Cracker
Album: Berkeley To Bakersfield
Label: 429
Tracks: 18
Website: http://www.crackersoul.com

To mark the re-release of Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti, The Telegraph indulged in a spot of list journalism with their top ten double albums of all time. If they re-run it forty years from now I think it's fair to say that Cracker's Berkeley To Bakersfield wouldn't be challenging for a place.

It is labelled as a double album, it is sold as a double album and, yes, if you buy it you will get two CDs but this is really two single albums conveniently lumped together. It is not a situation where their creativity refuses to be confined to two sides of vinyl nor is it an over indulgence, one where a hard prune would have resulted in a magnificent single offering.

Berkeley is alt-rock, it is punk, it is what have must have been happening in the Bay Area of California when I only had ears for Metallica. It is the original Cracker line up recording together for the first time in two decades.

Bakersfield is, well, Bakersfield. Buck Owens' The Bakersfield Sound was the alternative to Nashville long before Wilco and No Depression, and a decade before Willie and Waylon upped sticks and moved to Austin. As you would expect, pedal steel and twangy guitars are to the fore.

Berkeley is all about contrast; city versus country and rock versus county. Are Hickman and Lowery just showing that they can do both? Maybe, but I know that there's one disc (Bakersfield) that I'll possibly play again and one I'll probably not.

John 'The Jacket' Hawes