Our latest Short Cuts, a monthly feature where AUK casts a brief eye and ear on several albums we’ve received recently which just didn’t make the cut for a full review. Like most major music websites, we can’t mention every album we get sent, but we reckon the picks below deserve a nod. Click on the links to hear a song.
We kick off this episode of Short Cuts with a new band that evokes familiar sounds for anyone interested in country rock. Sunken Lands are a Dutch band who, to quote, “play in a deep melancholic tone… which resonates with the emotional traditional tradition of country music”. Listening to “Burning Desire”, their second album, it’s apparent that this quintet have done their homework, coming up with an album which has echoes of early Drive-By Truckers, dashes of blue-collar Springsteen and oodles of pedal steel laced and guitar-driven songs which recall the grungier end of the No Depression era. Hardly original then, but on songs such as ‘Burning Desire’, the glowering ‘Keep Running’ and the high-flying guitar-driven ‘Catch On One The Fly’, they rise well above being mere copycats. It’s an engaging album and well worth a punt.
Also well worth a punt is the latest album from home-grown Americana band Red Moon Joe, their first since 2017’s “Time And Life”, which AUK gave a 9/10 review. “Love-Locked Dreams” finds the band in a grittier mood this time. They’ve ditched the pedal steel to concentrate on a duelling twin electric guitar showcase, although there remain lashings of banjo over the solid rhythm section. There are worthy rockers such as ‘Falling Down’ which comes across like an earthier Little Feat, along with the twangy delights of ‘Whisky, Cigarettes and Rain’ and the southern blues slope of ‘Wishing Well’ while ‘Girl From Your Hometown’ has a slight Celtic kick alongside its Nashville bar room vibe. They still have time to comment on topical events, as on ‘The 315′, a strong ballad which addresses the issues of immigration albeit from a historical perspective, and there’s social commentary of a sort on the epic opening number ‘25 Years’, six minutes long with some wonderful squalling guitars to boot. Very fine.
Charlie Williams is a Worcestershire-based folk/acoustic singer-songwriter whose debut album, “The Divider”, comes along after a successful career as a novelist. Here, he comes across initially as a punchy operator with strident acoustic guitar and gutsy vocals with an affinity to the early works of Billy Bragg, best heard on ‘Normal Working People‘, but he can also delve into folklore as on ‘Face In The Wall’, based on the tale of a 17th Century Worcester tailor killed in the English Civil War. Meanwhile, ‘Tree On A Hill’ is a hymn to a conker tree, which acts apparently as a landmark for those travelling on the M5. It’s unlikely that Williams will sweep to fame on the back of this album, but it’s sure to delight his local fans.
Also, an author who has drifted into making music is Terence Blacker, who is now on his fifth album, “Misfits Jamboree”. Blacker plays solo for the most part with just his guitar to support him on a set of songs which are suffused with a sly sense of humour. On numbers such as ‘Clichéville’ and ‘Everyone’s Annoying In Their Own Special Way,’ Blacker is indebted to the great late Jake Thackray, and while that’s somewhat of a recommendation, Blacker lacks Thackray’s lugubrious delivery. Aside from that, it has to be said that there is a distinct lake of satire with none of the songs having an actual bite to them, while ‘Let’s Go Out And Pretend We’re Happy’ with its cheesy keyboard solo actually comes across as a parody of John Shuttleworth if you can imagine such a thing. Nevertheless, Blacker has an audience and “Misfits Jamboree” will surely satisfy them.
We go down under to have a listen to Ryan Sterling from Melbourne. “High Road” is a mildly engaging, although slightly too long (22 tracks) listen. Sterling plays all the instruments, and the electric strum of ‘Everything Gunna Be Alright’ is reminiscent of Mark Mulcahy. ‘While You’re Just A Ghost’ is akin to a new wave bedsit poet such as one might have heard on Cherry Red Records back in the 90s. Overall, however, the album is pretty much a one-trick pony, which could have done with some pruning if I can mix my metaphors.
