Mudlow: Press

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.

'....urged me to delve further and find out more about the band and their distinctive take on the blues... the result is receiving this album for review and being left with the feeling that i've found something quite unique, challenging, whilst infinitely listenable (the Mercury Music Prize please take note!)......'

On first listen to the debut album by Brighton's Mudlow there can be little doubt as to what/where 'Mudlow Country' of the title is. The bands aesthetic is soaked in film noir and pulp novels - tales of criminal acts, lost souls and decaying towns fill the corners of this mythic land.
in some ways the 13 tracks of this disc make up a sort of concept album, telling the stories of the characters and places of some murky, rotting netherworld.

'those Mudlow boys are crazy!'

Mudlow have one eye firmly on the US, but their seedy, growling version of the music of The
Deep South, has the salt of the Channel in its lungs and the darkness of [Graham] Greene’s
bad boy, Pinky, lurking in the nooks and crannies of excellent debut album, Welcome To
Mudlow Country. The obvious reference point is Tom Waits, though there are moments
which remind of Springsteen’s better work. And the lecherous saxes of the humungous brass
section give an interesting and original air to this fine collection.

“Thrusting screaming sax, hollering harmonica, dirty guitars and sleazy howling vocals … an
awesome set of sultry blues rock.”
“Had the crowd by the scruff of their necks unable to resist a good swing of the hips. It’s the
kind of music that makes you want to bark like a dog, and I am certainly one bitch who will
defi nitely be purchasing their album post haste.”