey, is the instrumentation, all of which can be found in traditional bluegrass or ‘old-timey’ bands. And yet, this band are playing what is predominately Scottish folk music and blending numerous other strains of folk music completely naturally, almost making their own unique genre. The Southern Tenants are able to rely on not just several tremendous vocalists and some peerless harmonies, but also on quite exceptional songwriting and highly skilled playing. For example, Carrie Thomas’ high quality fiddle playing is very Scottish grounded and is in an entirely different style to your average Bluegrass fiddler, giving the Southern Tenants highly evocative music even more of a lonesome haunting feel without ever spilling over into modern Bluegrass histrionics. Leader Pat Mcgarvey in many ways gives much of the music it’s signature with his musical vision, harmony singing and his always excellent banjo playing providing much of the lead, along with Carrie’s fiddle. Jenny Hill’s double bass is incredibly important in laying a foundation for the beat and fortunately she is more than capable of providing whatever is needed, with Adam Bulley on mandolin and guitar adding to the ‘old-timey’ feel. Ewan MacIntyre, with his strong Scottish accent, supplies over half of the lead vocals, as well as percussion, harmonica and guitar whilst Jed Milroy handles most of the remainder of the lead vocals plus guitar, clawhammer and harmonica. Finally, Chris Purcell plays guitar and sings lead on his own excellent It takes time, and along with everyone else adds harmonies.
            In the past, virtually all of the Southern Tenants recorded songs were written by Pat McGarvey but his attitude is that if the song is good enough it doesn’t matter who wrote it! An admirable trait and one that helps to develop their sound, with Pat having written about half, with five others being either solely or co-written by Jed Milroy. Chris Purcell, Ewan Macintyre and Carrie Thomas all contribute a song each, with Carrie’s gorgeous vocals on her own The tide giving the album and indeed the band, a whole new dimension. Some of the songs are fairly easy to relate to Scotland, but others could quite easily be ‘country songs!’ It’s quite incredible that one band has so many excellent vocalists and all with differing styles, consequently making their harmonies almost unsurpassable! It is impossible to really pick out album highlights although songs such as the title track Pencaitland and The rights and interests of the labouring man are mini dramas in their own right, whilst Travelling man is evocative of the journey through life. Rough head mountain could just as easily be set in the Appalachians as the Scottish highlands as could Monument, but really, all of these songs stimulate a variety of feelings and moods dependant on the individual but somehow linked stories, so do yourself and those around you a favour by buying it, then you too can lose yourself in the atmosphere that is created!
            In the end this is a complex but incredibly rewarding listen that mixes a predominantly Celtic feel with a large dash of American folk music, also adding a blend of other influences making a totally unique album.

www.southerntenantfolkunion.com

www.myspace.com/southerntenantfolkunion

Haunted Hearts – Howdy

2010 – Self released

3***

          This is the second album of Americana/Country/Indie music by this excellent band from Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. They have a highly individual sound that is difficult to pigeon hole, but on the strength of their first two albums their music is starting to become recognizable as their own. On the whole, the songs that seem to have even a loose association with ‘country’ are the strongest and whilst there is nothing bad on the album those that veer more towards ‘indie’ certainly seem to be less memorable, at least to my ears.
          The band is made up of Dennis Ellsworth who handles singing, songwriting and guitar, Johnny Ross on piano and organ, giving them much of their distinctive sound with his excellent ‘barrelhouse’ style of playing, Mike MacDougall on drums and Mark Geddes plays bass. All are talented, seemingly able to handle a myriad of tempos and emotions. Cellar of love is a decent ‘honky tonk’ song with the tremendous ‘barrelhouse piano’ playing of Ross driving the song along. Running like a riot is straight forward indie rock/pop with it’s only real distinguishing feature being the piano playing but this is followed by the quite exceptional country story song/ballad of Grandfather’s shadow, one of the tracks that lifts the album above average, along with the mid tempo country rockers Lend me some of yours and (I didn’t want to live in a) Cardboard box. Another beautiful ballad is Tried to be your lover, with it’s keyboards and haunting violin backing,as isthe album closer Satin doll, a lovely country ballad that includes excellent harmonies, weeping steel guitar and keyboards and is slightly reminiscent of something Glen Frey did many years ago that I can’t quite put my finger on!
          A good album with a variety of tempos and several styles that could have been great if they had left out their indie proclivities and continued along the country/roots road. They most definitely have their own sound, aided to a large degree by their use of keyboards, particularly the piano. It remains to be seen which route they take in the future.

www.hauntedhearts.ca

www.myspace.com/hauntedhearts

HIGHLONESOME – IN LIFE WE CAN’T BE FREE

2009 – Highlonesome

4****


This tremendous follow up to 2008s debut album (reviewed below) maintains the bands ability to conjure up these dark almost gothic country tales. As with the previous recording all of the songs on this album bar one are written by singer, guitarist and banjo player Noah Tyson. The ‘bar one’ on this album is a superb version of Hank Williams sad country gothic tale, Alone and forsaken on which Tyson’s vocals really get to the meat of the song, with atmospheric support by a heavy, low bass beat allied to the eerie sawing fiddle that is so prevalent on both albums. Other band members are a second multi instrumentalist, Joe Huber, who has recently released a soon to be reviewed solo album and is also a member of the superb .357 String Band with the lineup being completed by Ian Watson on bass and DB Morrison on drums.
             First couple of tracks are not too far removed from traditional
bluegrass, but have a slightly punked up feel to them. Of course this band don’t plough the bluegrass furrow, preferring to play around the edges and then veer off into an alt. country or ‘gothic’ country direction, the latter probably being as suitable a label as any for this band that really are masters of edgy acoustic ‘hillbilly’music!
             Generally Tysons vocals have a strong intensity and a timbre that’s a little remininscent of Steve Young of yesteryear and he ensures he gets every drop of emotion out of each of his well written songs. On your knees and pray is a tremendous alt. countryish song with the atmosphere being built by the banjo and acoustic guitar being about level in the mix, aided by a driving drum and bass beat and the haunting tones of the accordion. Devil at the door is another haunting sad song, this time driven by fiddle and acoustic guitar with the very next song Lonesome line, by way of contrast, being led by banjo and acoustic guitar! An excellent album that is quite eerily refreshing!

www.myspace.com/highlonesome13

HIGHLONESOME

2008 - Highlonesome

3.5***

An excellent debut album of really good, dark edgy punked up hillbilly music! At times they are slightly reminiscent of Old Crow Medicine Show but with even more of a ramshackle edge! So many of the songs
sound as if there are two banjos being played (maybe there are!) giving a unique sound to this recording that consists of all Noah Tyson penned songs with the exception of the traditional Wayfaring stranger. They are dark, pain filled songs of death, all round misery, lost love and very little optimism, all sung with such conviction that you can’t help but wonder what sort of life the writer has led, or maybe even worse, the place that his imagination takes him! Tysons vocals are untutored and at times incredibly raw, in other words perfect for this type of music! One of the songs
Healer has a very similar melody to a track from one of the Billy Bragg and Wilco ‘Mermaid Avenue’ albums but frustratingly I can’t think which one!
The lineup, as far as I know, is the same as on their second album (reviewed above) and the songs are just as strong, with the evocative driving banjo, atmospheric vocals and untutored hillbilly sounding harmonies of The longest day perhaps giving it a slight edge over most of the other songs, but there is most definitely no filler!
Although the album clocks in at less than half an hour it still has the feel of a complete album rather than a long e.p and is well worth spending your hard earned on! Real country music played from the heart!

PERREZE FARM – SONGS FOR THE BIRDS

2009 – Self released
(6 track e.p)

4.5****

     I know this e.p. is two years old but I’ve only just discovered it and
they apparently have a new three track e.p. out so I must try to get a copy of that as well. As usual I have an alarmingly large stack of new albums to review but just can’t stop playing this incredible disc of modern day ‘hillbilly/old timey’. The predominant instruments are banjo and fiddle, with plenty of guitar and some drums for support, but it is actually Joe Perreze’s harsh untutored vocals that are responsible for the eeriness of this extraordinary music. Joe’s brother helps out, but most of the support is provided by another tremendous artist that inhabits the slightly edgy boundaries of roots music, Graham Lindsey, who contributes fiddle, electric guitars, dobro, percussion and backing vocals. Joe has in recent years helped out as multi instrumentalist for people such as J.B. Beverly,Graham Lindsey, Slackeye Slim, Jayke Orvis, Sean Reefer and Rachel Brooke so has an almost incomparable pedigree!
             At times they are reminiscent of a band such as Souled American, not in their sound but purely for the fact that they have their very own idiosyncratic approach to their particular area of roots music. This eerie otherworldly music evokes an old weird ‘holler’ that probably never really existed, except in nightmares, much of it sounding more threatening than the hillbilly scenes in ‘Deliverance’!
            Not for the fainthearted, but an incredibly rewarding listen if you stick with this album of dark eerie murder ballads mixed in with a little gospel!
            I know next to nothing about the band but just wanted to do a
brief review to try and garner some interest in them. The downloads are readily
available from the usual outlets.

www.theperrezefarm.com

www.myspace.com/theperrezefarm

EMMYLOU HARRIS – HARD BARGAIN

2011 – Nonesuch

3.5***

                I would love to be writing this review trying to put into words what a great album this is. But the simple fact is, it isn’t! I’ve been a fan since the young folksinger made a pair of albums in the early 1970s with Gram Parsons. In the years since then she has made some exceptional albums, a few that were pretty average and just the occasional album that would have been better unmade. This one falls into the top end of the ‘average albums’. Of course whatever the quality of any of her recordings you know there is always going to be that gorgeous voice that is never anything but a rewarding listen. Her ability to quite literally drain every drop of emotion out of any song makes her almost without peers, although even Emmylou has to struggle with the pretty dire ‘dog tribute’ Big Black Dog!
            No one can inhabit a sad song quite as well as Emmylou which is a huge plus on this album that seems to reflect on loss, loneliness and all round sadness! Her songwriting, with a few notable exceptions has never been her strongest suit, but on this album she has written more decent songs than bad, showing a steady improvement as she becomes more confident.

