Seems that you only have to cough up out of your kitchen window these days and you're bound to hit some fey British guitar types playing at being a bourbon-chugging Gram Parsons tribute band. Which is no bad thing of course.
When the likes of Dylan and the Byrds freed Country from the rhinestones and cheese vaudeville get-up that Nashville had half-choked it to death with in the late 1960's, the whole musical palette suddenly got a hell of a lot richer. New darker shades of blood-red and black were suddenly available.
Mojave 3 have been ploughing this dusty furrow for a few years now and 'Excuses for Travellers' is as tear-soaked and gorgeous as we ever might have hoped. Each song more delicate and fragile than the one previous, each melody and whisper seeming to bleed into the next until all you're left with is long
languorous sigh of regret. These are tales of love lost and pick-up trucks, escape launched on the back of a tired and emotional Hammond organ.
'Return to Sender' is positively rose between the teeth and high kick to heaven delirious in comparison to most of these elegies to moments mislaid, although 'Anyday Will Be Fine' does hold it's own in the trumpets and hard won smiles department. What with Grand Drive and Calexico already having released the match of anything that the States has had to offer in a long time, Mojave 3 too have also succeeded in outstripping their impeccable influences. A beautiful record. Country. It's the old rock n roll.
