When Olsen starts singing, that sense is magnified by the harmony vocals and the ooh la la backing. This sets the mood, perfectly, for the album, as this track, Let Me Dream Of You, becomes jangle central. It then opens up with some background swoops of steel, throbbing bass and percussion. Pedal steel maestro, Joe Harvey-Whyte, whose definition of busy is far more encompassing than most, then later added his own additional magic, at his own studio, in London.ĭarker? Cosmic? Baggy? A murky strum introduces track one, intentionally all Exile On Main Street, but leavened with a hint of Sheryl Crow’s If It Makes You Happy, which it does, and that’s just in the first few seconds. With melodic ideas and lyrical fragments mainly from Olsen, Ralla also a source, thrashing them first into joint musical shape was the aim, and it was well met. To be fair, it was the four of singer and guitarist, Richard Olsen, drummer, Paulie Cobra, Patrick Ralla, guitars and keyboards, along with new bassist Paul Milne, that took the skeletal ideas and frameworks of songs up North. The aim? A self-confessed and self-styled “baggy Balearic country album”, an admirable idea, I am sure you would agree. Somehow, within that busy schedule, the band found the time to assemble at Edwin Collins’ Clashnarrow base, way, way up in Caithness, Scotland, and rip this one out, largely live in the studio. Billed as the ‘darker little brother’ to 2022’s Hollow Heart, reviewed here, the band seem to have been on permanent road mode from the minute the doors of lock down opened, garnishing plaudits aplenty, with last summer’s show at Shrewsbury Folk especially galvanising. It now deserves and has earnt those capital letters, even if I’m not going to use the A*****ana word twice in one paragraph. It’s official, then, Cosmic Americana is once more a thing, but now with capitals! Sure, these guys have been touting this as a concept for some time and over, now, five long-players, have been seeding the oh so Gram Parsons-esque vision into the vibe of the expanding renaissance of UK born country roots music.
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