The instrumentation has a haunting sound, perfectly matching Emmylou’s sublime vocals whilst the playing is almost peerless as you would expect on an Emmylou Harris album. To my ears there is no female vocal that can match her, in fact she is probably the only singer I know of that has ever made a lousy album that is actually worth listening to! (no, I don’t mean this one is lousy!)
            The outstanding song on the album is My name is Emmett Till whichcould well end up as one of the great classic murder ballads. It is a quite harrowing tale, made doubly so by the fact that it is a true story, with Emmylou singing the song as the victim, a 14 year old black Chicagoan boy visiting relatives in the deep south who is butchered for his cheek. It happened in 1955, so is not exactly ancient history. There are other good songs contained on the album but nothing else quite in that class. She certainly still has strong emotional ties to the late Gram Parsons as she shows in The Road an obvious tribute to him and one that will certainly keep his memory alive. New Orleans, is a tribute to that devastated by hurricane city that rocks nicely and enables her to show she is not just about ballads. There are just two covers on this album, the best of which is Ron Sexsmiths title track Hard bargain, a song that suits her voice better than that of its author! There is even another tribute on the album, this one for her late friend Kate McCarrigle, a huge and sadly missed talent. The songs title is Darlin’ Kate which I suspect may be found by some to be a little too cloying but it is most certainly heartfelt and emotive.
            It is a really difficult album to sum up. She first came to fame as a young and brilliant interpreter of new as well as classic country songs. She followed this route for more than 20 years, always with a little diversity but never straying too far from the country/country rock format. Then, in the mid 1990’s she didn’t so much change direction as take the country format and develop her strand of it into an emotional, atmospheric urban roots style of music, still with country elements but not of itself country. This album continues along that path and in many ways has the feel of someone who is trying hard to change but without really knowing what style she is pursuing. As a consequence of this, the whole album seems to lack any real direction, despite the haunting atmosphere and her beautiful evocative voice. Maybe I’m just yearning for days gone by, but despite one great song and most of the others being pretty good the whole album just feels slightly unsatisfactory and sits in a no mans land where I can’t quite like it, but can’t quite dislike it either. Such is life!

www.emmylouharris.com

www.myspace.com/emmylouharris

OLD MAN MARKLEY – GUTS ‘N’ TEETH

2011 – Fat Wreck Chords

3.5***

            A debut album can be difficult to assess unless you have seen the artist live or been told or read something about them previously. In the case of Old Man Markley I had never even heard the name before but thanks to their drive, passion and the sheer exuberance they display on every track I certainly expect to hear more of them in the future! They are a band that is fairly obviously enjoying themselves as well as being a band with a large membership, at last count there were eight of them, and they play roots music that could be described as punked up old timey. I can’t see that they would be very comfortable in the bluegrass genre that some have fitted them into, although to be honest they are one of these bands that are incredibly difficuly to categorise other than under the ‘roots’ umbrella!
            They all seem to be excellent musicians with an original sound that is certainly punked up and shows their background and musical tastes, but their instrumental prowess is better than any punk band that I know of as are Johnny Careys vocals. The duet between him and Annie Detemple on the tongue in cheek vaudevillian, Do me like you do shows her to have a really fine expressive voice as well. The punk attitude shines through at times in their Pogues like joyousness and sheer fun in playing their blend of various styles of roots music, which at times drives along at a pleasantly manic pace! An example of the changes in style is the song immediately following the aforementioned Do me like you do. Thatis Killing time a song that seems to combine, folk, country, bluegrass and punk, then this is followed by a song about … erm, songs! The title is Song songs, a bit of a giveaway on the subject matter and which veers towards a hillbillyish country ballad, extending their broad palette but without ever straying too far from their base!
            Most of the songs are written by Joey Garibaldi who also handles bass and vocals, Johnny Carey is on lead vocals and guitar, Annie Detemple on Autoharp and vocals, Aaron Higgins on drums, Ryan Markley on washboard, John Rosen on banjo and vocals, Katie Weed on fiddle and finally, Alex Zablotsky on mandolin. An excellent band that have so much scope for what they can achieve within the broad confines of rootsy, folksy, country, punk that I can’t wait for their next album! I’ll bet they are a cracking live band as well!

www.oldmanmarkley.com

www.myspace.com/oldmanmarkley

CRAZY MOUNTAIN BILLIES – BADLANDS III

2011 – Extra-Smooth 9000 Records

4****

            This is the fourth album of almost cinematic sounds by Andy Bormes alter ego the Crazy Mountain Billies. This disc contains more instrumentals than his previous offerings but if you lose yourself in this music, almost impossible not to, you will find yourself trying to remember what was going on in this particular western film. You may even be trying to visualise what was happening in one of these ‘western gothic’ movies such as ‘No country for old men,’ as particular tracks were playing, such is it’s grip on the imagination!
            I’m not too sure how he gets some of the sounds and can’t identify some of the instruments but this album is so different to anything else you might hear and consequently is quite addictive. Certainly the dominant instrument is banjo, giving Andy the chance to push his incredibly masterful dexterity to it’s limits, but amongst others there is jews harp, acoustic guitar, dobro, national steel bodied resonator, mandolin, fiddle and, I think, synthesizer plus of course his raspy atmospheric vocals, although there are less of those on this album than previous offerings! I’ve seen his music described as ‘an extreme form of bluegrass with elements of old-timey, string band and Appalachian mountain music’! Now you can add ‘elements of soundtrack music’ and still not really sum up some of the sounds on this series of albums, but don’t be worried by the ‘series’ tag. Each album can stand alone but all are still available so if, like me, you hear one and become addicted you can easily feed that addiction!
            To get an authentic western feel, Andy told me that he had great fun writing and recording the album in a remote cabin in the Black hills of South Dakota! Apparently there had been some minor sound quality issues during the latter stages of recording, due to his computer playing up and then seizing up completely! Fairly obviously those issues were resolved as the sound quality is now fine!
            The songs range in length from less than two minutes to eleven and a half minutes which is partly responsible for the scenic/cinematic quality of this album. At times the pace can be quite manic, almost taking your breath away, but stick with it and you will be rewarded! I expect the most radio friendly song will be The hills are black but this reference to those hills is a lot darker (sic) than the Doris Day hit of so many decades ago and despite only clocking in at just over three minutes is epic in texture and tone with it’s soaring chorus. The longest song on the album Freight train take me away is extraordinary. It’s structure and instruments change regularly almost making it an epic countryfied version of ‘Tubular Bells,’ but with different instrumentation and added character! It is almost impossible to keep up with everything that’s going on and will probably repay many listens! I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve listened to this album, but with every play something different seems to emerge. It’s that sort of an album! It takes a lot of time to reveal all of it’s nuances, but give it a try, I’m sure you’ll be pleased you did!

www.myspace.com/crazymountainbillies

ZOE MUTH and the LOST HIGH ROLLERS – STARLIGHT HOTEL

2011 – Signature Sounds

4****

Zoe Muth is another of the young up and coming country singer songwriters that doesn’t share the same broad but sugary vocal range of many of Nashvilles so called finest but the music is all the better for it. She injects plenty of feeling into proceedings and at times sounds a little like a cross between Iris Dement and Nanci Griffith. She is also a tremendous songwriter with all of the songs on this, her second album, being Zoe originals. Most of the songs are downbeat stories, many revolving around lost love or an inability to take a chance on love, possibly with just a little touch of cynicism! Either Zoe has packed a lot of living into her young life or she has an exceptional imagination. Maybe a little of both! Whatever the reason, this is an album that is rewarding to listen to over and over again with it’s believable, dramatic (but never overly so) songs.
The Lost High Rollers are incredibly important to the overall sound and give perfect balance to all of the songs on this as well as her first album. They are made up of Dave Harmonson on pedal steel and electric guitars, Ethan Lawton on mandolin, Mike McDermott plays bass and Greg Nies on drums. The sound could be summed up as straight country but with a few variations. The instrumentation is similar to that used in the 1950s and 60s Nashville version of country music but somehow has more of an edginess to it, possibly brought about by Zoe’s full of character vocals, as evidenced on songs such as Before the night is gone a sad sounding ballad about the fragility of love and the difficulties faced in keeping it alive. Harvest moon blues tells about the loneliness of moving on, with acoustic guitar and mandolin giving just the right amount of sparse support with some really good harmonies in the background. New Mexico is another downbeat story, this time about imagining an ex lover with his new love and it’s effect on her psyche, but is at the same time a gorgeous song of almost cinematic scope. The writing really does evoke the wide open desert landscape of New Mexico and the bars in it’s hot dusty towns! If I can’t trust you with a quarter brings a little lightness to the storyline in a steel driven country song with her slightly lazy drawl at it’s best telling the story of someone she meets in a bar, only to discover he is not worth wasting her time on because he’s never heard of John Prine. Is there a better way to judge character? Probably not! Music dictates life and everything is in balance!
This high quality writing (and musicianship) is what lifts this album above much of the ‘country’ genre. The instrumentation alone is incredibly well thought out and is never overdone, always having a sparse but at the same time, full sound allowing Zoe’s tremendous storytelling full rein. There are no vocal or instrumental histrionics, just exceptionally atmospheric country songs being played and sung as country music should sound.

www.zoemuth.com

www.myspace.com/zoemuth

LUCINDA WILLIAMS – BLESSED

2011 – New West

3***

            On first listen this album was really quite disappointing. I’m starting to find that lazy drawl that at one time held great appeal is at times starting to grate. I’m not writing this as someone who doesn’t like her either. On the contrary, I’ve always looked forward to her albums, even if there has been an incredibly long wait between some of them. I’ve always believed Ramblin’ to be a better album than she is given credit for, with her interpretations of old-time and blues songs. After that I thought Sweet Old World had more good moments than bad whilst Car Wheels on a Gravel Road provided a ‘benchmark’ by which much else could be measured in this branch of roots music. Ever since Car Wheels …… the quality seems to have lessened, although this one is slightly superior to her very recent work. At least here, the song topics have changed and she is steering slightly out of the alternative country furrow previously ploughed! She can never, nor should she try to, leave the country/blues styling’s that have given her a degree of fame completely, but it is nice to at last hear a little diversity.
            This album has the feel of being more reflective than much of her previous work, maybe exorcizing pre marriage doubts? There is quite a strong use of metaphor but the album does seem to be about love and an acceptance that not everyone can give the same level of commitment, and in fact seemingly points to an inability to show any commitment at all, unless of course this refers to old relationships. Who knows really what is in a songwriters mind? There are some good songs on the album and whilst her voice is as edgy as ever the same cannot really be said of the album as a whole, but with the onset of middle age and contentment it can’t be easy to retain the lyrical sharpness and edginess of yesteryear!
            Of course, having said all that, it’s certainly not a bad album. The ‘backing’ musicians are all top notch as is the producer Don Was, but some may think everything is too restrained. Lucinda’s singing still has that laconic drawl to it that to me is just starting to feel a little monotonous and the songs themselves don’t seem to have the writing quality of old. Maybe it’s the subject matter, much of which talks of total commitment from one party and very little or none from the other. A case in point being I don’t know how you’re living, the haunting steel driven, slow, moody, lovelorn ballad about giving yourself totally to someone who may be unable to reciprocate. There is the slow moody tale of loss in Copenhagen, more slants on commitment in Born to be loved and Seeing black, then there are songs about second chances and fresh starts that all point to what is likely to be the hopeless pursuit of an already dead relationship. She has obviously worked long and hard on getting these songs to this stage but there are several that just seem to be too repetitious. Soldier’s song is a really good ballad but it’s incredibly difficult subject matter is about a soldiers actions up to the moment of his death in relation to his loved ones back home. In the main it does work but it is incredibly harrowing. Whether any bereaved families would receive any comfort from it or just feel it to be slightly sycophantic is open to question? It is always a question of whether it’s ‘just a song’ or the fact that it’s alright because it’s topical, or wrong because it’s topical! But credit her with trying to say something about the horror of events that may be just a little too close to home for many. Ugly truth isa really nice mid tempo ballad with haunting steel guitar that seems to say we can’t change who and what we are, whilst the big ballad title track Blessed talksabout the blessings of life, irrespective of circumstances but is slightly monotonous, with the instrumental break meandering along and despite quality musicianship, not really coming up with anything new.
            My review copy of this album came with the ‘Kitchen tapes’ disc, which is all of the songs from the album being played at home at her kitchen table! Unless you are a Lucinda completest I wouldn’t bother with it unless you can find the double version for the same price as the single. So, not a bad album, just a slightly disappointing one.

