Track Listing:
- I Don't Know Where And I Don't Know Why And I Don't Know How
- Silence After Midnight
- The Queen's Train
- 300 Letters
- Unguarded Moment
- Corporal's Trousers/M'Lady's Moustache
- Randell Avenue
- No Good Around Here
- No Not Tonight
- Rain Upon The Road
- Glory To The Few
- The Last One
Alternative Route To All Destinations
The Durbervilles
This is the third album from Yorkshire's Durbervilles. Variously described as 'roots music with a twist of Northern Grit' to 'coming across as Fairport at their very best', they are a highly polished band that deliver a mixture of alt-country and folk rock. In fact they don't sound particularly 'northern' at all, if you heard this album with no knowledge of them chances are you'd say they originated from somewhere in the USA.
The band members are Lee Walsh on vocals, guitar, mandolin and mouth organ, David Crickmore on guitar, lap and pedal steel, mandola, banjo, glockenspiel, and Hammond (he's busy), Mark Boyce on drums and percussion, Gus Taylor on accordion and Jayne Belcher on bass. Jude Abbot from Chumbawamba and Ric Sanders from Fairport Convention join them on the recording and some live dates.
The list of instruments is a heady mix; from mouth organ to glockenspiel and drums to dobro. They are all played masterfully on tunes that get your feet tapping, the lead vocals of Lee Walsh carry the songs along in the fashion of the Oysterband. The rhythm section of Taylor and Belcher master the sometimes awkward job of lifting acoustic folk and roots songs to another level without bashing it into submission in the process.
Much of their songwriting is rooted in the observational mode of a story teller, it's fitting that The songs are fast paced and rhythmic, and they sound like a band well into their career as they are so assured and tight in their playing. It's nigh on impossible to pigeonhole them as they have so many influences woven into their sound, country, folk, cajun, rock; the core of the album is witty and inventive, although on some tracks they can veer towards a kind of mid-atlantic anonymity.
They have several live dates across the summer in a variety of festivals and venues. Most of these are in northern England, catch them now in their natural habitat. Before long they will get the attention they deserve and have to include the rest of the planet!
Iain Hazlewood