CD: Josh Bray - Whisky & Wool

CD: Josh Bray - Whisky & Wool | reviews, news & interviews

CD: Josh Bray - Whisky & Wool

West Country tunesmith taps into lineage of classic British songwriters

by Adam SweetingSunday, 13 March 2011

Josh Bray's songs are mellow on the surface, but there's turmoil churning underneath

This impressive debut from the Devon-born Bray teems with allusions to a raft of classic British songwriters, not least Nick Drake and John Martyn, though Bray also claims to have had his synapses jangled by everyone from Led Zeppelin and Nirvana to Crosby Stills & Nash and Joni Mitchell. It's his English Pastoral mode which leads off the disc in the shape of opening track "The River Song" (obviously no possible relation to Drake's "Riverman"), with its wistful acoustic guitar, strings and harmonica.

The more you dig into Bray's songs, the more you find that their seeming mellowness conceals 57 varieties of quiet anguish

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