The Big Hunt – The Lonesome Southern Comfort Company

I guess I find it hard getting my head around the idea of a band such as The Lonesome Southern Comfort Company coming from a place like Switzerland. I know that the world is a small place these days and music produced in one part of the world can quickly seep in to the conscience of musicians geographically and culturally separated from it’s origin. If, like me you have the land of Rolex and chocolate pegged as a bastion of progressive rock and metal, then The Lonesome Southern Comfort Company are going to throw up a few surprises.

The Big Hunt offers some lovely bluesy americana with a dreamlike edge, meandering lines and soft harmonies. If songs such as Retreat show that they can do the Paisley Underground style rock out when they chose to, it is the shuffling beats and subdued delivery of 64 Warwick Road or the languid and lazy vibes of Wall Street’s Foreign Legion that provide the identifiable flavour of the album for my money. The swan song of the collection Rent Song has a hypnotic and relentless guitar line that even have the hint of Wilco about them, something to which many bands aspire but few come close, so you have to admire them for that.

If you like your Americana laid back but unique in it’s structures and delivery, then this is an album for you, proving that you can take the heart and soul of the American sound without turning the experience into a Bruce Springsteen extravaganza.