The adultery and murder theme of the title track, which opens this debut from The Wildes, establishes straight away the genre that this Victorian outfit relishes – storytelling, rootsy country and folk music with links to the good, and not-so-good, old times. Along the way, you get whiffs of dust-bowl tunes, Johnny Cash-style hard yarns, some Hank Williams-ish yearning and, shifting gear a little, stuff that has an alt-country leaning to it, even as it continues to look over its shoulder. You get all that in a variety of rustic shades here, from the twangy slide guitar of Nothing, the back porch stroll of Sweet Teresa (but which is still big enough to fit in a piano), and the fiddle fest of Bare Bones to the Band-like organ in If I’ve Done You Wrong, a pinch of rural Dylan in Loverman and even a touch of earlier Celtic roots in Sue-Ellen (a bit like an outback Waterboys). For all that, there’s still a distinctly earthy Australian feel to this that separates from its slicker cousins in both Tamworth and Nashville – and that’s no bad thing at all.

BILL HOLDSWORTH

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