TOMMY STINSON’S COWBOYS IN THE CAMPFIRE – Wronger

Tommy Stinson is a legend. His work with The Replacements provided the heart of the Minneapolis punk scene in the early 80s, and by the end of the decade, the band’s more melodic sounds had paved the way for varying styles of alternative rock. With his other often overlooked bands Bash & Pop and Perfect, he took the Replacements’ sound even further, dabbling with power pop and even rootsier sounds. With that in mind, although this release from his Cowboys In The Campfire is billed as a “country album”, it’s best bits aren’t quite as massive a musical shift as some people might believe.

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REDEYE CARAVAN – Snake Oil & Lullabies EP

Formed in 2019, Greek band Redeye Caravan bill themselves as “dark country”, but their sound runs far deeper than that. For those people who are country averse, it’ll come as a relief that they don’t necessarily fit the country mould – or certainly not as a lot of people would perceive it. For example, the brilliant ‘El Muerto’ from their 2020 album ‘Nostrum Remedium’ actually plays more like a swamp blues; a landscape where acoustic slide guitars meet haunting harmonica lines and a gruff vocal comes a little closer to the work of Molly Hatchet. The same record features a choir of vocals exploring some moody folk sounds (‘Banshee’); a marriage of hefty twanging guitars and whistled melodies on a piece that’s clearly modelled on an Ennio Morricone score for a Western (‘Old Debt’), and even a mix of blues and cajun (‘The Road North’). There are hints of something a little more traditional when ‘At Gallows End’ plays more like a moody Johnny Cash number by way of Mark Lanegan, but it would be hard to pigeonhole the whole affair as “a country record”.

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REDBUD – Long Night EP

Texan indie pop band Redbud began releasing music via Bandcamp during the lockdown of 2020, and it was immediately clear that their sound had something special. Their early digital singles ‘To The Moon’ and ‘Opal’ conveyed elements of retro dream pop and light psych-tinged Americana in a way that felt both familiar and fresh – an oxymoron if ever there were – and vocalist Katie Claghorn’s hazy and ethereal vocal style had an immediate appeal.

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THE MORNING LINE – Scene

The Morning Line’s 2019 LP, ‘North’, was an absolutely terrific album. Reawakening the sounds of ‘Girlfriend’ era Matthew Sweet, Soul Asylum’s best major label recordings and even a the productions of Sean Slade & Paul Q. Kolderie, it felt like a musical love letter to the 1990s. Retro, yet still somehow fresh, it’s melodic and jangly songs really captured the best of the band’s obvious talents.

Three years on, their first release for Justine Couvault’s Red On Red Records is another musical treat. A seven song collection, ‘Scene’ taps into the “mini album” format – something that seems to have been overlooked since the early 90s – which means there’s far less opportunity for the listener’s attention to wander, but still enough scope for a little variety along the way.

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