Born in Oklahoma, the now Essex-based Bob Collum is a self-proclaimed Anglophile but has still made an album which is pure Americana. The first single From Birmingham, for instance, is a story song inspired by Johnny Cash and he cites rockabilly artists such as Bob Wills to Buddy Holly as other influences.
Despite being recorded and released during the global pandemic, the desperate state of the world is not really evident in any of the tunes. As Collum says of the honky-tonking title track about ill-starred lovers: "we make a dark and pessimistic view of life quite danceable.”.
This stubbornly positive approach has its limits of course and means that any serious themes of broken dreams, anxiety or fear tend to be regarded dismissively.
Songs like Giving Up and Garbage In, Garbage Out are lively and upbeat which is probably why they seem so out of synch with the world we're living in.
