Green Diesel
Album: Now Is The Time
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 13
Website: http://www.greendieselfolk.com

If you're going to take an influence or two, make them good ones… Green Diesel are making no bones about their debts to classic folk-rock fuel with big riffs, ballsy basslines and unafraid-to-rock drums. Think Oysterband, Fairport, even Blyth Power, with flashes of punk-funk and the internationalist flush of gypsy jazz or klezmer.

The band's musical cops are laid out for all to hear and the incorporation of an arrangement of the traditional Hod the Lass Til I Run At Her in their own Hop Festival Song is particularly well judged. London Pride/Eliza Lee also reinvigorates an old shanty to good effect and Steve Ashley's Fire & Wine makes for an arresting opening statement. Meanwhile, Roy's Presbyterian Catharsis is not only blessed with the album's finest title, it also captures the band's most inventive playing in its mash up of a trad Presbyterian hornpipe with Amy Cann's song, Catharsis.

But there are weaknesses. The lead vocals of Ellen Care and Matt Dear have yet to truly define the personality in their own voices, although both sound well on the way to doing just that. Perhaps then there'll be greater readiness to employ both in the same song more often.

For now, the vocal shortcomings hold back otherwise accomplished songs such as the tragi-romantic ballad Unjust William (Care) and Dear's carefully constructed fable The General's Lament. Musically too, Dear's electric guitar solos can tend towards the flashy where the songs invariably require something more sympatico.

None of which is to say there isn't much to warrant further investigation on this self-released album because I'm sure there is more to come from Green Diesel.

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk