Everything’s Fine

If Whiskeytown are weak tea, then Boston’s Willard Grant Conspiracy are a whiskey chaser. It helps that singer Robert Fisher possesses the browbeaten gravitas of a Stuart Staples or even a Bob Dylan, spinning nursery rhyme melodies over road-worn fibres: blues harp, dobro, guitar, saloon piano and a drum sound EQ’d at just the right spot between roadhouse and FM radio.

At their most evocative (‘Notes From The Waiting Room, ‘Kite Flying’) the Conspiracy cut the waltz-time country elements from The Triffids’ outback balladry and patch them into No Depression territory, with Fisher’s baritone seemingly shadowed by memories of the late great David McComb.

Ultimately Everything’s Fine comes off as a strong brew of gin-soaked guilt (‘Wicked’, ‘Drunkard’s Prayer’) mountainy-man morbidity (‘Ballad Of John Parker’, Southend Of A Northbound Train’) and good ol’ dust bowl agoraphobia. I like it.