Fri 17 Aug 2007
LEA VALLEY DELTA BLUES
Source: NET RHYTHMS webzine

It's a source of infinite regret (and not a little guilt) that this fabulous disc got mislaid within my review pile for the best part of six weeks, following which I had it on the car CD player on almost constant replay and it never got taken back indoors to be written about until now! Honest, it's that addictive - rich and heady yet full of sublime internal definition; beguiling and beautiful yet forthright and punchy; hypnotic and captivating yet never standing still for a moment.

Morning Bride turns out to be a genuinely Anglo-American outfit, with continents and sexes duly (and almost deliberately!) separated: Amity and Alexa both come from the NE of the USA, while Mark, Pete and Jim hail from English seaside towns: an ostensibly strange mix which doesn't give much of a clue to the music they produce. They're based in Hackney, east London - a situation which gives rise to the irony-laden album title, but then again the idiom's not delta blues by any definable stretch, instead more a kind of rootsy punk-Americana vision of moody anthemic balladry with a homegrown English indie sensibility that feels like the band have probably listened to as much early Fairport Convention and Nico as Tarnation, Maria McKee, Cowboy Junkies, To Hell With Burgundy and even Boothill Foot-tappers.

The Morning Bride sound world is pretty distinctive too: deep Southern twang guitars move around and collide with swooning cello, occasional melodica or keyboard touches and a purposeful (but not over-the-top or over-friendly) rhythm section, all as a backdrop to the vocals - the gorgeously sweet belting Amity Joy Dunn or the more velvety Mark James Pearson (think Johnny Cash and Lou Reed cohabiting this guy's larynx!). The actual songs, all Mark's creations (lyric-wise at any rate, with the band collaborating on the musical side of things) are replete with attention-grabbing big-time hooks for the choruses and often slow-build verses that let the deeply lovelorn and often surprisingly bitter words insinuate their way into you.

Any number of the songs here would impress on first play, but standouts are the opening pair (the epic This Place is No Place for Harbouring Angels and the more modest, if creepy Replica), the (at first) deceptively pretty waltzing of Time Delay with its feverish build, and the more twisted Zero One, Zero One. But then, I find new standouts every time I play the album through. What a superb debut!