www.lucindawilliams.com

www.myspace.com/lucindawilliams

CARRIE ELKIN – CALL IT MY GARDEN

2011 – Red House Records

4****

With the banjo, mandolin and Carrie’s lovely vocals to the fore this album is set apart from many other albums in this folksy countryish genre, not only because of it’s all round quality but also that little extra originality. Her voice may lack the purity of say, an Emmylou, but it is still an instrument of great beauty and character, with an edge that keeps things interesting. She fills these mainly self penned songs with the soul needed to lift her above this incredibly crowded sub genre that actually does sit somewhere between American folk music and country. With that in mind she should be more commercially viable than ‘the crowd’ and hopefully the excellent writing and slightly unusual lead instrumentation, along with that gorgeously expressive voice should stand her in good stead. It’s funny how you can actually sometimes hear a singers influences in their vocals. Thank goodness Carrie’s seem to be more ‘hillbilly’ than Nashville mainstream, thus giving her that already mentioned edge! This is the third album of hers that I’ve heard and each one is an improvement on it’s predecessor, never a bad sign!
The playing of the band and the instrumentation, which also includes dobro, various guitars, drums and bass, is always excellent, and restrained enough to allow these diverse story songs to shine through. The album was apparently recorded at the home of Sam Baker who helps out with harmonies on the song written especially for him, Dear Sam. There are some excellent harmonies on the slightly gospelly feeling Guilty hands, then there is the gorgeous poignant ballad Lift up the anchor with it’s haunting steel guitar and mournful cello giving it even more atmosphere. Landeth by sea is another in a similar vein, again with the beautiful sound of a steel guitar in the background. Indeed most of the songs have an incredibly intimate feel, but with their variety of emotional ups and downs involving different aspects of a relationship are never tiresome. In fact on the contrary, whilst her vocals are often gentle, almost fragile, she seems able to summon extra strength when necessary, enabling her to imbue the songs with a power belied by the fragility of her voice. None of the songs on this album get much above slow to mid-tempo but instead of holding the album back it seems to add to the strength of the songs and probably to her confidence in being able to achieve this. At times Carrie’s vocals are reminiscent of singers such as Jane Siberry or Gillian Welch but really she does have her own individual style and long may she continue with it! A beautiful and haunting album by a talented singer songwriter.

www.carrieelkin.com

www.myspace.com/carrieelkin

ISRAEL NASH GRIPKA –
BARN DOORS AND CONCRETE FLOORS

2011 – Continental Song City

4.5****

            Israel Nash Gripka is a singer songwriter on an epic scale! His songs are not simple songs, they are nearly all stories of a filmic quality, some encompassing an entire life story! The album as a whole actually reminds me in a strange way of Robbie Robertson’s debut solo album of 1987 in as much as you know it has almost unsurpassable quality in it’s musicality and writing but will probably sell very little despite that cinematic scope. Several of the songs are deep and difficult to unravel in their subject matter but it is hugely rewarding trying! Apparently Israel and band decamped to a barn in the Catskill mountains to record this album; maybe the echo I hear of an earlier work relates more to The Band’s ‘Music from Big Pink’ than Robbie, bearing in mind that was recorded in a rural setting as well! In fact the more I listen to this powerful album the more I’m reminded of The Band but definitely not in a copy cat way! The first time I heard the word ‘americana’ as a reference to music was in the context of The Bands early albums and the melange of styles and influences set in a rural old time almost otherworldly America. Since then it seems to have come to be a catch all for anything from folk to country, with the exception of the commercial Nashville version of country! This is probably because there have rarely since been many artists of the quality of ‘The Band’ but with this album Israel Nash Gripka comes close! Like ‘The Band’s’ music, some of these songs have an ethereal, almost out of time quality that could just as easily have been set a hundred years ago as now.
            The album was produced by Steve Shelley (of Sonic Youth) and mention should also be made of the tremendous musicians who are a band in their own right that support him on this album. They are the Fieros and are made up of Joey McLellan on various guitars and backing vocals, Aaron McLellan on bass, Chris Holston guitars and Austen Hooks on drums, with Shelley, fairly obviously also contributing some drumming. (McKenzie Smith, from Midlake, has also recently joined the band) There are various others mentioned in the sleevenotes and all add to the musicality and flow of this tremendous album with it’s rural, backwoods feel.
            The ability to veer from an almost classic Rolling Stones feel on Louisiana and Black and blue to weeping country songs on the gorgeous Red dress and Goodbye ghost, then flowinto Neil Young territory with Baltimore is quite stunning. For me, one of the highlights is Drown an epic story song about a man who started out with nothing and then dropped further after the death of his mother, then we have the heartrending hopelessness of the beautiful Sunset, regret, another song that lacks any real optimism.Gripka’s voice is so evocative of the stories he writes and sings that with the excellent harmonies and atmospheric mandolin and fiddle really does echoe some of The Band’s rural epic songs. The beautiful Bellwether ballad is evocative of ‘The River’ or even ‘Nebraska’ era Springsteen but probably has more of a discordant edginess with it’s lovely acoustic guitar and gorgeous haunting steel, contrasting with Gripka’s straining poignant vocals.His voice is powerfully expressive and with that gravelly rough around the edges texture absolutely essential to his style of music, but he also seems to have the ability to change the timbre to suit the song, almost as if there are several vocalists with similar styles on the recording.There are a diversity of styles and tempo’s but the album never completely leaves, what is essentially ‘alt. country,’ behind, just touching the borders of many roots styles including blues, in much the same way as The Band did. In fact, yet again the word ‘americana’ crops up and is probably the best single word description of Israel Nash Gripka’s music, far better in many ways than alt.country. It really should be a word that is used to cover that peculiarly American music that is descended from the old time blues and hillbilly and yet is neither, ignoring the race aspect and simply blending the styles into an incredibly atmospheric stew! All of the various influences are there, although I suspect many are unwittingly acquired, and yet in spite of this, it is an album that is totally unique to Israel Nash Gripka. When you think about it, you can’t do much more than take your influences and develop a style utterly and completely your own!

www.israelgripka.com

www.myspace.com/israelgripka

GRANT PEEPLES – OKRA AND ECCLESIASTES

2011 – Self released

4.5****

            At times when listening to this superb album I couldn’t believe I wasn’t listening to Guy Clark. It really is of that quality and there are similarities in the deep, pleasantly grizzled vocals, although Grant Peeples wrote songs for this really edgy, at times almost eerie, folksy country album that are considerably darker than Clark would write.
            His style, whilst being predominately rooted in the folk/country genres is far more expansive and the boundaries much wider, even including a couple of songs that would once have been described as ‘Country and Western’ and been sung by the likes of Marty Robbins! Do not under any circumstances, should you purchase this album, expect a pleasant little middle of the road country album though, far from it! On Cowboy gothic we hear about a saloon ‘whore’ who rides off on a mystery horse and they are never heard of again in what seems a metaphorical story about lifes choices. I don’t think that in Robbins heyday they were recording songs like this! In fact, the more I listen to this album the more I’m reminded of the writings of Cormac McCarthy in as much as the word ‘Gothic’ really adheres to both men’s writing. I know this applies to many other writers and seems to be evolving into a new genre in country music but much of the ‘Gothic Country’ is too over the top with it’s tales of the dark side of life! Grant Peeples writes in that genre but is not restricted by it and as a consequence the darkness in his songs is not over exagerrated and does reflect parts of life that we should all be aware of as we grow up and grow older.
            Multi instrumentalist Gurf Morlix took care of production, co wrote with Grant the sad lovelorn tale of unrequited love Empty cup plus added his considerable skills to many of the instruments including guitars, bass, keyboards, vocal harmonies and pedal steel! It will probably surprise no one that is aware of Morlix that he chose to involve himself in an album by such a ‘kindred spirit.’
            The songs are all superbly written and really cover the broad pallet of events that take place in life from pre-birth through to death with what could be a conception song about the dangers of illicit love under the secluded pylons in Powerlines! Then there is the slightly harrowing tale of a prisoner waiting to be executed and still stubbornly unrepentant on the bluesy Lethal injection blues. John L and Helen is a heartbreaking song about the pointless murder of an innocent young couple taking their first steps on a life together, an all too regular occurrence in the modern world. The last great Buffalo hunt led by the gorgeous accordion playing of Radoslav Lorkovic is so evocative of the time many decades ago when we all but wiped out yet another noble beast! That kinda woman is another tale of the old west that Marty Robbins and co. would have found difficult to record but can just as easily be a metaphor for a boy becoming a man with the help of an older lady, (any bells ringing?) even having a note of humour to lighten the dark a little! It’ll never be love again is a beautiful heartrending song with the weeping steel guitar and Lis Williamson’s lovely harmonies adding hugely to this story about the realisation by both parties that their love is at an end. And so the album proceeds with excellent story songs that tell of the emotion that most of us experience on our journey through life, just the right amount of weeping steel guitar and accordion, and colour added by various guitar treatments and always with Grant Peeples expressive vocals getting every last drop of emotion out of these songs.
            This is his fourth album, although only the second that I’ve heard, the previous offering being the just as excellent ‘Pawnshop.’ Whilst I made the Guy Clark comparison this was just to give a loose illustration of what the uninitiated can expect. Grant Peeples has his own style and way of doing things. Some may write similar dark tales, some may have a similar voice and some may use the same instrumentation but I don’t know of anyone else that puts all three together in such a complete way. An exceptional album by an exceptional musician!

www.grantpeeples.com

www.myspace.com/grantpeeplesmusic

CAM PENNER – GYPSY SUMMER

2011 – Self released.

