The Redlands Palomino Company - Take Me Home (Laughing Outlaw)
3/5
By: Christiana Spens
First, a confession. I'm not usually a big fan of country music - at least, not knowingly. So when I glanced over the press release for 'Take Me Home' and saw the band described as "alt-country heroes", the suspense wasn't exactly killing me. Still, I slotted the record into the player (or at least the CD into the disc drive) and let it play me to some persuasion.
As I was making some coffee and toasting a bagel I realised country music wasn't so unfamiliar after all, and really it wasn't so bad either. Although a British band, The Redlands Palomino Company are heavily inspired by Americana, particularly that rooted in Nashville, Tennessee, the home of country music. And guess where I was at school last year? - Memphis, just a drive away from Nashville. Although Memphis is traditionally more a blues town, nevertheless guitars strummed the atmosphere into a heartbroken little melody and in the year I was there I guess some country music must have drifted my way at least some of the time, when the blues didn't get me instead. So it's not so unfamiliar at all, these songs all melancholy and sweetness at once.
Although I haven't heard this band before, I have to admit that the stories they tell don't seem so estranged from experience either. There were times where I just wanted someone to Take Me Home. Actually all the songs seem in some way familiar - 'Wasted on You', 'Burning it Down', 'Empty Feeling', and especially 'Friend in the Dark'... I'm beginning to think that few people ever admit to liking country music - because it plays the tunes that make you remember those times of the night when you're driving back from something with that dazed feeling that a lot happened real quick and you just 'Don't Know Why.'
And in that ability lies the power of the music. It soundtracks the universal stories and journeys that a lot of people experience in similar ways, whether in Tennessee or Tottenham Court Road, and when you least expect it you hear some country song and remember all over again the songs you felt too, and so you feel them once again.
I don't think I'll ever say I'm a huge fan of the whole genre, but I'm being swayed the way of the Redlands Palomino Company - maybe because I'm easily swayed - or once was - but really it's more than that. It's because they're a solid band, with two voices that really compliment one another - the husband and wife Hannah and Alex Elton-Wall. There's a sincerity and honesty to their lyrics and tone, and a sense of compassion, of pan-Atlantic understanding and just a bit of a Southern drawl - to compliment that underlying British rock 'n' roll. They rhyme - and as with listening to these songs, that seemed a good idea at the time.
Artists in this article: The Redlands Palomino Company
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