There’s nothing like starting a review with a bunch of tedious and slightly tenuous comparisons so, erm, why the fuck not, eh.  This sounds to me like a funny old mix between Natalie Merchant, Michelle Shocked and Jolie Holland.

And with that out of the way, I’ll do the negatives first: sometimes the songwriting has too much gingham-clad, oven-baked, log cabin goodness for me.  This is folky music, with gorgeous vocals, banjo, violin and a skitter of percussion, and it can be just a little too nice for me at times, particularly when the bass guitar kicks in and it starts to sound like a nice sensible rhythm and a nice sensible song.

Whilst this does happen from time to time, it is generally not that much of a concern.  Tracks such as Slow Walk and Lately in DM are fantastic and, whilst not exactly groundbreaking in style or structure, have the strain of emotions personally felt about them, and this gives them real impact. At times though, despite there being nothing I could really criticise about the songs, this album just fails to grab me.  There are some brilliant songs on here, and some which are all in the right place, but nevertheless have failed to take real hold on me for some reason, and I couldn’t tell you why.

I really like the minimalism of the instrumentation on this record as well.  This may have been due to restrictions of facilities or budget (and often is when I admire the lo-fi or bare-bones nature of under the radar bands), but they did have access to drums and bass guitar, so it is good to see songs like Young Blood Blues embellished with no more than a constant, gentle strum of banjo, and a little slide on the acoustic guitar.

So it’s a pretty album – at times too pretty for me, as I said – but there’s a lot of really good stuff here.  And it’s being released on vinyl too, as is a lot these days it seems.  Where the fuck are the record labels getting all this bloody money – it’s not cheap you know!

Hurray For the Riff Raff – Is That You

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Hurray For the Riff Raff – Slow Walk

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Website | More mp3s | Buy direct from Goner Records