3.5***

This album comes across as quite mellow sounding and could easily, on first listen, be dismissed as being a little bland. However if you stick with it there are some little gems contained on this high quality folksy album that slides into country and even has a bluesy feel at times.
The generally sparse instrumentation allows the lyrics to have a fuller impact and gives just enough colour to the songs to avoid the album sounding too flat. A slight problem is that not all of the songs are quite as strong as they really need to be, but what they do create is a mellow sound that at the same time has some depth. A case in point being the otherwise excellent Driftwood with it’s steel guitar and harmonica, that is quite evocative of early Neil Young, but with a too repetitive key line of ‘it’s going to get worse, it’s going to get better’ that by the end of the song begins to grate a little; for all that still a pretty good song though! Even the lesser songs are by no means bad, just not as memorable as others, but all are helped by the tremendously soulful voice that ensures every one of the songs just oozes feeling. He also has an extraordinarily literate and personal writing style as evidenced by the tale of homesickness in Cool cool nights, which, with the sparse instrumentation, has to be a strong song to induce as it does the feeling of travelling in places such as the mighty Mississippi and just longing to be home with a loved one. With it’s slow pace and tuneful echoing guitar sound Gypsy women has an almost sinister, spectral feel whilst Ghost car is faster but has the same effect.
Certainly Cam Penner doesn’t rest on his laurels and is a man who likes to experiment a little. This album pushes into slightly different areas to it’s predecessor and whilst not perfect it does work in the main and leaves the impression of a really good album that has an eeriness to many of the songs. Add all that to the really soulful voice and strong writing and you have a really good album that is starting to grow on me even more!

www.myspace.com/thegravelroad

TWO FINGERS OF FIREWATER – SONGS TO LISTEN TO

2010 – Clubhouse Records

4****

            This is a hook laden album with strong songs, gorgeous harmonies and excellent instrumentation. An album to evoke those lovely lazy summer days (I know they don’t really exist, use your imagination!) and brighten up winter! The songs and instrumentation have depth and originality, but also have a lightness of touch that should appeal to anyone with a pulse! Jon Clakes always excellent vocals seem to have gained more character over the last couple of years and have subsequently gone up a notch to match anyone in the country rock/ indie rock field. When harmonies are needed as they invariably are with this band, Tom Harding has the ability to blend his voice perfectly with Clake’s. Add to this his exceptional bass playing and James Sacha’s tremendous drumming and you have the more than solid foundations of a top notch band, but then you lift it to an even higher level with the two musicians responsible for much of the colour. They are Steve Price on keyboards and accordion and Al Chappelow’s incredible multi instrumental prowess on various guitars, pedal steel, mandolin, trombone and clarinet! Put all five together and you have a tremendously high quality and versatile lineup in which each musician is essential to their sound; a sound that is just as good live as it is on record. They all have a hand in the songwriting although the predominant writer is Jon Clake, with Al Chappelow chipping in with a couple of his own excellent songs and there are also several co-writes.
            On some of the quirkier songs, the excellent Chappelow penned Ride out for example, I was reminded of the less self indulgent side of XTC with it’s catchy melody and instrumentation. Don’t buy the album though, if you are thinking now that they are XTC clones! They are far from that, with most songs on the album having 1970s classic country rock proclivities as well as elements of indie rock. And yet they are so much more than that. They wear these influences incredibly well, but are very much a twenty first century band with their at times, slightly psychedelic experimentation and indeed their experimentation in other areas as well with steel guitar and accordion often being to the fore. The gorgeous Forever with Jon Clakes emotive vocals and the perfect harmonies would be outstanding however it’s played, but with the lead instrument being the accordion, is given an extra lift! If ever there was a song that could be a tailor made summer hit this could be second in line! First would be, what to me at least is the best song on an album of exceptional songs. That is State of Daydream, a truly classic country rock song. Were you looking for a song that sums up the classier side of classic southern California country rock this could have been written for you. Not too far behind is the harmony heavy The last train goes with it’s catchy melody driven by Alex Chappelows brilliant mandolin playing and Steve Price’s always excellent accordion also showing up well in the mix.
            The harmonies throughout this album are on a par with ‘old timers’ such as the Beach Boys and the Beatles at their recorded best, but with Two Fingers of Firewater, as fans already know, you get this and so much more at their live gigs as well as on disc. This is an album where many of their influences can be gleaned but never as copyists. There are songs that have elements of pop/rock, the already mentioned country rock, a little folksiness, even one track that has an almost gothic country feel, but in the end it all goes into the melting pot and comes out sounding like no one but Two Fingers of Firewater! A tremendous album by a tremendous band!

www.twofingersoffirewater.com

www.myspace.com/twofingersoffirewater

6 DAY BENDER – E’VILLE FUZZ

2010 – Self released

3***

            This, the band’s second album starts off sounding as if it’s going to be a straight forward, but pretty good, album of southern rock, in much the same vein as bands such as Molly Hatchet and .38 Special. However, as the album progresses it changes slightly and begins to blend a little country into it’s strong blues influences.
            The band is made up of Luke Nutting on banjo, electric guitar, acoustic guitar and vocals, Clayton Avent, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, cello, vocals, James Keenan on bass and harmonica and Corey Gross on drums and percussion. You don’t usually get too many banjo’s or cello’s on southern rock albums, which accounts for the other generic influences. Nutting’s hoarse, straining vocals are ideal for this music, sounding fiery and aggressive on the uptempo songs but also being capable of a more tender expression on the slower songs such as Good girl blues.
            There are some good ideas with guitar sounds and fairly frequent use of banjo helps to make this band just different enough from the rest of this loose genre to get noticed. On the banjo and harmonica driven My old friend their sound is reminiscent of Little Feat. Out there is an example of a song that gives their music that little individuality with it’s slow southern rock grooves, with banjo and violin chiming in to give it a more subtle atmosphere whilst the jangling guitars stand out on the country rock ballad Huxley.
            Overall, a good album that diversifies enough from the standard southern rock format to make them well worth watching out for on future albums. Their first, released in 2008 and simply called ‘Six Day Bender’ is also well worth searching out.

www.6daybender.com

ZOE MUTH AND THE LOST HIGH ROLLERS

2010 – Self Released

4****

            The albums opening bars are from a gorgeous sounding steel guitar, then in comes the banjo, acoustic guitar and mandolin. Almost a clichéd start, but this album is certainly not clichéd! It sounds better each time I play it and for a variety of reasons. Zoe possesses a lovely clear voice that whilst not having the purity of Emmylou is at times slightly reminiscent of a young Nanci Griffith with that lovely twang in her voice giving a slight edginess that never becomes tiring to listen to. The production and instrumentation are top notch with a band supporting her that are of the highest quality and made up of Ethan Lawton on mandolin, Mike McDermott on bass guitar, Greg Nies drums and Dave harmonson on pedal steel and electric guitar. They are all excellent musicians and add plenty of colour to the songs, all written by Zoe, whilst always allowing her vocals and stories the space needed to get the best out of them. Many songs in this ‘real country’ genre have at least an element of biography to them, in which case Zoe has had a heartbreaking life so far. Most tell of lost love, unrequited love, cheating, loneliness, jealousy and the tremendously sad tale of a mother and two sisters being deserted by the husband/father in the necessarily lengthy and heartrending Never be fooled again.
            Strangely and appealingly Zoe sounds by turns both vulnerable and in control as if there is an inner strength to the character/s that inhabit these quite exquisite country songs, as in the gritty tale of a lonely troubadour with no money or lover in Last Bus. There is the beautiful steel driven introverted ballad about a faded and consequently lost love in I used to call my heart a home then we have a song on which she shows some strength as she finally gets fed up with a two timing lover in Not you. There is also some excellent dobro playing on another lost love song The running kind that warrants a mention as do most of the stories on this tremendous album. Certainly there are one or two songs that strike as being slightly less than essential but that’s just nit picking!
            The songs on this album, even the slightly lesser ones, are written, sung and played as country music should sound, that is with a lack of string orchestras and overproduced colouration! There is an edgy individuality and distinct lack of over romanticising that lets you know she has produced an album that is a labour of love rather than aiming directly at the main stream, which with her talent would be a breeze, always (as usual!) assuming she was promoted properly. She has a sweet edgy twang in her voice, as well as a little of the sassiness of Lucinda Williams, that appeals to most people, whilst not having the sugary tone so beloved of Nashville, but as we know their promotional machine dictates what sells irrespective of whether the performer has much talent or not. In the case of Zoe, she most certainly does have an abundance of that!

www.zoemuth.com

www.myspace.com/zoemuth

Me and Rose Connelly by Rachel Brooke from the Down in the Barnyard album

City of Shame by Rachel Brooke from the Down in the Barnyard album

RACHEL BROOKE – DOWN IN THE BARNYARD

2011 – Farmageddon Records

5*****

            It is not often an album comes along that has no weaknesses and is of such high quality that describing it in words just cannot do it justice, but this is definitely one of those albums! It is already favourite for my album of the year, maybe even my album of the 21st century! It really is that good!
            It sounds like Rachel has just emerged from a lost, out of time ‘holler’ somewhere in the high Appalachians with all of that old time ‘hillbilly’ eerie edginess and mystery completely intact. Some of this music is so strong on emotion that if it doesn’t get your pulse racing it’s probably already too late and your heart has stopped beating! At times it is completely draining emotionally with it’s mix of sadness and tragedy and yet at the same time can be incredibly uplifting!
            All of the songs are written by Rachel although with the sparse instrumentation and her highly evocative vocals the listener can be forgiven for thinking these sad, lost love, murder ballads were written in the dim and distant past. She has cleverly linked the traditional ballad character Rose Connelly, to a story of her own invention in the simply heartrending Me and Rose Connelly. Her own harmonies are absolutely stunning on this traditional sounding sad story and when you add in the strummed guitar and echoey haunting fiddle you are unlikely to hear anything else as beautiful for a very long time. I’ve been listening to roots music for much longer than is probably healthy, having been to hundreds of gigs/concerts and listened to quite literally thousands of albums, yet even after listening to the album, probably 30 times so far, I still believe this to be one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. Worth the cost of an album on it’s own.
            But of course, there are other tremendous songs on this extraordinary album, although unsurprisingly none that sound quite as good as this. Despite that proviso, every song stands alone as a thing of beauty. The stunning The barnyard containsgorgeous vocals and harmonies allied to much murderous intent making it an epic murder ballad of a two timer and the price that has to be paid! It really does sound like a traditional old time song that the Carter Family, amongst many others, would have killed for! Another gorgeously haunting, genuinely epic ballad is The Legend of Morrow Road but includes a strange unnecessary crackling noise that is presumably included to evoke the surface noise of an old 78 r.p.m record or cylinder. The song is so strong that it really doesn’t need any dressing up to pay homage to the music of so many decades ago. There are the tremendous female/male harmonies on I don’t worry, a gospelly sounding song with background organ and strummed guitar which precedes the final song on the album, the beautiful Don’t forget me when I die another song that is highly evocative of the old time music of the Carter Family but this time driven by that eerie fiddle and banjo. There is even a little grunginess on Must be somethin’ in the water a song that starts with a haunting slide guitar and Rachels vocals and becomes a noisefest for the last couple of minutes! Similarly, Mean kind of blues, with it’s driving guitars and drums/cymbals shows that Rachel can rock as hard as most! Then there is the classic old time of City of shame, led by it’s strummed acoustic guitar and scratchy haunting fiddle and we even have some excellent yodelling on another old time ballad Gather and hear.
             And so it goes on, from one high quality gem to the next. This disc is the perfect response to much of the country music churned out by the Nashville machine. It shows that you can have beautiful vocals and harmonies and still have an incredibly powerful edge but with the blandness control set to zero! The instrumentation, whilst generally sparse is also highly inventive with it’s use of acoustic guitar, drums, banjo and fiddle, and always those gorgeous highly evocative vocals.
            This album actually reminds me what it was that originally drew me to old time/hillbilly music, with it’s haunting otherworldly eeriness. There is always a danger with music of this nature that an artist can be labelled a copyist. I know, I’ve done it myself, but this album is totally original ‘old time music for the 21st century.’ Simply stunning!