To Canada, Edmonton, Alberta, to be exact, for the debut album from Marv Rogers. A latecomer to music, Rogers says he writes in the vein of John Prine and Guy Clark, and that’s evident in some of the songs on “Cryin”. The opening song, ‘I’ve Been Crying‘, finds him bemoaning a lost love as he sings “I been smokin’ lots of weed, I been high for near three years, And it don’t matter how much I smoke, I’m still cryin’ and without hope”, and this stoned world-weariness pervades much of the album. Songs such as ‘My Baby Don’t Love Me Anymore’, ‘You Hate Me’, ‘The Ring Don’t Fit’ and ‘Eternal Pain’ are all about being abandoned, but Rogers does stray from his path on one occasion as he delivers the murder ballad ‘Say A Prayer’. All sung with a hangdog voice and nicely attired with some delicate folky flourishes from his band, Rogers isn’t an original, but the album is actually a fine listen just as long as you’re not in a depressive mood yourself.
If you are intrigued by the weirder roots of Americana, then you’d do well to investigate The Verdin Brothers, a trio of (yes) brothers who inhale the likes of American primitivism as parlayed by the likes of John Fahey, and then they dig a little deeper. Their acoustic guitar pickings are to the fore here, but they add all sorts of incidentals adding to the atmosphere of the album “Endless Night On The River Dirge”. They open with a spectral reimagining of a 1946 recording of a song, ‘Did You Ever See The Devil In The Garden’ which they found on an anthology of field recordings issued on Folkways and much of the album is based on their extrapolations of ancient recordings (stretching back to 1923 with Sylvester Weaver’s ‘Guitar Rag’ which was one of the earliest recordings of solo bottleneck slide guitar). They’re quite spectacular on the lengthy ‘Avalon Suite‘ (presumably named for Fahey), where dulcimer competes with the massed guitars, but overall, the album is a must for fans of their genre.
Eric Andersen is perhaps the best-known singer/songwriter you’ve never heard of. A veteran of Greenwich Village, protesting civil rights with Phil Ochs, journeying with The Band on their fabled Festival Express, and a member of Dylan’s Rolling Thunder tour, he’s paid his dues. AUK dutifully awarded the 2023 tribute album, “Tribute to a Songpoet – Songs of Eric Andersen”, an 8/10 as he was celebrated over three CDs by a host of Americana luminaries. “Dance Of Love And Death” finds Andersen in a reflective mood, his voice now aged but still well able to hold up a song while there’s a degree of serenity throughout, somewhat similar to that expressed by Chip Taylor on his recent albums. Unfortunately, that serenity is sometimes disturbed by heavy-handed arrangements, as in the opening title song, where Andersen’s musings lead to eruptions of strings and thrashing guitars. A similar blight affects ‘Didn’t It Make You Want To Sing The Blues’, which comes across as a wonderful song but begs to be heard in a more stripped-back manner. Fortunately, there are several stripped-back songs here which are much more welcoming. ‘Love Is A Sacred Thing’ and ‘Troubled Angel’ have the guitar and harmonica element which harks all the way back to the Village, and ‘River Spree‘ is a quite majestic song which reflects on bohemian times in Berlin with grim undertones. There are similar elements in ‘Season In Crime (Crime Scenes)’, a song which has echoes of Dylan in it while the closing ‘Broken Bones’ shows that Andersen still has his Greenwich Village folk blues chops.
North Carolina’s Dave Desmelik is one of those singer-songwriters who work at the coal face for years with little recognition. “Among Friends” is his 19th release (and, somewhat shamefaced, we have to admit that AUK seems to have missed all of his previous releases aside from 2018’s “Army Of Love”), and it features his versions of songs written by his fellow songwriters, songs which he says “have moved him.” His peer group is not star-studded. Instead, they are a collection of jobbing musicians who all play for the sake of the song, and Desmelik does them proud, not only playing their songs but also asking listeners to check out the originals. He certainly has an acute ear, able to pick some tremendous songs. ‘Everyday Theatre‘ (written by David Phillips) is quite tremendous in its fractured beauty, so reminiscent of bands such as Granfalloon Bus. Desmelik continues to deliver several songs which are frail and spindly, such as ‘Durango’ (written by Nolan McKelvey) and ‘Be Real’ (written by Jay Brown). The whole album recalls the era when alt-country and No Depression were throwing out a whole bunch of singers and bands who were plugged into the dusty gap between Willie Nelson and Uncle Tupelo, and it’s a fabulous listen.
