Drake, Views - album review: 'Rarely has one man moaned quite so much'

Sign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Get our Now Hear This email for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Kacy & Clayton - Strange Country - 4/5 Download this: Strange Country; If You Ask How I’m Keeping; Brunswick Stew; Dyin’ Bed Maker Kacy Anderson and her second cousin Clayton Linthicum irresistibly recall the work of Gillian Welch & David Rawlings on this second album, though the Canadian duo’s distinctive appreciation of traditional folk themes and modes owes just as much to British precursors, Linthicum’s guitar work on the title-track boasting the ebullient spring of Jansch and Renbourn, while the tone of fragility tempered with experience aligns Anderson’s vocal with the likes of Sandy Denny and Anne Briggs. Save for three traditional songs, Strange Country comprises brilliantly-wrought original material haunted by themes of uncertainty, lassitude, jealousy and spite, perhaps most strikingly realised in “Brunswick Stew”, where a pulsing drum lends fatalist momentum to a tragic tale of a pregnant daughter’s shame. Any potential sensationalism, however, is dispelled by his decision to present the songs chronologically - so we get the languid “Honeymoon” first, followed by the birth of a son in “Bloom Forever”, before he returns to their “Country Home” to find her body, disarmingly wondering “why weren’t her eyes covered and closed?”. John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers - Live In 1967:Volume Two - Forty Below - 4/5 Download this: Tears In My Eyes; So Many Roads; Greeny; Sweet Little Angel Recorded covertly in glorious mono by a fan at London clubs such as Klooks Kleek, this vividly atmospheric lo-fi album captures at its best the short-lived version of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers that featured Peter Green, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood, on the cusp of their formation of Fleetwood Mac.