The Quiet American
Album: Wild Bill Jones
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 15
Website: http://quietamericanmusic.com/

The Quiet American is actually a misnomer, given that there are in fact two of them in the band, husband and wife duo, Aaron and Nicole Keim, who between them play a decent range of instruments, including washboard.

The appearance of washboard, together with banjo, fiddle and ukulele should give a massive clue as to where "Wild Bill Jones" is pitched and if you went for old time mountain music and pre-war American folk music you'll be pretty much on the button.

The dominating feature of "Wild Bill Jones" is the stark simplicity of the songs and tunes, it's a song where the instrumentation is sharp and clean, you can practically every single note on the album and know the place of them all.

Songwise the album includes murder and gallow ballads, "Posey's Song" and "Gallow Pole" being two examples, with the poignancy, particularly in the former, really being brought out by the sparseness. It's also one of the songs that features just one voice, Nicole's, with none of the tight harmonies that pepper the album.

Aaron takes the vocal lead on the title track, another murder song, but it's also a track that really highlights the quality of the harmonies. If I'm giving the impression of an album that enjoys wallowing in its own sorrow, far from it, there are also some damned fine dance tunes, "John Brown's Dream" being a good example, whilst other danceable tracks also come with lyrics.

The Quiet American have delivered a sharp, tight album that's as fine an example of porch country as you're going to find. "Wild Bill Jones" is full of people, places, love and death, great songs and tunes and you really can't ask more of an album than that.

And yes the sleeve is meant to look like that

Neil King