The August List
Album: Handsome Skin (EP)
Label: Ubiquity Project
Tracks: 4
Website: http://soundcloud.com/theaugustlist

This self-proclaimed "backwards country porch-folk" husband-and-wife duo, who name themselves after a Willard Grant Conspiracy song, are dedicated purveyors of raw acoustic garage-folk with real attitude, somewhat in the manner of The White Stripes perhaps (to invoke a fairly ready musical reference point). But there's more to their music than that.

Kerraleigh Child's extraordinary, full-throated, bare-chested, battle-ready voice is right there at the front of the sound-picture, grabs you by the throat and just won't let go, whether on the crashing blueser of Forty-Rod Of Lightnin', the decidedly Siouxsie-esque swagger of Death Penalty or the contrasted strongly pleadingsome longing whine of the closer Homeland with its glorious moaning pedal steel.

Kerraleigh and Martin together prove capable of chameleon-like musical changes through the course of a song, as the highly persuasive Bird House Song demonstrates, with its sweet and tender a cappella opening giving way to a primitive mandolin-and-harmonica-with footstomping-drumbeat. The songs themselves inhabit the inevitable "life, love and death" triumvirate, weaving dark stories around those honourable topics. This is a distinctly arresting disc.

David Kidman