Stonehouse
Album: Junction
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.reverbnation.com/thestonehouseband

Welsh blues rockers Stonehouse, have come a long way since they formed as a trio of friends back in 2010. Grafting hard and playing venues as diverse as a tee pee and bank vault and travelling the length and breadth of Britain and more recently America. That hard work also brings us the band's second album, "Junction".

"Junction" kicks off with the title track, a place where I've always felt the title track should be, there's a case for building towards it at the end, but not anywhere else, I'm a luddite like, that, I digress. The opener gives you no doubt you're about to indulge in a blues rock/soulful journey, with just a hint of Welsh twang.

"Junction" is an album with a real kick, it's rough around the edges and feels like a lot of it has been recorded studio live with the whole band. It's an album with flaws and the songs feel like they've been written for purpose, written around a specific event or to purge the mind of a very specific bit of heartbreak.

There is a point on the second track, "Wintertime" when the singer refers to a midnight train and you get the feeling that even if the singer couldn't tell you the number of the train, he could definitely tell you the station it left from and what it was like when he got there.

This feels like a very genuine album, there is an inherent honesty in the songs, Stonehouse are not trying to tell you they're the next Manic Street Preachers or Catatonia, they are telling you they are a good blues rock band, one that's worth taking notice of, because they have a knack of taking everyday life, the sort that happens to me and you, and putting it to music in a way we can relate to and in fairness can you ask more of a band than that?

Neil King