Footnote: I do realise that this review may come across to some as incredibly sycophantic but this album really is that good! I have tried, as I always do, to give a balanced view, but very occasionally something comes along that sends objectivity flying out of the window and what are you left with? Subjectivity is the answer, and in the end that is what draws us all to music! This is the first time that I recall it happening to me. I do however feel that if you are reading this far, you probably have similar music tastes to me and will as a consequence buy the album and love it as much as I do!

www.rachelbrookemusic.com

www.myspace.com/rachelbrooke1

Shady Grove/Gypsy moon from the 2011 album 'It's all been said'

Feelings like this from the 2011 album 'It's all been said'

JAYKE ORVIS – IT’S ALL BEEN SAID

2010 – Farmageddon Records

4****

It’s difficult to relate the music on this album to the psychobilly of the band he tours with, the ‘Goddam Gallows,’ although it is considerably easier to relate to another band that he helped to start, the brilliant ‘357 String band’ with their authentic, at times punked up old-time hillbilly. Jayke is an exceptional player of the mandolin, which he did in .357 String Band and currently does with Goddam Gallows, whilst also being no slouch on guitar! This tremendous first solo album is certainly ‘old time/hillbilly but with a modern take on the tradition that certainly, in my house and car at least, keeps the album on repeat play!
            At times his vocals are quite reminiscent of a young John Prine although he has more ‘twang’ in his music, but also an early Johnny Cash, not in vocals, but in the spooky feel, particularly on the tremendous Feelings like this with it’s Tennessee Three walking bass line. Yankee taste is an excellent instrumental on which Jayke is able to show off his prowess on the mandolin, whilst the traditional Shady grove is an evocative version of a song that whilst it never really changes whoever records it, always seems to have something new going on. Prove if needed of why these old songs survive. Streets sounds like a live recording with it’s crowd noise but I don’t have enough information to know if it is. This rendering of the song is quite catchy but the gorgeous harmonies lift it above just being catchy, whilst the eerie ‘gospelese’ of Dreadful sinner in which the story teller is hoping for redemption, despite very little hope, probably sums up this whole album! Music made for the sake of making music rather than a half hearted attempt at commerialisation. Jayke finds himself, thanks to the promotional machine of which he is not a part, on the extremities of a traditional music that really should be mainstream. After all, in many ways he blends the edginess of two of the three Williams family. That is Hanks ‘one’ and ‘three’, missing out the more ‘mainstream outlaw’ of ‘two’! In listening to much of the lesser known Hank ‘one’ music it becomes apparent that he was never going to become a member of the establishment. Just one example is the eerie ghostliness of Ramblin’ man. This song is about as far from the bland Nashville fodder, some of it good, that was starting to be churned out in the late 1940s/early 50s. It had the same eerie edginess that his grandson brings to country music; it’s just that five or six decades and huge cultural changes have intervened. This song is by no means unique. There are many more of equal substance that would probably not have sold very well at the time had they been released, maybe showing just how far ahead of his time Hank was. I’m not suggesting that Jayke is up there with the first Hank and it would be completely unfair to suggest that he ever will or won’t be. The point is that he is helping others, such as Hank III to bring that sensibility and individuality to modern country music, as well as keeping the ‘old-time’ or ‘hillbilly’ tradition going whilst updating it, and long may they continue to do so!
            Certainly the album is not perfect but it most certainly is original, with mandolin and acoustic guitar vying for leadership and with banjo on the fringes. It’s also nice to hear upright bass well to the fore. Buy this album and help to make this music mainstream!

www.myspace.com/jaykeorvis

THE LONESOME DRIFTER – EAGER BOY

2010 - Norton

4****

            Seventeen tracks of rockabilly clocking in at just over thirty five minutes, some of them not even essential to the album, some poorly recorded, probably on basic, even for that time equipment, several alternative takes included, but one of the best rockabilly albums I’ve heard in a long time! Apparently the single version of Eager boy backed by Tear drop valley is one of the most valuable and sought after singles ever, three takes of each being included here.
            The Drifters real name is Thomas Johnson and these appear to be the only recordings he ever made, eventually owning his own record company and presumably now aged eighty, being retired. In many ways it’s surprising that he didn’t become a star, with his guitar playing prowess and a really expressive singing voice, but it is a fact that he wasn’t just a straight rockabilly musician. His style is at times evocative of the spookier side of the great Hank Williams, having much of the eeriness that can be found in the 1920s and 30s recordings of people such as Dock Boggs and Frank Hutchison. Music that almost appears to be from not only another time but also another dimension!
            Of the songs, the aforementioned pair are both pretty good and the two other versions of each are just about different enough to be included. There are several poorly recorded but otherwise decent songs such as the atmospheric, mournful tale of lost love, Your new love and the hissy, slightly reminiscent of Hank Williams Blues from a broken heart. Of the better, but not perfect, other recordings, the ethereally haunting almost otherworldly sound of No lovin’ no rockin’ blues is the standout whilst the mid tempo ‘hillbilly’ lovelorn ballad Honey do you think of me is not far behind with it’s really strong guitar sound. There is even a song that shows the Drifters prowess with a yodel on the rockabilly leaving song Ain’t got nothin’ but the blues.
            All in all an excellent little window into the past of a late 1950s ‘also ran’ that deserved more success than he actually got.

MALCOLM HOLCOMBE – TO DRINK THE RAIN

2010 – Music Road

4****

            Take some ‘old time country music’ mix it with a little ‘folk’ and add a fair portion of ‘blues’ then stir in some brilliantly written and perceptive songs, plus the gravelly, at times snarling vocals and you have Malcolm Holcombe’s music as near to being summed up as it’s possible to get! But, even that doesn’t really do him justice because there are nuances in his songs that only become apparent with repeated playing. He uses the snarl and gravel for emphasis more than just effect, even managing a little tenderness at times!
            Authentic is an often over used word to describe musicians such as Holcombe and to be honest it is a lazy throwaway word when it comes to music. It is used to describe someone who plays the music he is rooted in and has a feel for, to the detriment of record sales or making money! A man who follows tradition. The problem is that the tradition can only be traced accurately back to the early days of recording and the untutored blues and ‘hillbilly’ singers, songwriters and instrumentalists, which when analysed shows that very few modern day musicians ever fall into the ‘authentic’ category. The true meaning of authentic is ‘of undisputed origin or authorship’ so we come to where Holcombes music originates, because he is most definitely authentic! It is certainly easy to trace his music back in leaps and bounds rather than thin interminable threads that apply to many so called ‘roots musicians’, to those early days, but with the bonus of 21st century sound systems and recording equipment enhancing his ability to get more nuance into the music.
            He is now on Austin, Tx, based Music Road Records (owned by Jimmy LaFave)with people such as Sam Baker, Kevin Welch, Slaid Cleaves and new(ish) band Stonehoney. An ideal home for musicians that are outside the mainstream and one that will hopefully allow them to fulfill their musical visions that mix blues, folk and country into an edgy blend.
            This is his tenth album of edgy consistenly high quality music that borders so many roots styles. The songs, as is usual for him, are all well written and tell tales probably based on his less than smooth journey through life, although there are stories that intimate his settled domestic life as in Beckys blessed, thenanother one about home and the way things change is the excellent Mountains of home. There is also a song about loneliness, another that seems to suggest we live for today, another is a love song that says we should be grateful for what we have. Never anything preachy but all little vignettes taken from his life and expanded into these little gems of stories. The musicianship is always of the highest quality with Jared Tyler on dobro, Luke Bulla on fiddle and Bobby Kallus on drums plus Holcombe’s always excellent guitar mastery. Apparently the whole album was recorded in three days and amazingly each song was recorded with just one take! If that’s not another pointer to authenticity I really don’t know what is! Do yourself a favour and buy the album. The more you listen to it the better it gets!

www.malcolmholcombe.com

www.myspace.com/malcolmholcombe

TWILIGHT HOTEL – WHEN THE WOLVES GO BLIND

2010 – Cavalier

3***

            Twilight Hotel is the duo of Brandy Zdan and Dave Quanbury who hail originally from Winnipeg, Manitoba but are now domiciled in Austin, Tx. This is their third album of predominately deep dark moody ‘Americana music’ that lets you know right from the start that it is not going to be an ‘easy listen,’ with it’s mournful accordion and repetitive bass drum beat on the title track.
            The singing is always excellent with the majority of the lead vocals being taken by Zdan, whilst the production and instrumentation is often out of the Tom Waits mould with it’s, at times, slight but appealing discordancy! The gloomy stories to some of the songs are almost unfathomable and yet the album is always highly listenable with it’s slow, moody, reflective atmosphere and always excellent playing. On the story of a confusing love, What do I know about love, the accordion gives the song an element of backstreet seediness that is added to by the ‘smoky’ sounding brass, again reminiscent of Waits. Some of the songs have a journeying feel as in the at times sad Mahogany veneer that seems to detail some of the stop off points of their own journey with beauty and tragedy going hand in hand. Other stories seem almost to have an acceptance of the hopelessness of life but without any of the answers or consolation, or even humour! In other words, go with the hand you’re dealt and just accept the consequences! And yet, love does crop up just enough to let the listener know that there is a little light shining out of the darkness inherent in most of the songs. Just enough to perhaps let in a little optimism and hope. I know several people that have this as their world view anyway, so maybe they are right, and the album is an exercise in realism!
            A good album that certainly repays repeated listens, after all, a little darkness keeps the world in balance!

