With lyrics referencing Lazarus and black coffee, this is refreshingly familiar ground, the fraternal harmony like grit on gravel.

Live, Joe Hazell plays bass, uncertain if he does on the album, or, to be fair, who adds the keyboards, but these are mere details, in the way of cutting to the chase.ĭon’t Waste Your Prayers On Me starts as they mean to go on, a hoarse and homely holler, over picked electric. Callum sings and writes the storyboard narratives, Jack plays lead guitar and Theo drums. Late to the party, let me now add my vote. Those that do have been quick to hail them as somewhat special.

Unless a regular at the burgeoning UK Americana scene Maverick Festival, Ramblin’ Root Revue, that sort of gig, you wouldn’t have been aware of them. So Callum, Jack and Theo Lury have been channeling this muse since 2018, if remaining a best kept secret to most. Actually, their second album, this found me almost by chance, glad that it did. There are a few Colin Macleod, the Stornoway Springsteen, being one, not forgetting also the mighty Sam Fender, but let me add these guys to the list. Maybe we still do, I do, but there seems little new from that sphere to loosen the juices in the same way they were once capable of. OK, then, who’s up for a bit of widescreen cinematic blue collar rock, open throated guitar anthems of the north eastern industrial cities of Detroit, Newark, Boston, all of them? And Harrow, England? Is that a problem? Don’t let it be, for this band of (real) brothers channel as much Bruce, Mitch (Ryder) and Bob (Seger) as you can shake a headband at, causing you to recall quite why we thought those guys all so good.

Blue highways book review