An article by Tom Morton
YOU know a band is going to be troublesome when you have to stop the car, just in case you miss the rest of the mysteriously wonderful track crackling out of a bad radio. And you must, absolutely must find out who the hell is responsible for this tough, soaring alt-country. Clever lyrics, too. Bastards. American, probably. Whiskeytown, maybe, before Ryan Adams stopped being Gram Parsons and started being Bruce Springsteen.
Never mind that articulated lorry howling its air horns. Pull in and listen. This, really, is good. Startlingly good. The Lush Rollers, eh? Scottish? From Inverness, Queen of the Highland Fleshpots? I don't believe it, as Mr Meldrew might say, if he wasn't dead.
So the trouble starts: you dig up the website when you get a chance, find out about the The Flying Bridie Brothers, the Macaskill boys and their Gaelic antecedents, order the EP and the album, and think to yourself: they don't even know how good they are. This bunch are in it for the music, and that's it. Well, the music and the crack, as in Gaelic craic, not Lower East Side rocks, and a few pints along the way. The scenery. But basically it's the music.
More trouble. You have to go to Inverness, which is always, always trouble, to catch them playing in the crammed black hole of humanity called the Market Bar, and instantly you can tell that with these guys and music it's a love affair, a big, lifelong passion thing. And serious.You can name the names: Hank Williams, Gram and Emmylou, George No Show Jones, Neil Young but not, definitely not Graham Nash, except maybe for harmonies (and good grief, they've got those harmonies sorted out. It makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on end, if there is any). The Clarks, a touch of Gene but loads of the great and ignored Guy. The Van Zandts, Townes, loads of Townes but a maybe a smidgin of Miami Steve too. Steve Earle? Too obvious. Tom Russell? Too wordy. John Prine? Yes, he's there, him and, you're right, Lefty Frizell, the Thinking Man's Hank Williams.
So you go to the trouble of discovering this band, and you tell other people about them, and suddenly you notice that you're not alone, that a lot of other people like them too. Influential people. They go to some record company convention shindig in Amsterdam, and take the place by storm. They get offered tours in the heartland of the homeland they yearn for, America, and you wonder what that'll be like, Gaels on the trail of the diaspora. You wonder about the Gaels who took their Celtic music to America, how it was transfomed into country and bluegrass and then brought back, to Inverness, where the circle was completed. And you think: William Burroughs fans, if the name's anything to go by. What is going on in Inverness?
Finally, you can see The Lush Rollers going all the way. Strength in depth, songwriting anchored in solid experience. Real songs about real people. Great singing, exqusite playing. A soulful knowledge of where the music's roots lie. Heart and mind. Trouble is, you ponder, they may be too good for the masses. But somehow you know that's not true. And that anyway, the Rollers won't care. They are, after all Lush, not Bay City.