www.myspace.com/twilighthotel

www.twilighthotel.ca

THE FAREWELL DRIFTERS – YELLOW TAG MONDAYS

2010 – Heart Squeeze

2.5**

I must admit that on the first couple of listens I found this album to be too sweet, with it’s perfect but bland sounding lead vocals and harmonies, which, allied to the acoustic instrumentation seemed to have nothing to lift it above many other well played and sung mainstream bluegrass albums. I’ve had a tremendous run recently whereby virtually every album I’ve played has had, at the very least, something to lift it above the ordinary, so I decided to stick with it! I’m still not a great fan, much prefering music that has a little ‘grit and gravel,’ something that is lacking here. Having said that, some of these songs, of which all bar one, the Lennon/McCartney penned For no one, are written by Zach Bevill and Joshua Britt, really do have an edge to the stories that takes them out of the bluegrass ‘comfort zone.’ It’s just that the sound is all too sweet, although of course, many people will love the album for that very same reason!
            The all acoustic instrumentation and playing are really good. The lead vocals are excellent, if lacking a little edge (similar to someone like Chris De Burgh) and the harmonies are just about as perfect as anyone could wish for, but in the main there is what seems to me, a lack of soul. The five band members are as follows, Zach Bevill: lead vocals, guitars, banjo, Joshua Britt: mandolin, vocals, Clayton Britt: lead guitars, vocals, Christian Sedelmyer: violin, vocals and Dean Marold: upright bass, vocals. They have obviously worked incredibly hard to hone the talent that they so obviously possess and are perhaps due some credit for a little experimentation in as much as many of their songs are not straight bluegrass but could be termed AOR or pop, but in a string band setting!
            Somewhere down the road, the album closer is a good song, driven along by the banjo and is on a par with higher echelon bluegrass or even ‘old-time’ music. A really excellent song, but the pat on the back for this and several other decent songs has to be tempered by the truly awful decision making in covering the aforementioned For no one The version on this album is about as bland as anything I’ve heard for a long time, being totally smoothed out and lacking in anything to lift it above the mundane.
            With their obvious abundance of talent perhaps they should be stretching out more and bringing more of an ‘edge’ to their music rather than staying in what appears to be a ‘comfort zone’ that seemingly plants them firmly in the mainstream. Then again, maybe mainstream success is what they want, in which case with the right promotion I’m sure they will get it. To me, this is a missed opportunity from a band that is capable of much better, but one that will in all probability sell well.

www.thefarewelldrifters.com

www.myspace.com/thefarewelldrifters

EMORY QUINN – SEE YOU AT THE NEXT LIGHT

2010 – Texas Entertainment Group

4****

This is the fourth album of what is at times quite excellent country rock by this Texan three piece band. The line up is Clint Bracher on guitar and lead vocals, Nathan Rigney on anything with strings, also vocals and Case Bell on vocals, bass guitar and keyboards. Bobby Jarzombek was added on drums for this album with Melissa Ludwig assisting on vocals. The bands name is taken from Clint (Quinn) Bracher and Nathan (Emory) Rigney’s middle names. The playing and singing is always excellent, with perfect harmonies and evocative melodies lifting this outstanding alt. country rock album well above average, in spite of the drums at times sounding a little too forward in the mix, although never spoiling the songs. All of the lyrics are written by Clint Bracher whilst all three permanent band members contribute to the music.
Their sound is at times a little reminiscent of Tom Petty, at others the harmonies of the Eagles and the edginess of Poco come to mind but very much country rock for the 21st century with their own stamp of originality. Songs about living for the moment, the search for love, loneliness, lost love, even murder, added to lying, cheating, bad love, in fact all of the staple country music themes but with a little use of metaphor that means, as with all good albums, a little thought is sometimes required to work out the story but none of the songs ever descends into being excessively metaphorical. The instrumentation is excellent and includes various guitars, drums, mandolin, banjo, viola, violin, pedal steel and of course Brachers emotive vocals and those brilliant harmonies! More than enough to make this an album well worth listening to but the strength of the writing takes it up a further notch. The songs are all strong and atmospheric but Holes through the windows is not only a gorgeous song but is also quite harrowing in it’s subject matter and finale. The haunting ballad Tear down the walls is stunningly full of emotion, aided and abetted by the beautiful weeping steel guitar. The album closer Falling down again with it’s banjo driven ‘despite all the hopelessness of the world I still feel love’ emotions, reminds you that it’s time to start playing this excellent disc again.
A tremendous album that will reward a lot of plays, made by a top notch band that given a few breaks could and should be at the top of their genre.

www.emoryquinn.com

www.myspace.com/emoryquinn

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS – GO-GO BOOTS

2011 – ATO Records

5*****

            I should say straight off that I’ve always been a fan of the Drive-by Truckers, so my vision, despite my best efforts, may be a little coloured. To me, this is not only their best album, but also one of the best alt. country albums for a long time! Some may say that is not really their genre, but there have been elements, in varying degrees, of country on all of their previous albums. They are usually put in the incredibly wide ‘roots rock’ category which also has elements of country so there is no argument really!
            Underpinning everything the Truckers do is Patterson Hoods atmospheric vocals and songwriting. I still find it difficult at times, despite perhaps a little more hoarsness, to accept that he is not Don Henley. Of course the old Eagles man would probably have never been involved in anything so lacking in polish as this band. The Eagles were/are (who knows if they still exist?!!) a band that had great melodies, great singers, decent songs and more gloss than any paint manufacturer. The Truckers have most of that as well, but importantly and to their great credit, because of the lack of polish, their songs have that edgy feel that allows you to listen to them over and over again and still find something of interest to stir the emotions. Of course, Hood is helped by the fact that they are such a high quality band around him and that Mike Cooley could easily be lead vocalist in most other bands and is a talented songwriter in his own right. Now that the hugely talented singer/songwriter and bassist Shonna Tucker has settled in they have the vocalists to cover virtually any song they wish to attempt. Add this to the fact that John Neff is now a full time member with his pedal steel guitar and we can maybe look forward to many more of these highly original countrified albums! As if all this were not enough, Brad Morgan on drums is more than able to cope with all that is going on in this mélange of tempos, and with what is basically three lead guitarists and their highly literate songs it really is no wonder that they are such a great band. They can probably have the dreaded ‘mainstream’ tag applied to them now but it should be argued that they are still very much in control of everything they do and still have a little of the ‘outlaw’ attitude despite increasingly healthy album sales.
            Probably the least essential (but still pretty good!) song on the album is the Eddie Hinton penned country soul of Everybody needs love, whilst Where’s Eddie, the other Hinton original is quite beautiful with Shonna Tuckers vocals drawing more emotion out of the song than Hinton himself would have expected, despite the unsatisfactory fade at the end. The songwriting is still dominated by Hood with him being responsible for eight songs, Cooley for three, Shona Tucker writing and singing beautifully, the excellent country soul of Dancin’ Ricky plustwo as already mentioned by Hinton. Highlights are just about everything on the album, but a few songs that really grabbed me are the dobro and snare led ‘hillbillyish’ country rock of Cooleys Cartoon gold and his still snare led but sparsely gorgeous country ballad Pulaski. In the case of Hood’s songs, they are as usual highly evocative, at times mini novels that demands the listeners full attention. (the same also applies to Cooley now) The three that I found to be strongest are the countryish Assholes, the atmospheric almost noireish haunting and haunted Used to be a cop and the slow sparse twenty first century murder ballad The Fireplace Poker.
            So, is it really a great album? I definitely think so because amongst everything else the story songs are still exceptional and they now have at least three real quality songwriters. It could be argued at one time that they were purely a band supporting Patterson Hood, but not anymore. They really are a ‘band’ in the truest sense of the word and long may they continue to be so. Anyone who is already a fan will probably love the album, some may even agree that this is their best, it may even win them more fans from the alt.country community! As a bonus, anyone that likes Don Henleys vocals will love it. My wife thought Hood was him!

www.drivebytuckers.com

www.myspace.com/drivebytruckers

Goose Creek Symphony – Charlie Gearhearts Home Recordings

2010 – Bo Records

4****

            First off it is probably a good idea to give a little perspective to the album and Charlie’s background. Charlie Gearheart was (and still is!) the founder, leader, main singer songwriter and guitarist in this excellent and generally ignored band. There is a strong argument to be put forward that suggests they were one of the first country rock bands, although where they differed from bands such as the Burrito’s, Poco, Rick nelson’s Stone Canyon Band and many others was in the fact that they were quite happy to add other instruments not normally associated with this genre to some of their recordings, even edging into a little jazziness on occasions! In fact the band with whom they probably had most in common was ‘The Band,’ with their own original ideas on how to play their brand of ‘roots music’ and their ability to experiment around the genres they inhabited. Their first album was released in 1970 and their fourth in 1976, following which they disbanded, although they still played live with many different lineups. They regrouped and made a new album in 1990 and simply picked up where they had left off! They have since released seven more of their ‘hillbillyish’ folksy country rock albums, very rarely to any great critical acclaim, or for that matter sales, but don’t be misled, they really are a superb band that not only deserve better but will hopefully, one day be recognized as a highly original roots band that have lit the path for many others.
            Enough of the history! This album is being sold as a Goose Creek Symphony album but is fairly obviously a Charlie Gearheart solo album. As the title suggests, it is made up of home recordings mostly written by Charlie, but unusually for an album of this type the sound quality is high and well balanced. All eighteen tracks were recorded in the 1970s and have never been released before, except for the studio versions with the full band, so it is refreshing to hear the original sketches almost completely unadorned. Apparently this is the first of a series taken from tapes found in Charlies home. If the remainder are of this quality I can hardly wait for the rest! Charlies vocals have always been up there with the best in country rock, in fact they are more expressive than most, whilst his guitar playing is always confident and supports his vocals perfectly. An album such as this is very difficult to pull off, many seeming samy and tiring after a few tracks. Not so with this album! The songs cover a range of themes found in this genre with some having a tongue in cheek element to them. He has more expression and range than many ‘singer/songwriters’ and it is difficult to come up with a comparison but the late greats Townes Van Zandt and Gene Clark come to mind and whilst the songwriting and vocals are different Charlie is not out of place in that company!
            The love songs such as Love me when I’m with you and forget me when I’m gone are never allowed to plunge into over sentimentality whilst songs with a comedic element never give the album a feel of just being light hearted. It’s easy to imagine Charlie’s tune or Finale for a symphony being played and sung on a front porch in the 1920s/30s Appalachians and so it goes on with each of the eighteen songs evoking the time and place in which they are (or could be!) set. So go on, give yourself a treat and give this album a listen. You will be very lucky to find a better singer songwriter with just a guitar accompaniment and you may even feel the need to investigate the Goose Creek Symphony!

www.goosecreeksymphony.com

www.myspace.com/goosecreeksymphony

T-MODEL FORD and GRAVELROAD – TALEDRAGGER

2011 – Alive records

3.5***

T- Model Fords life has never been particularly well documented but to précis the information available he is approximately eighty years of age (even he is unsure of his exact age!) he was born in the delta, grew up as a logger and driver, was sentenced to ten years for murder, but was out in two and has been playing music for several decades but recorded only intermittently. Almost a life of cliché for an old time bluesman, as he most certainly is, although there is more to his music than just being trapped in the acoustic tradition of the itinerant minstrel. He has the young highly gifted GravelRoad (not to be mistaken for Gravel Road, the country rock band) giving him excellent support and taking this mix of classic blues songs to places it might not have reached had it not been for their excellent playing and feel for the blues.
            Maybe some of the instrumentation is that which can be found in Chicago blues but T-Model Fords music is very much of the delta. There is an eerie, raw power on this album that is peculiar only to the deep Mississippi delta and in fact, rarely found there in the 21st century. This is early 20th century blues but with a 21st century sensibility!
            How many more years has an almost ‘Hendrix’ sound to the instrumentation that veers into psychedelia but without ever losing it’s blues feel. Big legged woman has a blues rock treatment but one that would be quite at home in a Mississippi backwoods juke joint whilst Same old train and Comin’ back home are classic delta blues. Little red rooster has all the rawness that most other interpreters of this classic blues song would kill for!(with the obvious exception of the late great ‘Howlin’ Wolf’)
            On these songs, Ford sounds as if he is coming to terms with and accepting his own mortality, most of them having a theme of death threaded through them, as evidenced by the incredible I worn my body for so long! There is a note of unsettling discord running through the whole album that has the edginess of much of the classic, authentic delta blues of many decades ago. All in all there still seems to be plenty of life and experimentation left in this old bluesman and will hopefully continue to be so for some time to come!

