Album Notes

Download Welcome to Mudlow Country here: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playListId=80900165 or here: http://www.emusic.com/album/10896/10896056.html?fref=700329 THE FOLLOWING COMES FROM RICK SAUNDERS WORLD; www.homestead.com/ricksaunders With a voice like a rarely (although occasionally liberally) greased pawnshop trombone Mudlow's Tobias wails croons growls and squalls across the lushly criminal sultry seaport landscape that is Welcome To Mudlow Country. It's their first album. With a swagger and swing so long and thick they gotta wear it for a belt, Brighton's Mudlow have become my new Afghan Whigs, my new Nick Cave, my new Marah, impossible to play loud enough. I want to crawl inside their sound and drink deep till hammered and slaked then dance. spin,buck,bark and rail along with it before the next song picks me up on it's gangster lean and shoulders me to the next basement bar. Bass and drums swingin' beats fatback crisp and cold hot greasy. Drummerman Matt Black layin' so far back into that drop down it's a G.D. Memphis miracle the whole thing don't totter and tip backwards on it's big sexy ass. But that Bass! Damn. Paul Beat keeps it all pulled down sublow sonic like a big fine woman's behind the wheel backin' it up. Brass horns careen and plead and sob and harmonica call the lonely and lonesome home. For all the raw refined glorifying groove power it's no stoop to roll it back and lay out in rich cinematic black and white and noir. Tobias's guitar crawls from under it's own rock and slithers and slinks and solos sideways and frontwards. He chops chunks scratches and lines out colours in deep blues and orange red, chocolate dark brown and bright white heat. His lyric work intrigues with Waits-ian leanness and heft rifely populated by characters, misfits, fuckups, frauds, sociopaths and common charmers. My people. Despite the deceptively dour imagery there is simply an undeniable joy shimmering throughout. You can tell Brighton's finest love playing these songs. Live I ain't seen 'em and Lord knows if I will on the otherside of the world but i've been told and I surely reckon they must put out on of the heaviest shows out. This is frayed sharp black suit Outlaw Music. Midnight sometime Harvest Moon Chinook Wind Sunless winter cannery dockside. It's all the same and something bad comin' and goin'. Each song stands upright alone alright but the soundscape is beautifully frosted with subtle sounds of running machinery, creaking ships and crying seabirds, down stairs doors (un)locking and matchlight building burning. Nothing to distract but to add some stones and brambles along the river road to catch on the cuffs of your ears and set you to watch where you're walkin' and maybe LiSTEN where you're goin' for a change. Even to my beat ears it's one of the best sounding recordings i've had the pleasure to hear. Sonically raw and gorgeous and mapped out with care. If given three quarters the chance these damned kings of the south deserve for recording an album this down, this grimy, this menacing, this star spankin' grand and glorious my world will sleep in safety and spite. Thank You Mudlow.