Album review: Jack Rose and the Black Twig Pickers – self-titled

OK, so Jack Rose and the Black Twig Pickers are about as far out of my knowledge zone as anything that’s yet crossed my desk since starting up The Dreaded Press, and I see no shame in admitting that. Their self-titled album is true Americana folk – not trendy hipster anti-folk or a post-modern reworking of traditional sounds for a jaded and novelty-starved market. Rose himself plays steel guitar, and the Black Twig Pickers back him up with fiddle, harmonica, guitar, banjo and percussion. The end result: something that sounds like the ideal soundtrack to a well-earned sippin’ whisky after a long hard day panning for gold in the sun-swept California riverbeds of 1849.

What’s remarkable about it, for me at least, is how we can be so familiar with this sort of music as a stylistic cliché despite hardly ever hearing it in the modern media space. It’s strangely comfortable, like a shabby but much-loved greatcoat acquired from an elderly relative: distinctly different to the fashions of the moment, but instantly recognisable, timeless and practical. The chicken-scratch rhythms, the nasal and untutored harmonies of the vocals, the traditional chord sequences embellished with effortless detail by musicians whose familiarity with their instruments leads to a virtuosity that has nothing to do with fretwank grandstanding and everything to do with the sheer joy of battering out a rollicking tune with your buddies. Jack Rose and the Black Twig Pickers are locked into the rhythm on every track here, and the wilfully basic (as opposed to deliberately lo-fi) production lends the whole affair the same vibe as a live set in some unknown bar. The throat-clearing noise between “Soft Steel Piston” and “Some Happy Day” pretty much sums it up: no pretence whatsoever.

Do Jack Rose and the Black Twig Pickers play the best Americana there is? I couldn’t possibly say – as pointed out above, it’s not a genre I know well enough to assess on that level. But what I can say for certain is that this is a mellow and diverting collection of tracks that had me tapping my foot from beginning to end, daydreaming of the golden age of railroads and the dirt-street town architecture of the more authentic Westerns. Perhaps that’s a crass and clichéd summary, and if so I offer Mr Rose and company my apologies; I mean only to say that I enjoyed it very much. Maybe you will too.