Footnote: Gravelroad have made three excellent modern delta blues albums between 2001 and 2008. They are as follows:
2001 – Mountain man – self released
2004 – Gravel Road – self released
2008 – Shot the devil – Uncle Larry Records

www.myspace.com/tmodelford

www.myspace.com/gravelroad

www.gravelroadblues.com

JOHN WORT HANNAM – QUEEN’S HOTEL

2010 – Black Hen Music

3***

            This is much nominated and prize winning John Wort Hannam’s fourth album of Canadian rooted folk music and is on a par, quality wise, with his previous recording. I’m not familiar with the first two albums, but due to his consistently high quality songwriting, will be looking to investigate them. He has a pleasant nasally sounding voice that would probably do well in Nashville and is helped out by excellent, mainly acoustic instrumentation consisting of a little banjo, mandolin and dobro as well as various guitars, drums and accordion. So many folk singers over use metaphor but Hannam never falls into this trap, all of his songs being well written easy to understand and more importantly, easy to relate to, story songs of life, love, lost love, travel, leaving home. Whilst some of the songs have a slight edginess to the story, the actual sound is kept mainly acoustic and fairly mellow, never reaching above mid tempo, but always highly listenable. The album is produced by guitar maestro and Black Hen Music label owner Steve Dawson and has what seems to be his almost stock live feel, which always helps to give a slowish tempo recording that extra oomph!!
            Church of the long grass is a paean to the simpler things in life, whilst Come back to me is a heartrending story about thinking you are over a previous love, only to realize that you are most definitely not! Pier 21 is a tale of someone who realizes it’s time to leave the parental home and the paternal advice given to never forget the ties and roots. In it’s way just as heartrending as any lost love song, given added poignancy with the finality and emotion in the harmonies of the chorus. There is even a song about workers striking in an attempt to get a living wage and the employers unwavering, callous attitude towards them in Tonight we strike (ring any bells?) There is the tremendous Worth a damn, an edgy duet with Jenny Whiteley (another excellent singer whose albums are also worth seeking out) and the accordion and dobro led quirky country that most can relate to of When I drink too much.
            This is a good album by someone who is just different enough from other folk singer songwriters to deserve a larger audience. Not ground breaking but still worth spending your money on.

www.johnworthannam.com

www.myspace.com/johnworthannam

Abigail Washburn – City of Refuge

2010 – Rounder

4****

            I never thought I would be writing a review of an American folksy, countryish album that also has a strong Chinese influence, but that is the case with Abigail Washburns third excellent album. That influence shouldn’t really be a surprise, due to the time Abigail has spent there and her love for the country, but it is interesting to hear how that influence fits in with what would have been an excellent countryish folk album even without the Chinese seepage! It succeeds really well despite the cultural differences simply because the Chinese influence is never too far over the top and she is extremely good at keeping things subtle, even when some of the instrumentation causes the listener to do a double take!
            She had at least a hand in the writing of eight of the eleven songs, five being co writes with Kai Welch, who also plays various instruments on the album including ‘tongue drum’! The Chinese instrument that crops up throughout the album and is arguably most responsible for the oriental sound is the Guzheng which is played by Wu Fei, a virtuoso master player and vocalist.
            The album seems a little more refined than her previous ‘Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet’ album but is none the worse for that. At times it has a strange haunting atmosphere and at others an almost operatic feel due to much of the orchestration, as can be heard on songs such as ‘Ballad of treason’ with it’s myriad of mood changes and tempos. Following on from that song is the beautiful ‘Last train’ with it’s almost perfect countryish feel which includes steel guitar and an uplifting chorus. Burn thru is a strange song that has a full violin sound (almost like a string orchestra) and at times seems a little ‘middle of the road’ but that is deceptive. It is basically a folksy song that, at times, includes a choral choir, steel guitar and mariachi horns but always with Abigails excellent banjo working away in the background! Corner girl starts with her tinkling banjo to the fore but again an orchestral feel creeps in that at times overwhelms this gentle folk song with it’s powerful orchestration. Maybe she is making this a metaphor for an individual voice being lost in the massive power of China (or maybe not!) Dreams of nectar could almost be a Chinese song, with it’s backing choir, Chinese instrumentation and atmosphere. Then we have an acoustic guitar and fiddle driven little nod to ‘hillbilly’ front porch country gospel in Devine bell and the album finishes on Bright morning stars, a song that opens with what is probably a Chinese street scene then goes into haunting almost accapela harmonies with eerie violin and choral choir chipping in.
            Overall it would have been nice to have heard more of Abigail’s excellent banjo playing and less orchestration, but she is already a great artist who is following her own muse and fairly obviously has an extraordinary musical vision that can only be fulfilled with experimentation.
            This is an unusual, gently powerful album that is really in a genre of it’s own and needs considerable concentration to take in all that is going on. If that doesn’t really appeal, Rachel has a beautiful, expressive voice and is an excellent songwriter with an unusual take on roots music!

www.abigailwashburn.com

www.myspace.com/abigailwashburn

SOUTHER STILL – GREAT WILD STREET

2010 – Feed Dog Records

3.5***

I can see why this band have been compared to the likes of the Jayhawks. They play a melodic country rock that has it’s roots implanted in some of the great 1960s and 1970s bands, but is also very much of today with it’s occasional slightly indie rock leanings. I don’t think they are quite in that exalted class yet despite their ability to keep you guessing what is coming next, but are certainly well on the way! The biggest compliment that can be paid to this excellent band is that I didn’t realize until doing a bit of research that they weren’t country boys from the U.S but are made up of two Britons, one Irish and two Kiwi natives and, as if that were not enough, are based in London! Bradley Putze is responsible for lead vocals and guitar, Kevin Stokes, guitars, Simon Goldstone plays keyboards and piano, Peter Lewis on drums, Niall Moran, Bass and Kate Tringham on cello. The songs are all band originals and on repeated listens, probably due to the variety of homelands, don’t fall into the usual alt. country topography although the overall sound generally does!
City Rose with it’s keening guitars, pedal steel and epic sound is certainly reminiscent of latter day Jayhawks despite Bradley Putze not quite having the vocal qualities of Gary Louris. Despite that premise, he is a really good singer and as a band they obviously know what they are after in their recordings. The mellow Hang on allows a little relaxation, after the previous track, with it’s subdued piano and steel, then it’s back to the epic sound on A ghost in the neighbourhood a song with the fulsome sound of the Eagles Witchy woman. Next comes the gorgeous ballad, The blood that flows with it’s haunting steel subtly giving the song even more atmosphere, whilst the beautiful love song Caroline with it’s mix of slide guitar and straight forward acoustics is quite stunning.And that is how the album proceeds, with varying tempos and instrumentation, often reminding the listener of other bands but never as copyists. They have very much their own style within the folksy alt.country/country rock prescinct and deserve success on that basis. It could be argued that they are not highly original but it could just as easily be argued ‘there is nothing new in music,’ yet this band are just different enough to not be mistaken for someone else. As stated earlier, they are not yet on the same level as some of the greats but what an incredible achievement for a London based band to be mentioned in the same breath and maybe …..… just maybe!

www.southerstill.com

www.myspace.com/southerstill

BOB WAYNE – OUTLAW CARNIE

2011 – Century media

4****

            Real outlaw punk country is how Bob Wayne’s music is often described and these three words are just about as perfect a description as it’s possible to imagine! The fact that he signed to this heavy metal record label should be enough to warn the more sensitive what to expect, which is a shame because the album certainly comes within the country genre. He will never be part of the mainstream (probably good news to him!) because of his fond usage of expletives in half of his songs, although they always appear as an emphasis rather than just for effect. It’s a shame because he writes some incredible songs about life on the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ added to which the instrumentation and playing are pretty exceptional. The production and recording quality is high, rather than following a punk do it yourself ethic and this attitude lifts the album far above some of the other generic bands.
            His nasally vocals, whilst not having much range are really expressive and perfectly matched to these songs of battling the devil, murder, death, truck driving and generally living outside (or at least, on the edge!) of society!
            Not all of the songs are wild punked up country. There are plenty that appear to have a slightly more Nashville leaning, such as the tremendous banjo driven Escata, the beautifully played electric and steel guitars on Gold, followed by the just as good Blood to dust. The young Johnny Cash soundalike song Reptile gives a little ammunition to those that say he is a parodist whilston Ghost town, if you took away Bob’s vocals and replaced them with Marty Robbins, it would be looked on as classic 1950s country! But of course, these two country legends are not there and one of them would certainly have been shocked by some of the lyrics anyway, so we are left with Bob’s vocals and the excellent support of banjo, fiddle, electric and acoustic guitars as well as steel guitar, which in the end are more than enough to carry off this excellent album. To those that accuse him of parody, I’m not sure that sounding a little like Johnny Cash on one song really qualifies and who else does Bob Wayne’s music sound like? Answer: No one I can think of and long may he continue on his ‘outlaw punk country’ way!

Footnote:-
This is his 4th solo album, the previous 3 being self released, the titles of which are as follows:-

2008 – Blood to dust
2008 – 13 truck drivin’ songs
2009 – Driven by demons.

