The Rockingbirds
Album: The Return Of The Rockingbirds
Label: Loose Music
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.loosemusic.com

It's more than 20 years since I saw The Rockingbirds tear it up in front of a crowd of as-yet-unchristened proto-Britpoppers who would soon be more used to the snot and snort of Oasis and The Verve than the rich textures of the Fabulous Burrito Brothers' acid country shots. But those 'birds were razor sharp that night and impressively set about demolishing a stack of Red Stripe as tall as a man afterwards.

Ah, heady days. It was 1992 and The Rockingbirds snaffled an unlikely slot on the little cred roster (Manic Street Preachers, St Etienne, Flowered Up) at Heavenly Records as they were briefly lauded as darlings of the music press around the time of their self-titled debut, archly produced by the Langer and Winstanley hit factory. A follow up, the aptly titled Whatever Happened to the Rockingbirds (with the godlike Edwyn Collins at the controls) emerged on Cooking Vinyl in 1995 shortly before the band split and that was the last we heard of them… until now!

Alan Tyler's voice has seasoned with age, its bottom end warmly inhabiting the slice of life lyricism of songs like The Lonely and the Drunk, You Can't Win the Heart That You Broke, Now I Do and the stirring Til Something Better Comes Along, which Gideon Coe has lately been sharing with us on 6Music. The band's roots lay in C86 indie hangovers like the Weather Prophets and Milk, but their passionate embrace of country rock was highly infectious and, just as Little Feat et al had done 20+ years earlier, opened English ears to the beautiful grit of what has become known as Americana.

Patrick Arbuthnot still plucks a mean pedal steel, Country Humming is a real beauty, as does Andy Hackett on the mandolin and Sean Read's organ is more to the fore than I remember. This remains a drop of the very finest good stuff; well worth the wait.

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk