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Review: 'MY DARLING CLEMENTINE'
'The Reconciliation?'   

-  Label: 'Continental Song City (CD)/ Plane Groovy (Vinyl LP'
-  Genre: 'Alt/Country' -  Release Date: 'September 2013'-  Catalogue No: 'CSCCD 1099/ PLG 019'

Our Rating:
Enthusiastically championed by W&H on release, MY DARLING CLEMENTINE’S 2011 debut LP, ‘How Do You Plead?’ has since been highly acclaimed in the UK, Europe and the USA, with Country Music People even moved to dub it “the best British country record ever!”

High praise indeed, but well-deserved too, for beyond the hubris, ‘How Do You Plead?’ remains the most beautifully-realised album of authentic, Nashville-style duets ever to have been fashioned by British-based country-rock practitioners.

Of course, while they are indeed UK-based, MDC’s husband and wife team, Michael Weston King and Lou Dalgleish have roots’ n’ country flowing through their veins. Before they finally got around to unleashing ‘How Do You Plead?’, Dalgleish had worked with the likes of Elvis Costello and Brian Kennedy and released four solo LPs, while MWK had released a string of pioneering roots-rock albums with The Good Sons before establishing himself as one of Europe’s most prolific and respected solo troubadours. Actually, should you wish to chart his progress further, simply do an alphabetical search through this site’s archive.

Nonetheless, ‘How Do You Plead?’ sounded like a career-definer on release. Helmed by Nick Lowe producer Neil Brockbank and featuring the cream of UK pub rock’s finest players (including Geraint Watkins, Bobby Irwin and Martin Belmont), it took the best of late ‘60s/ early ‘70s Nashville as its starting point and created something highly potent of its own.

It’s fair to say, then, that a certain weight of expectation surrounds the release of the second MDC opus, ‘The Reconciliation?’ but even though the supporting cast have shifted slightly as this time out (the LP was recorded at Sheffield’s Yellow Arch studio with Richard Hawley’s band seamlessly making it swing and the same ensemble’s bassist Colin Elliot co-producing with MWK) but you’d hardly notice the join as ‘The Reconciliation?’ ranks as a virtually flawless second installment from the MDC team.

This is country-roots music, of course, so the question mark in the title ‘The Reconciliation?’ is ominously loaded. As was the case with ‘How Do You Plead?’, harmonious domesticity is very low on the totem pole, and certainly King and Dalgleish indulge in their fair share of dysfunctional, George’ n’ Tammy- esque set pieces (‘No Heart In This Heartache’; the Kinky Friedman-assisted divorce epic ‘Unhappily Ever After’) and being tempted to seek solace elsewhere (the playful ‘Leave The Good Book On The Shelf’ and Honky-Tonkin’ ‘Let’s Be Unhappy’), while the title of the gorgeously sparse, Memphis-style soul of ‘Our Race Is Run’ tells its own sorrowful story.

Crucially, however, there’s a lot more to ‘The Reconciliation?’ than merely Nashville-styled retro-fitting. Certainly, a song such as ‘No Matter What Tammy Says (I Won’t Stand By You)’ may be beautifully – and authentically – realised, but its pin-sharp depiction of domestic abuse (“I’m seeing black and blue, ‘cos he keeps seeing red”) is entirely contemporary. Ditto ‘I No Longer Take Pride’s moving depiction of a widower unable to come to terms with his loneliness and ‘Ashes, Flowers & Dust’: an elegy to the loss of a parent that’s as haunting and graceful as they come.

As with its predecessor, ‘The Reconciliation?’ is also beautifully-packaged: the CD coming in a gatefold sleeve with a retro-vinyl disc and a detailed booklet with full lyrics, while a limited, heavyweight vinyl edition is also available through the Plane Groovy imprint. Needless to say, either (or better, both) are to be treasured.



Continental Song City online

Plane Groovy Records online

My Darling Clementine online
  author: Tim Peacock

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MY DARLING CLEMENTINE - The Reconciliation?