The Tarbox Ramblers
A Fix Back East
Rounder

Four stars ****

In-yer-face, roots-influenced second album with one foot in the delta blues and the other in a kind of Nick Cave/Tom Waits swamp country.

From the Paul Burlison-style guitar shredding on opening track Already Gone,  to the
Slim Harpo-in-a-fist-fight attitude dripping all over their cover of Dock Boggs' Country Blues, there's a primal blues energy at work here. Mostly written by guitarist and vocalist Michael Tarbox,  and partly recorded in Memphis with Jim Dickinson, these songs are unlikey to be
covered by Boyzone in the foreseeable future.  Using a tight guitar/drums, violin/string bass line-up, with sandpaper vocals, they achieve an intense, often claustrophobic sound.  Cloth of Gold comes on like rockabilly at 16 RPM,  the title track is a pure David Lynch movie, and Last Month Of  The Year is gospel sung to pounding drums and percussion.  In a word, tasty.