Mudlow: Press

(Thanks to Rick Saunders, a gentleman.)


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.”

When I first listened to the debut full-length album by Brighton, England quartet Mudlow, Welcome to Mudlow Country, I was taken utterly by surprise. These talented few possess a wholly unique sound, decidedly one of the more original ones I have come across in recent years. An amalgamation of musical elements consisting of back alley blues, noir jazz, dark lounge-core, and gritty roots rock, just as raw and dirty as it is tight, cinematic and exceptionally well-constructed, Mudlow’s raunchy sound seems almost like something one might hear at a smoky basement speakeasy, a strip club on the wrong side of town, in the pages of an obscure crime novel, the sort of carnival one doesn't take one's children to, or accompanying the strange imagery and hip characters of a black-and-white exploitation film.

As far as the working components of Mudlow’s gargantuan sound, they are easiest appreciated as a whole, obviously, with all of the interacting instrumentation and whisky-soaked vocals. That is, I often visualize music in an anatomical sense: the instrumentation being the various parts of the body, and the vocals being the head. In other words, the instruments are the trunk, or foundation, along with the appendages, and the vocals give a face to the whole thing, with distinct features. Still, in this case, I am having difficulty deciding if this head wears an old greasy newsboy cap or a cool-as-can-be fedora. That's neither here nor there, really. Just something that sneaked into my gray matter for a few moments of contemplation.

Mudlow can also be appreciated on many levels by its individual parts. Frontman and songsmith Tobias provides rust bucket vocals and plenty of guitar sludge and twang-infected blues riffs. Matt Black drums with mathematical precision, presiding over the kit like a pro. Paul Beat skillfully works the thick strings of his Rickenbacher bass, going beyond the simple routine of hitting on root notes. Trimble wails on the saxophone like the wild, improvisational ‘50s era jazz men of Frisco that the Beat Generation so celebrated in their legendary poems. And lastly we have a musician referred to simply as Jules, who is not one of the band's core members but is credited as having contributed harmonica and baritone sax to the songs on the album.

There is something undeniably Waitsian and Cave-esque about Mudlow’s sound, but it also reminds me somewhat of a more obscure band or two, especially Colorado’s Bad Luck City. Most of all, though, it is a unique sound that stands on its own and requires little comparison, which is evidenced on the album.

Welcome to Mudlow Country consists of thirteen territorial sonic markings from a remarkably rare breed of musical animal. Even though this album was originally released in 2005, it is one that deserves mention again and again throughout the years so that it can be discovered and appreciated by obscure music enthusiasts who may not have otherwise come across it. Believe me, it's about time you took a trip to Mudlow Country.