Two decades ago the hippest indie musicians were having fun upturning stones and thrift stores to find, learn from and churn out the dysfunctional old weird Americana of Appalachian murder ballads and itinerant delta blues stomps. In more recent years a new breed of indie pickers have taken to mining the more functional seam of middle-aged straight Americana shilled by the more commercial beat combos of the 1960s. It’s in this spirit that The Duke and the King delve lovingly into that place where the picked and raspy textures of folk ‘n’ country blended with the more syncopated rhythms and soulful melodies of R&B.
Their second album is, in its own not hugely ground-breaking way, a textured, melodic triumph of walking bass lines, acoustic pickery, upstroke guitar licks, electric pianos and organs, rolling drum lines and rich well-tuned backing vocals. The touchstones are clearly the likes of The Band and Buffalo Springfield and Jimi Hendrix – in other words, the ‘60s rock ‘n’ roll and pop that eschewed genre purism but still wore its influences on its sleeve. Occasionally, like the aforementioned bands, the music and subject matter veer into fuzz-box assisted, anti-war psychedelia (like on the nostalgia-tinted ‘Shaky’ – “Baghdad she’s a mean old town/ I get the feeling she don’t want me round”). They do all this hippy-pleasing very well, but they don’t, of course, do it first (because that would require a time machine).
Key Track: ‘Shaky’