Downbeat gothic country fans can rejoice, Mr Plow are back with the Leicestershire bands first new album since 2014's Not The Beginning, Not The End. They finally feel that their vision is now At One With Nature and they pulled themselves out of various dank establishments to reconvene and record the album at The Plow Recording Facility and The Drum Bunker in Leicestershire. Mr Plow are Lincoln W. Plow, Alex Scoppie, Mark Hayes and Kevin Hewick. The album was mastered by Brett Richardson.
The A-side opens with The Great Diamond Swamp that sounds like it was recorded while they were partially submerged in Leicestershire's nastiest swamp, the fuzzy amps and snare drums make clear just how bad things have gotten, with the evil trafficking of underage kids for the pleasure of evil men, who claim they are going to drain the swamp, while simultaneously filling it with ever more ordure.
A Bigger, Better Jesus is what many evangelicals have been promising us, while going on tik tok to sell merch, to keep their churches going and devaluing the message that Jesus tried to impart on his followers, this is almost as down beat as Blazing Zoos or Steve Earle at his most dissolute.
Every Loser Loses Again that mantra for all your gambling addicted mates, who are always one more loss away from penury, while dreaming of hitting it big, this has a downbeat cabaret feel, full of thoughts of how better times are never coming, not while you still need to place one more bet, soon enough you will not have a roof over your head because you've lost again and again.
Surf Nazis Must Die reworks a Ventures riff to chase those Surf Nazis out of Leicestershire's premier surf hangouts, although to be honest I was more worried as a teenager by the ten pin bowling nazis with swastikas tattooed on their arms, that we saw while bowling when the cricket got rained off at Grace Road.
Find Joy by playing downbeat miserable dark music like this. Let's face it in the current climate finding anything to bring you joy must be saluted. Nineteen Twenty is a stark dark tale of what was called the Spanish Flu, an epidemic that knew no borders, killing indiscriminately across the world, our narrator is threatening the one who did him wrong, that he will kill them if the virus leaves them still breathing, whatever did they do to Mr Plow to illicit that reaction.
The B-Side opens with Mud Mountain a slow building epic for someone having trouble driving round that mountain in his truck, with Kevin Hewicks guitar slowly freaking and peaking in the slow ruminating murderbilly epic this is.
We are Not Your Friends and why on earth did you think we were, the guitars splinter like the way we split from having anything to do with someone whose so horrible as you often are, carefully picked guitar making clear all the reasons they list that you have no friends and no amount of $5000 bribes will change that.
The Happiest Person Alive has just been rescued from the murderous clutches of a particularly violent femme fatale who nearly did for him, an experience he found so exhilarating that he now feels like The Happiest Person Alive, well it takes all sorts.
Village Of The Damned is where you'll end up if you don't buy a copy of At One With Nature, slow implications of everything that might lead to your being exiled to The Village Of The Damned are made clear in the song.
300 Lbs takes us to the hills or Arkansas for one super dark twisted tale of that 300 Lbs white tailed buck and the battle that ensued while they try to get the Neil Young Sleep With Angels guitar sound just right.
The album closes with A Particular Place where you can go and feel even more miserable than the depressed slow country blues of this song, they are waiting for you to join them on that quest to take the elevator to the darkest places of despair.
Find out more at https://mrplowsplace.bandcamp.com/album/at-one-with-nature https://www.facebook.com/mrplowsplace
