The Beards are billed as ‘The original spaghetti rock blues band from Italy’ with a sound that makes for ‘an essential listen for fans of the post-country but still rural genre’ . I for one can’t think of any spaghetti rock blues bands, especially not from Italy, and as far as I can tell, they’re the sole exponents of the post-country but still rural genre. It’s good to stand out from the crowd, and these guys haven’t so much found their niche an created it. Kudos.
For their third album, ‘Muskito’, they’re joined by Julien Poulson with a view to cooking up ‘a weird soundtrack inspired by the music of Spaghetti Western Movies’. They’ve certainly succeeded. ‘Muskito’ is every bit as far-out as you’d expect given the description, a wiki-wiki wild wild western hybrid mashup of cinematic scale and tinged in sepiatone and psychedelics (no, not psychedelia. I mean it’s positively trippy).
It begins at the end – sort of – with a backwards guitar before crunching percussion and whirling organ spiral in simultaneously with Massimiliano Magro’s vocal, coming on like a cross between Nick Cave and James Ray with a rich, ragged baritone.
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The rough, brawling ‘Drunky Sailor’ has more than a touch of Tom Waits about it, while ‘Fugitive Dance’ sounds like a completely different band, flexing the rock muscles of ‘Born to Run’ eras Springsteen. But ultimately, chucking comparisons and touchstones at ‘Muskito’ is a futile exercise: this doesn’t sound like anything else and it’s clear that The Beards are truly unique. Which other band would conceive of shoehorning ‘Humpty Dumpty’ into a spacious Western number performed in the style of The Birthday Party?
‘Muskito’ is as warped as it is ambitious, but thankfully, they pull it off because it’s also brilliantly executed.
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