KwalaParla
Album: Break The Man
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.kwalaparla.com/

With a sound that feels like the illegitimate offspring of darkest Americana and dirty dirty blues, KwalaParla are built around the songwriting journeys of Mike Willacy, a man who would seem to be able to walk down any alleyway and emerge the other side with a story to tell.

He's joined on his journey by two travelling companions, Daniel J Logan, whose very name sounds like a confederate soldier on the run having won a knife fight in a dodgy bar over a suspect game of cards, but who is actually the bass player and percussionist and the distinctive guitar of Jo Bywater who also contributes backing vocals on the track, "To The Gallows".

The confederate reference isn't entirely coincidental as "Break The Man" is a fictional story set around the American Civil War. Regular readers know that one of my criteria for a top album, is that it be a geography lesson, a history less and a death or two, kerching! It doesn't matter a jot that the tale has been fictionised, the story contained in the narrative is definitely believable, the whole rings true.

Without a doubt, "Break The Man" is a gritty album, made all the more so by Jo Bywater's dirty blues guitar and the freedom that seems to give Mike Willacy to deliver a laid out drawl of a vocal, one that feels like it was marinated in hard quaffing whiskey.

Titles like "The Betrayed", "Here Is This Hole" and Hangman further give the impression of an album that sits on the dark side of a spaghetti western, but actually the album is more cathartic than anything, without a doubt it's been well penned, dark it might be, dreary, it ain't.

At its heart is a good man brought down, there's a love triangle and ultimately consequences. It's not, though, an album that preaches, rather one that observes and narrates. Some of the phraseology is modern, but that aside this could be a take on a series of collected folk songs. It's an album that Kwalaparla should rightly be proud off as should you be to have it in your collection.

Neil King