These days, we're inundated with bands tapping into overused phrases like 'Americana' and 'Alt.Country.' Sure, I grant you a whole host of bands from The Handsome Family though Jeff Tweedy's ever-shifting Wilco to more obscure troubadours like Neal Casal have played an important part in shaping this writer's playlists over the past five years or so, but nowadays it seems any band from Obscureville, Midwest who've nicked their Uncle Billie Ray's dobro are being lumped in by an ever-lazy press only too happy to utilise handy pigeonholes.
But those origins are so important. Credibility-wise, what could be better for the aspiring Alt.Country artist than to be raised in some one-horse town out in the midwest's open spaces? Sorted. You're halfway there already.
If you're from the North west of England and have an affinity with such music, it ain't so easy. Which is surely why a period in the early 1990s is always conveniently glossed over in the history books. Because, around the time Uncle Tupelo were about to make their classic third album with Peter Buck and American Music Club were about to make the uneasy transition to major labeldom, there was a small, but important clique of English bands who were busily making exciting roots-informed rock music drawing on the legacies of such as Gram Parsons and Gene Clark as well as Dylan and Hank Williams.
You rarely heard about them, of course. Yes, the biz did briefly latch onto London-based troupe The Rockingbirds, who had a degree of patronage by dint of signing to the (then) Manics' label Heavenly, but you didn't read about Gary Hall & The Stormkeepers, Mirrors Over Kiev and Red Moon Joe: a core of bands from England's industrial North-West who - for a while - were signed to Devon-based folk label Run River Records and between them made a rarely-noted Anglophile contribution to the pioneering early days of what we now term 'Americana'. It's long-deleted, but Mirrors Over Kiev made an album called "Northern Songs" which deserves to be hailed as a lost classic. See it in a bargain bin and you'll be overjoyed, believe me. Pay your 50p and marvel.
More importantly, though, both Mirrors and The Stormkeepers bequeathed members to THE GOOD SONS, who - fantastically - were even better. Still way ahead of their time, The Good Sons were led by singer/ songwriter Michael Weston King, bassist Sean McFetridge (both Stormkeepers) and also included drummer Ben Jackson and secret weapon lead guitarist Phil Abram from Mirrors Over Kiev. They made four superb albums over an eventful seven year period which found the band battling everything from record company collapse to near-fatal car crashes and ultimately left us with a tremendous back catalogue whis has been plundered with some taste by German label Phantasmagoria for the purposes of this extensive 2CD retrospective set "Cosmic Fireworks."
It's a little simplistic to refer to The Good Sons as simply an Anglophile adjunct to the Alt.Country explosion, though. First and foremost, it's Michael Weston King's quality songwriting that sets them apart, and the band's subtle and inventive playing is truly distinctive throughout. Another thing that's immediately apparent is that Phil Abram (who now teaches English in Italy) is one of rock's great unacknowledged guitariasts, but more of that in a little while.
In terms of mood, the four Good Sons albums are quite distinct entities. "Singing The Glory Down" was the debut from 1995, and broadly it's the one that adheres most to the Alt.Country tag. "Cosmic Fireworks" pillages several of the crucial tracks such as "God's Other Son", the sardonic weekend cowboy commentary "Riding The Range" (a duet with the legendary Townes Van Zandt in rather shaky form) and the yearning, anthemic "Leaving Time". Crucially, though, The Good Sons proved themselves equally adept when they tackled soul cover "You Are Everything", which features a commanding vocal from Weston King and a quicksilver guitar solo from Abram that's both vicious and elegant all at once.
Second album "The King's Highway" from 1996 is the one many of the band's hardcore fans rate the highest. Sonically, this is the gentlest of the band's albums, but the predominantly acoustic frameworks strip things back to present The Good Sons as unadorned and emotional as possible. This record also features several of Weston King's most heartbreaking songs. Despite its' jaunty shuffle beat, "The Grass Has Grown Over" is almost unbearably sad, whilst "Broken" and "The Girl That Got Away" found King broaching difficult subjects (domestic violence and senility, respectively) with a sensitivity few contemporary writers could achieve. Ironically, the album's finest moment is actually a cover: but tackled by just Abram and Weston King in naked, bleeding acoustic form, Nick Cave's "Straight To You" sounds definitive to these ears.
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By 1997, the band looked like they might just crack their spiritual homeland of America and thus made the rock album they'd been threatening. "Wines, Lines & Valentines" (repackaged as "Angels In The End" in the US) appeared to have everything. Full of amped up swagger, it features anthemic highlights such as "Angels In The End" (still a MWK solo fave), the boozily exciting "Mathilda" and "The Sun Won't Shine Today" where Weston King again tackled a taboo issue: this time the Dunblane school massacre. Typically, it exuded hurt, longing and a rare sensitivity and also provoked some incredible six-string violence from Phil Abram. The big rock excitement of this album was tailor-made for Abram and his playing is exemplary. This most unassuming of characters has the economy of Wilko Johnson, the expression of James Burton and the flash of The Only Ones' John Perry. Teaching's gain is rock's loss these days, it seems.
Naturally, just as it looked like The Good Sons were gaining ground it all went pear-shaped. Their US label went down the pan, Abram announced he was leaving the band to live in Italy and then the group were nearly decimated in a head-on collison while on tour. Licking their wounds, they did make it back into the studio for one last hurrah and the ironically titled "Happiness," which dominates the second CD.
Arguably their best album of all, "Happiness" (2001)again stretched the band's sonic shapes. Although it's hardly The Libertines, the album's songs are coloured by Weston King's then on-going divorce, and many of these songs are painfully personal. They're also brilliant, taking in the expansive, Bo Diddley beat-based "Both Sides Of The Faith",the cathartic "Rush Of Happiness" and the seething anger of "Reason To Live". Although this album marks the first appearance of now-regular King collaborator Alan Cook on pedal steel, it's possibly the band's least country-oriented record and tantalisingly leaves you feeling The Good Sons had magic aplenty still to come: a fact compounded by the riffsmart cut' n' thrust of the previously unrelased "Sad Sad Truth" which dates from the demos for what might have been a fifth album.
Of course, while only King is still competitively involved with music these days, The Good Sons' story may not have been entirely concluded and a door has been left ajar for possible future collaboration. That's for the Gods to decide, but with "Cosmic Fireworks", we have a lavishly-packaged and utterly unmissable legacy in compendium form from the band who this writer would rate as England's very own Uncle Tupelo. High praise? Maybe, but wholly warranted by "Cosmic Fireworks" truly thrilling display.
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