If you enjoy ‘Outlaw carnie’ you will probably enjoy these other three as well.

www.bobwayne.org

www.myspace.com/bobwayne

The Sumner Brothers – In The Garage 2

2010 – In the garage records

4.5****

            This, their third album, is made up of bits and pieces taken from dozens of hours of their own personal archives, some live, some in the studio and some at home. The idea was to put together something that they thought would interest fans and as with their 2006 debut, ‘In the garage’ they’ve hit the nail on the head! What this album shows is that they are steeped in not only country and roots rock but also ‘deep blues’. If you want a nice smoothly polished album it would probably be better to pass on this one, but if you want an album that covers all facets of their music and influences and has an edginess that very few possess then this raw rootsy disc is most definitely one to seek out.
            The band is, unsurprisingly, a pair of brothers, Brian and Bob Sumner, more than ably supported by the excellent Mike Ardagh on drums and the just as excellent Mike Agranovich on bass and all hailing from Canada. Their influences include Johnny Cash, Townes Van Zandt and Neil Young, so no real surprises there, in fact it is relatively easy when listening to them to hear those influences although definitely not as copyists!
            They mention a songline from Bruce Springsteen, ‘nothing feels better than blood on blood,’ as a website introduction to show how important the fact that they are brothers is to their partnership. Maybe it’s a coincidence but Bob’s vocals are uncannily similar to a young Bruce Springsteens, being particularly apparent on the tremendous, haunting Floyd Tillman penned Paper flowers with it’s eerie treated guitar and atmospheric tinkling piano echoing in the background. Brians vocals are just as good, with him at times having a similar depth and quality to a young Johnny Cash. Add these to the sparse, excellently played instrumentation and you have a band with such a huge amount of talent they really shouldn’t be allowed to continue as a cult and really should be part of a ‘mainstream’ that no longer recognizes the Nashville generated country pop as such!
            Added to all of this is the fact that they have a highly individual style even on songs written by other people, as evidenced by their incredible, roaring live performance of Willie Dixon’s Wang dang doodle showing what can be achieved within the blues genre if you put your own stamp on it. Toots Hibberts reggae song, 54 46 sounds more like an R.L.Burnside performance in his backwoods ‘juke joint’ in deepest Mississippi on a hot sultry weekend night. The strong repetitive bass line being the only clue that this was once anything else but a blues. Add in the cymbals that are too much to the fore and the brilliant ramshackleness is pretty much complete! Then you get Tex Ritters Sam Hall which, whilst I have certainly never heard every version of the song, I can safely say has never sounded like this, with it’s ‘Tennessee Three’ walking guitar line and vocals that sound like a young Johnny Cash at his darkest! You actually begin to think there is no style or song in the roots music genre that this talented band can’t make their own and you would probably be correct! The sparse I don’t care if there’s a heavan is without doubt the most harrowing tale of ‘mans inhumanity to man’ that I have ever heard in a song . It is sung by Brian, whose highly emotional voice is ideally suited to the song, but as I said, quite harrowing, and worth the price of the disc for the sheer nerve they showed in adding it to the album! Darcy’s song is an eerie sparse ballad, whilst Jake’s song is a rambling instrumental that would have ideally suited ‘Souled American’ and the Tom Waits/Kathleen Brennan penned Going out west with it’s acoustic guitar and banjo accompanying Bob’s emotive vocals is a perfect example of what ‘straight’ country could and perhaps should be, a powerful song able to breath without overdoing the instrumentation!
            I should have added that, wedged between the two ‘In the garage’ albums was a studio offering that came out in 2008 simply titled ‘The Sumner Brothers.’ Apart from the studio production it differs from this one only in the fact that it is even better! Do yourselves a favour and buy all three of these amazing recordings. I doubt that you will regret it and if you do …… why the hell are you bothering with websites like this one?

www.thesumnerbrothers.com

www.myspace.com/thesumnerbrothers

Rachel Harrington – Celilo Falls

2011 – Skinny Dennis Records

5*****

If anyone wants a definition of ‘real country music’ they could do a lot worse than give this superb album a listen, but be warned, you will probably not want to play anything else for quite some time! Rachel’s gorgeous, sassy vocals that evoke the very best of the likes of Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch and Carrie Rodriguez would be sufficient to carry any album, but when you add them to her superbly written songs and the just about perfect instrumentation that includes fiddle, acoustic guitar, dobro, steel guitar etc. you have an absolute sure fire winner! Oddly, she reminds me at times of Lyle Lovett with her highly individual take on country music, particularly on the tongue in cheek You’ll do, which I’m sure Lovett would be proud to have penned! She is variously described as folk, folk blues, country soul and Americana and for once all of these American roots music tags apply to Rachel who seems to improve with each album, this being her third, and with the first two both being excellent!
            Of course, the problem in this twenty first century is that nothing really sells without huge promotion and record companies are just not prepared to ‘take a chance’ unless dealing with an already well known artist who toes the corporate line or worse still, a manufactured one! Rachel Harrington is neither of these and really should be an exception to this premise. Her vocals have the range and character, allied to a slightly ‘untutored’ edge, to draw you in to any song she sings; add this to the fact that she writes from the heart and we have a huge talent at work here. She is just as happy to submit her vocals to the beautiful and completely unaccompanied traditional melody (with her own lyrics added), Pretty Saro, with this being one of the great triumphs, amongst many, on this gorgeous album. Her own songs fit in with traditional stories because of the timelessness of the themes she incorporates, to such a degree that many could have been written anytime in the last couple of centuries or so! In fact these stories of love, lost love and lifes ups and down in general could be applied to ‘old time’ music from the 1920s and 30s; add in the sparse instrumentation and her gorgeously evocative vocals and the album almost transports the listener to a front porch in the high Appalachians of many decades ago, whilst at the same time retaining a modern feel.
            It almost seems an insult to suggest album highlights on a disc containing nothing but essential tracks, but mention needs to be made of several other outstanding songs as well as the already mentioned Pretty Saro! The fiddle and acoustic guitar accompanied Goodbye Amsterdam is an incredibly heartrending but strangely uplifting tale whilst the beautiful ballad, Let me sleep in your arms tonight actually sounds more like early ‘Cowboy Junkies’ than they did themselves! You don’t know, a song about the uncertainties of life could well have been written for Carrie Rodriguezand there is also a superb gospel song He started building my mansion in heavan today.
            If there is one thing that stops it from being perfect, it’s the fact that it should be a double album or a triple or ………… ! Definitely a contender for album of the year 2011, even at this ridiculously early stage!

www.rachelharrington.net

www.myspace.com/rachelharrington

JAY BERNDT – SAD BASTARD SONGS

2010 – Rusty Knuckles

4****

            With a background in punk and heavy metal it seems strange that Berndt with his deep, soulful, incredibly expressive voice has taken so long to find his musical forte. This tremendous album of roots music covers just about everything from country to blues and even includes a little gospel, yet when he feels the need, he can still rock harder than most. His vocal range seems to cover everything from a soulful croon to a rasp that Tom Waits would be proud of, but always with a real power. All of the songs on this first solo album are self written and most reflect the hardships that can be found in trying to keep love on the straight and narrow and the penalties if that love is lost, for whatever reason. There are also a few songs that call down hellfire and reflect a southerners fear of the lords punishment for various misdemeanours! On the more countrified songs his extraordinary vocals are sometimes reminiscent of a slightly deeper version of Dave Alvins but with more range and gravel.
            Considering taking my life, an incredibly powerful song about the ultimate sacrifice to a lost love is given added impact by his intense vocals , then there is the lovely accordian led ballad, Jessica, the tattooed lady, in which he sings of his unrequited love for a beautiful tattooed lady! ’67 serenade, a song about bad love is a countryish rock song on which his vocals sound like a tuneful Tom Waits, whilst I still believe in you is a beautiful steel guitar driven country love song that emphasises his deep expressive vocals to the full in a story where despite everything love wins out! The Judgement (Book of Ezekiel) bounds along in furious fashion telling of the penalty that sinners must pay if there is any chance of redemption, despite the chances being slim, but not to worry, the hellfires need stoking! The final track is Spiritual a powerfully haunting, intense. slow spiritual song and in it’s way, just as frightening. Sandwiched between these two scary songs is the beautiful acoustic slow blues that tells of a man grown tired of running away most of his life, but now has a little hope from questioning if it is time to stop.
            So why only four stars for an album that is clearly as masterful a collection of American Roots music as can be imagined? The playing is superb, the songs are brilliantly written and the vocals are extraordinary. The reason it doesn’t get the extra star is that there are so many facets to these songs that I’m sure there are probably songs that didn’t make it to the album that could easily have made it a double and thus given a greater degree of continuity to the whole! How often do we say a double album would have been better if it had been a single disc. Makes a change to turn that around doesn’t it! Definitely an album of the year but could have been THE album!

www.jayberndt.com

Travel by Sea – Two states and the blindness that follows

2010 – Self released

3.5***

The band is made up of singer songwriter Kyle Kersten, multi instrumentalist Brian Kraft, Dan Moore on bass, Andrew Morrison on guitar, Mike Cusick drums and John Phinney plays pedal steel and banjo. Quite a line up and one that covers just about any direction they choose to go in on their moody, edgy blend of alternative country and indie rock that occasionally veers just far enough from country to keep their sound different.
            All of the songs have strong melodies and most have memorable hooks, whilst several of them are built predominately on acoustic guitar and steel and as a consequence are probably the strongest songs on the album. Where it comes close to falling down is on the tracks where there is too much going on with the instrumentation, with the sound getting a little muddied and lacking direction. If the band can avoid too much experimentation during the recording process and make an album where the beautifully written songs are allowed to breathe and the vocals to take over it would in all probability be given a five star review by just about everyone! Kerstens vocals are too good and full of character to be over shadowed by all that is going on in the mix, on this at times haunting and atmospheric album. There are even a couple of songs, the slow ballad, Eventually and the mid tempo Even the sunrise, where his voice sounds a little like country rock (or ‘cosmic American music’) legend, the late Gram Parsons. Another, Sign of the times, is similar in sound to mid 1970s country rockers such as the ‘Ozark Mountain Daredevils.’ All highly creditable comparisons and the quality doesn’t end there. There is the lovely country ballad, In your eyes, with it’s gorgeous steel guitar highlights, whilst Light in the darkness is another really nice country song, starting with a slow moody violin, then the steel comes in but after about four minutes it loses direction a little by building to an almost grungy crescendo that never really arrives. I still feel the same, a slow haunting song, has a doomey synth echo in the background that is too dominant and stifles the song that would have sounded more effective without this extra colouring.
            I’ve listened to the album quite a lot recently, sometimes accompanied by friends, some of whom, despite seeing what I was getting at, disagreed with my point that some of the experimentation spoilt the album a little, so make up your own mind!
            To sum up, this is an album that could and should have been great and despite falling short is still pretty good apart from some unnecessary extra ornamentation with synth and echo!

www.travelbyseamusic.com

www.myspace.com/travelbysea