There was a place in the seminal comic 2000AD’s Judge Dredd story called the Cursed Earth. It was a radiation ravaged desert outside the walls of Mega City One exclusively inhabited by mutant hillbillies, mutant spiders and all kinds of other mutants. I seriously doubt the Be Good Tanyas hail from the Cursed Earth in reality, but in a musical sense they are fully fledged passport holding citizens.
What they’ve
done is written the perfect sound track for life in the post apocalyptic
radioactive wasteland. It’s off kilter Americana with a sour mashed flavour
that takes the deep south template favoured by Caroline Herring and mutates it
into a banjo fuelled, skiffle infused hybrid that is as disturbing as it is
beautiful. When Judge Dredd stumbles on a group of mutated hobos clustered
around an oil drum fire, this is what they were listening to.
In reality they
come from Canada which is less romantic but probably better for them. Every
track is a little country meets bluegrass gem and to name but a few; ‘Scattered
Leaves’ is a lilting leftfield ballad, ‘Draft Daughters Blues’ is wholesome and
chunky blues and ‘The Littlest Birds’ defies you not to sing along. My personal
favourite is the stark, banjo meets that unique vocal style of ‘Only in the
Past’ and then the fiddle kicks in. Having said that, the entire collection is
not too shabby.
Unusual,
original and glorious, the Be Good Tanyas are a folk band I’ll be keeping an eye
on in the years to come. A rich and varied collection just as at home in the
North of England or in a post nuclear irradiated fictional desert. They also
have the despairing look of a group that may also give us an interview?
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