The Rails
Album: Fair Warning
Label: Island
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.therailsofficial.com

This album appeared in the racks at least three months ago, but it's taken me a while to source a copy for review, and as luck would have it the subsequent Thompson-related venture (the Thompson Family CD) finally managed to get through the review mill a touch ahead of The Rails. So now it's time to backtrack.

The Rails is a new duo comprising Kami Thompson (daughter of Richard & Linda) and James Walbourne (former Pretenders guitarist and Kami's spouse), and I gotta give duly "fair warning" and say straightway without prejudice - yet with what ought to be an apology for predictability I guess - that their debut album (seemingly unavoidably) has much of the flavour of classic Richard & Linda product. I suppose I mean in terms of sound, rather than the scope of the actual material necessarily, for it differs in mixing truly classy original compositions nine in number) with equally classy arrangements of traditional songs (two of those). The production is punchy, the singing and playing intensely assured and well past competent, and the writing keen and eminently accessible but with plenty of depth. On first playthrough, my assessment was to vote three tracks total winners, a further three outstanding, and three very good indeed, with the remaining two cuts not quite doing it for me despite some uncommonly fine playing and lovely vocal harmonies. Although the sheer quality of the performances strikes the listener immediately, I felt (and still do) that the running order of the tracks isn't quite ideal, even while much capital is made out of the contrasts between songs.

The gentle acoustic-driven Bonnie Portmore opens the collection in a deceptively straightforward manner, but thereafter we find an appealing and utterly infectious pop-folk sensibility about virtually the whole exercise, wherein the duo's expressive approach could be said to derive inspiration from several approved folk-rock-inflected role-model, from the swirling electric confidence of Steeleye Span (Breakneck Speed and William Taylor) to the gutsy fiddle-driven demeanour of Seth Lakeman (Panic Attack Blues, which also happens to contain an almost incidental killer guitar solo), via the delicious, tender close-harmony acoustic duet Habit, the wistful, if slightly sentimental, bluegrass-inflected waltzer Younger and - best of all - the poignant, hook-rich Send Her To Holloway (that one could almost've been penned by RT himself, and it's capped by another tremendous, and admirably economic, guitar solo). The traditional styling extends into many of the songs, notably Jealous Sailor and Borstal, and this impression is reinforced by the presence of Eliza Carthy guesting on fiddle on these and three other tracks. And the album's title song has the aura and epic tread of Sloth allied to something of the emotional weariness of, say, Walking On A Wire perhaps. It's a shame that lyrics aren't included in the booklet, the majority of whose space is filled with studio photos, but I like the neat touch of the retro repro Island "pink label" for the disc itself (although pedants will doubtless argue that the actual design used here is, strictly, more akin to the fin-de-60s Fairport phase of the label than the Richard & Linda era). You are hereby served with fair warning that these guys are going to be big!

David Kidman