Mon 7 May 2007
LEA VALLEY DELTA BLUES
Source: AMERICANA UK

Rootsy rock pop tunes with big fat hooks that on any reasonable planet would be all over your radio.

Morning Bride are a UK based (Hackney) five piece, consisting of two females from the US and three males from the UK. This record was recorded with engineer Ed Deegan who previously worked on the White Stripes ‘Elephant’ and with their pal Holly Golightly. Unsurprisingly, with that pedigree, the album was made with all analogue kit, ignoring all that new fangled digital nonsense.

However that doesn’t mean things are particularly garagey, with crunching dirty riffs and wailing feedback, but it does mean a spontaneous and pleasantly uncluttered feel. What we have here is a rootsy variation on the likes of the Beautiful South, intelligent lyrics laced with both humour and bitterness, some big choruses with major pop hooks, and alternating male and female lead vocals (the majority are female).

Opener ‘This Place Is No Place For Harbouring Angels’ sets out the stall, after a slow start and Amity Joy Dunn’s emotive vocal, a great hooky chorus that sticks in your head like Abba, but in a good way.

‘Replica’ starts with cello and a plucked guitar that sounds vaguely like an update of ‘Groovy Kind Of Love’ or ‘Ruby Tuesday’, this time it’s the male lead vocal of Mark James Pearson (three names seem to be the thing in this band!), before Amity gets to belt out the chorus ‘Bang bang, lay down and play dead!’ calling to mind early Lone Justice; as elsewhere on the record though, the influences don’t dominate - Morning Bride have very much their own identity.

Its not every time that the hooks dig in, but that doesn’t mean the less hooky songs are any less effective. ‘Zero One, Zero One’ is a bitter, angry song telling the story of broken love and regret being contemplated on January 1st: ‘I tore up my wedding dress with your old razor blades’ sings Amity over Alexa Rose Richardson’s affecting cello.

The line ‘it’s the first of January but my resolutions gone’ ushers in a rare, and nicely unhinged, guitar solo. This is a high-quality, very enjoyable collection of roots oriented hooky pop, if some of these songs found their way onto the right ipods Morning Bride could even have a hit or two on their hands!

Eight out of Ten

Reviewed by Patrick Wilkins