Band of Joy
4/5
Given the rate at which ageing male rockers are starting to bash out covers albums of gruffly reworked Americana, it’s not going to be long before we’re listening to Ian Broudie rasping his way through ‘She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain’. Still, we’ll forgive Robert Plant, since he’s already conclusively proven his bluegrass chops on six Grammy Awards-winning last album, ‘Raising Sand’. And especially given the sonic variety on show here.
With Nashville guitarist Buddy Miller producing, the majority of tracks are shot through with bouncy, tea-chest bass, swoony dobro and breathily crooned, male-female vocal harmonies. However, the first single, a reinterpretation of Los Lobos’s ‘Angel Dance’ thrums with a muscular and bass-y, psych-ish guitar tone that could have come straight off a Led Zep album. Two (admittedly slightly uninventively maudlin) Low covers (‘Silver Rider’ and ‘Monkey’) delve into distorted sonic washes. And is that borderline electro on ‘Even This Shall Pass Away’? Not quite Grammy-winning material, but pretty damn good nonetheless.
