This album was recorded in an old chapel in Gloucestershire and again highlights along with several other recent albums by My Darling Clementine, The Rockingbirds, Danny & The Champions of The World and Hank Wangford a number of acts making contemporary and very good country music in the UK. They are all distinctive and following their own paths, offering some very different takes on the broad church of country inspired music.
This album was produced and mixed by Alex Eton-Wall who, along with his wife Hannah, heads up this fine band. It was recorded before their drummer emigrated and utilises the talents of all five members to good effect. The instrumentation included pedal steel, guitars of several styles as well as keyboards, fiddle and mandolin which bring a range of textures to the songs and provide a perfect backdrop for the lead and backing vocals. The lead vocals are shared between Alex and Hannah with the latter handling the lion’s share which is understandable as she is the main songwriter. The songs, while not fitting the tag of pop, have a melodic resonance and lyrically a strong singer-songwriter quality that’s sometimes oblique, sometimes obvious.
The final song is something of a summation of the company accounts. The Band Song tells of being “married, broke and tired”; of being “naive and dumb waiting for the break to come” but in the end wanting the band to live on. Given the strengths of this album and how they’ve grown over their three previous albums, one can only hope that they do continue to make their music and make it mean something to them and all their growing audience.