I don't know how to describe this, but give it a whirl and you'll find a really playful twist on bar-stomping rock and Tom Waits gritty vocals. It's really deft free-for-alling. What strikes me is that the songs are seemingly straight-up fun rock, and then at some point, about a minute into the song, there's usually a very inventive wild change to the tempo or a bizarro backing vocal--some amazing lift to the song that rewards frequent replaying. This is great stuff!
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Originally recorded three years ago with Johnny Dowd as producer, but finally given a wider release to capitalise on the band's recent support slot on Dowd's tour, Nowhere comprises 12 slabs of gut-bucket art-blues likely to appeal to anybody with an affection for Tom Waits or Captain Beefheart. Singer/guitarist Andy Weaver plays scarified slide guitar and employs the raw growl of a Beefheart or Howlin' Wolf on bleak, quirky blues like "Desert Rose" and "Paper Houses", sketching a dystopian vision of contemporary Britain in songs such as "Howling Road". Driven along by the stark percussive power of former Comsat Angel drummer Mik Glaisher, the trio is at its most compelling on the gospel-boogie of "Your Enemy Cannot Harm You", whose optimistic title is tempered with the advice that one should "watch your close friend".
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By its very nature, the blues feeds on dark and negative emotions. And yet British three-piece Chicken Legs Weaver are a blues band like few others. First championed by Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, they have been likened to Howlin' Wolf, Captain Beefheart, Tom Waits and the White Stripes.

Produced in a remote log cabin in upstate New York by Johnny Dowd, Nowhere ties together several disenfranchised and distinctly melancholic strands, including blues, punk, alternative rock and even gospel in a disturbing style that has been called nu blues. The songs are mostly slow and menacing, with the moodiness of "In The Ground" and "Howling Road" serving to double the shit-your-pants effect when "Your Enemy Cannot Harm You" finally kicks in.
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The Sheffield based punk/blues band now signed with Riverside Records have a distinctive sound and thrust - and the voice of Andy Weaver is prime stand-out here (what does he gargle with?)...then there's the music that he 
dominates with his guitar, outlandish, irreverent or what, well yes, it's just creative and so different to anything else right now you'll either love it or hate it. Traditionalists beware then. The legendary Johnny Dowd produces this album which was recorded in the USA. The band have shared the stage in the last year  with, amongst others, the Alabama 3 as their status grows. The music, thought provoking, stark, mind crunching, energetic, melancholy even, oh yes and catchy in parts. Particularely liked "In The Ground" with its infectious lead pattern, "Love Locked" resembles the feel of battle to landscape, "Your Enemy Cannot Harm You" carries the warning words "but watch your close friend", "Howling Road" is story like and spell-binding. The slide work throughout the album is sterling stuff. Do take a listen but beware.
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