We’ll Be Fine – Flood County  (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Anyone with half a good ear would place Flood County fair and square in the country oeuvre, but genres are tricky things to get to grips with. Either they are so vague as to be next to useless, or, and yes metallers I am looking at you, they are so precise and convoluted as to only neatly relate to one or two bands. Country music definitely falls into the former category. So this is country, but it is what gets threaded through We’ll Be Fine that we need to talk about, the deft musicality which personalise it, the clever sonic choices which make it stand apart from the rest of the rhinestoned, pick-up truckin’ line dancing lesser mortals.

For whilst it is an album which has a country core and even elements that will find favour with the Music City purists, this is an album, and indeed a band, who don’t follow the rules, at least not to the letter, and therefore don’t fall for the cliches. By and large theirs is a soothing and soulful take on the genre, restrained and delicate and the gently sweeping violins and lilting banjo’s touch on pastoral bluegrass and bucolic folk as much as they do the traditional country music building blocks.

Songs like Most of The Time, The Road and the title track itself provide confident country grooves but they are balanced by the restraint of The Old Famous Smile and the delicate waltz of World Come Undone. It swings when it choses, it struts when it feels like it but most of all it is a deft and well crafted collection of songs, songs which would rather underplay their musical hand in favour of a softening soulfulness and a wonderful delicacy. Less is indeed more. Much more!