Baskery
Album: Little Wild Life
Label: Mother Tarantula
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.baskery.com

Some of us remember the feisty wedish female threesome Baskery from their support slots on the 2009 Seth Lakeman tour and their concurrent (debut) album Fall Among Thieves, which was characterised by a strong and defiant spirit, a bluegrass-punk alliance that was quite reasonably dubbed “killbilly”. Two albums on, we encounter Little Wild Life, the band’s latest offering. On the cover pic it looks rather familiar: a backwoods-located bluegrass outfit, casually sporting banjo, double bass and guitar. But stick the disc in the player and out creeps the tarantula (if you get my drift!), for Baskery are unmasked as alt-Americana indie-rockers with a twist.

The trio consists of sisters Greta, Stella and Sunniva Bondesson, who still display a fine degree of sibling togetherness that the stylistic diversity of their self-penned material (each contributes more or less equal in terms of writing credits) might not necessarily (or immediately) prefigure. Even so, in the vocal department there’s both strength and beauty often à-la-McGarrigle especially in some of the harmony work, which remains the trio’s strongest suit. On tracks like The Solution and The Reverend there’s also a good helping of that ol’ Scandinavian introspection, not least in the dark tones and brooding electric guitar licks that pervade the textures (note that there’s not an awful lot of banjo hangin’ around the studio nowadays). Indeed, The Shadow could almost be a late-period Abba outtake, and tracks like The Kid and The No No display distinct echoes of Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac introspection.

At the same time, though, there’s more than a touch of bombast, perhaps, in some of the more insistent driving drum backbeats (The Charm and The Fire). I can’t escape the sneaky feeling that in jettisoning the more old-timey-bluegrassy elements of their sound and going all-out for electricity Baskery may have lost their way a little. And although the sisters’ lyrics are more focused – and more thoughtful in general – here than on their debut there’s still sometimes a marked shortfall in terms of substance that any amount of bluster and fuller sound can’t altogether hide. And even when Baskery hold all-out for hauntingly enigmatic, as on the brief a cappella opening cut Northern Girl, it all feels too unfinished notwithstanding its tacitly expressed function as an album prelude. So, although by and large I’m sold on Little Wild Life, not least because it still sounds pretty good and is admirably chock full of attitude, I’m not yet convinced that the sisters have successfully realised their musical vision, which probably now to some degree needs some more careful rationalisation.

David Kidman