A five piece acoustic band from Bristol, Young Waters were previously known as Snufkin, a name which to our mind is perfect for a folk group who cite The Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention as influences. However listening to this excellently played and well mannered collection of chamber folk music it’s probably for the best that they underwent the name change. Indeed there’s little here which would remind one of the aforementioned bands as Young Waters seem more enamoured of the tight song structures one recalls from Pentangle (without the jazz and blues influences) and leaning more towards Renbourn rather than Jansch in the guitar stakes.
Aside from some impassioned moments on Weary Soul and a final dash to the line on the closing song much of the album is a courtly passage through finely entwined instrumental dexterity supporting Theo Passingham’s limpid songs. The majority of the album was recorded in one day at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios (a prize won by the band at The Bath Folk Festival) but it doesn’t sound rushed, instead the songs unwind at a steady pace. The opener Dust sets the scene as fiddle, guitar and a burbling bass slowly lead into the song before Passingham and singer Kerry Ann Smith intone the words in a delicate fashion. They almost tiptoe through the song although it does wax and wane and there’s some fine counterpoint singing. A cover of Jesca Hoop’s Enemy is more down to earth and there’s a hint of the eerie atmosphere contained in some of the soundtrack to The Wicker Man. Don’t Stare at the Sun follows as Passingham’s fairly unique reedy voice strains over a simple guitar melody on a threnody of sorts which reeks of alienation.
As the band weave away through their songs one continues to be impressed by their dexterity with Bleary Eyed a pizzicato delight while Eternal Bliss follows in the footsteps of Don’t Stare at the Sun although here the instrumentation is more fully fleshed. However, as the songs meander for the most part over five minutes with little in the way of dynamics the listener can drift off. A cover of a traditional song, Polly Vaughn, sung acapella, does grab one’s attention and sets up the closing number, Swimming Pool which is perhaps the most fully realised song on the album. Here the band almost swing and there’s a satisfying progression in the song as it builds up to its instrumental break and then settles back down before its closing crescendo.
Overall, it’s an impressive debut album and one would hope that as the band progress they can loosen up in the studio. That said, there’s enough here to indicate that on stage they would be quite entertaining as they can whip up a storm when required.
This second album from Toronto based songsmith Ben Kunder is an enjoyable slice of breezy pop inflected songs which comes across at times as if a more upbeat than usual Ron Sexsmith was the scribe and performer. Kunder’s attractive tenor voice rides over some very sympathetic settings with some arrangements recalling the heyday of LA balladry as practised by Jackson Browne ( as on Fight For Time) while the fizzy Jessi is enlivened by electric keyboard and a cheesy synth zipping around over the rock steady backbeat.
Best known for his marriage to country star Kacey Musgraves and for having written hits for the likes of Tim McGraw, Ruston Kelly’s debut album Dying Star indicates that he has the potential to become a star in his own right. He can write songs which recall the musings of Steve Earle or Ryan Adams and sing them in a finely grained voice with an attractive lack of polish. In addition, the songs are delivered for the most part in classic California country rock with keening pedal steel (played by Kelly’s father). They are bathed in melancholia and regret, stained with a faded grandeur as they surround you.
Lest we forget, it was Willie Nelson’s album of standards, Stardust, released back in 1978, which saw him becoming a household name. Of course by then he had a chequered career, writing huge country hits for Ray Price and Patsy Cline (with what is perhaps his most famous song, Crazy) in the early sixties before becoming a country star himself and then fading out somewhat towards the end of the decade. He reinvented himself in the seventies, abandoning Nashville for Austin, Texas, releasing albums which eschewed the Nashville sound and signing up to the Outlaw Country movement with buddies Waylon Jennings, Tompall Glaser and Jessi Coulter. 1975’s Red Headed Stranger was the pinnacle of his wayward battle with Nashville but it was the following year’s Stardust, a 10 song collection of standards, which saw him burst into the pop charts.
Sometimes a record just accords with the times and so it is with this sprawling and epic collaboration between Alejandro Escovedo, a Mexican-American who was named by No Depression as the Artist of the Decade at the end of the nineties, and Antonio Gramentieri, AKA Don Antonio, the Italian leader of the awesome Sacri Cuori. Both outsiders of sorts who manage each in their own way to capture the spirit of American music while retaining elements of their native culture, the pair teamed up last year when Gramentieri supplied the live band for Escovedo’s European tour and having hit it off they repaired to Italy to record The Crossing.
First up, here’s another album added to the list of contenders for best of the year when we start to tally up soon. In addition, we have to add Carson McHone, from Austin, Texas, to the list of female artists who have really injected some fire into the Americana scene of late. McHone, who was playing in Austin bars at the age of 16 has had two previous releases (an EP and an album) but Carousel is her first fully fledged outing which captures in several of the songs an Austin honky tonk sound but in others shows that she is straining at the leash to catapult herself into the top echelons of singer/songwriters working in a country vein.
When a band says that they take their inspiration from pre-war country music, The Carter Family, and the psych-cowboy music of Lee Hazelwood, then the results are either going to be a mess or something a wee bit magical. Thankfully, in this case it’s the latter as this London based trio (who expand when required) turn in a grand listen on their debut album. Truth be told we can’t find too much evidence of The Carter Family here but there are oodles of Hazlewood styled melodramas with an added ingredient of spaghetti western fuzzed guitars to spice it up a little. They also cite “hillbilly noir” writer Daniel Woodrell (author of Winter’s Bone) as an influence with the result that many of the songs are deliciously dark examples of gory gothic Americana not too dissimilar from that of The Handsome Family.
JP Harris modestly describes himself as a carpenter who writes country songs. On his third album, Sometimes Dogs Bark at Nothing, he has indeed carved an excellent benchmark by which the remainder of this year’s releases should be measured. A colourful (and heavily tattooed) character, Harris has lived an itinerant life since leaving eighth grade class in Alabama, riding the rails and hitching lifts for a decade or so picking up labouring jobs for a spell and then moving on. This lifestyle informs several of his songs which he delivers with a raw authenticity whether they be hard driving honky tonkers or gritty ballads and on this album he even tackles some sweet Nashville countrypolitan sounds.
The 12th Glasgow Americana Festival kicks off today as Bristol based