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Thirteen songs of bad luck and good faith, shot through with southern alt. country-rock and a few jazz moves from those fine folk at Homest Jons.

Tuckassee Take by Lone Official

The debut album from Lone Official is shot through with more than a flavour of Silver Jews, Lambchop and a sprinkle of Granddaddy - and it's just hit the shelves.

After the century turned, Matt Button left Louisville, Kentucky, where they make post-rock and baseball bats, and memorialise the birthplace of Muhammad Ali, and headed south to Nashville, in search of musical inspiration. He’d been working on a few songs with his only friend there at the time, Josh Garcia. Within weeks he was pulling beer at the infamous Springwater Club: one night Matt went to the microphone with his guitar, solo; soon after, he was joined by drummer Ben Martin (who’d played with Lambchop and Justin Earle), then others. This was the start of Lone Official.

The band was soon recording and playing dates. Alongside Matt and Ben were Sam El Amri (on guitar), Brian Nicholls (behind the lap steel), Ryan Norris (on keyboards), and Eric Williams (bass). Local luminaries Lambchop were so impressed they named a song after them, on the Aw C’mon album. Leader Kurt Wagner remembers: "The way they put intricate melodies together was very interesting in a ‘post-rock’ kind of way. Lambchop was strongly affected by this and I specifically set out to emulate those qualities - although what came out sounded nothing like the Lone Official at all except perhaps in spirit.’

After the hook-up with Honest Jon’s, and it came time to record the tales of Tuckassee Take, it was only natural for the group to knock on the door of Lambchop member and producer, Mark Nevers. Nevers had worked with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy himself: Will Oldham, the Silver Jews, and Bobby Bare. The Tuckassee sessions ran alongside his recording of Candi Staton (her first-class album: His Hands) for the same London label. For the album, Lone Official were joined by their friends - and stalwarts of Nevers’ Beech House set-up - Paul Niehaus, Pete Finney, William Tyler, Roy Agee and Tony Crow.

Amelia Earhart

The opener Pony Ride invokes childhood in its longing for companionship. Fight Song runs from a languid, reflective waltz, into a Thursday night scuffle, and out again. Stall of The Steed and Monarchos are liveried in the imagery of horseracing - a passion of Button’s - which rides metaphor throughout many of these songs: the hopes, losses, upsets, gambles, the odds, stewards’ inquiries, comebacks, the photo finish. Monarchos is the horse that won the 2001 Kentucky Derby. ‘Once in a while the odds work out,’ recalls Button, ‘to where no one is betting on the horse that you know will win. That’s what happened with Monarchos. Six months earlier he won the Florida Derby and I just had a feeling he would win in Louisville. I put every dime I could spare on him.’

Amelia Earhart invokes the pilot and her mysterious disappearance in its passionate but elliptical statement of disaffection and doubt: ‘You said a set-back was just a set-up for a come-back.’ The gambler in Le Coq Sportif believes thing will work out because he has nothing else to believe in. The beautiful and dark Pretty Waters sets out from some desolate banjo-picking into a hymn about a friend’s drug habit: ‘I’ve seen you give your blood for a night of fun.’

"...loose vocal style and varied lyrics. Chiming guitars, imaginative lead frolickings, tight & varied rhythms and warming textures carve out southern country soundcapes, resulting in a sound not too dissimilar to that of Nashville counterparts Silver Jews, Pavement and perhaps even Death Cab For Cutie to some extent." - Colin Burrill, writing on www.contactmusic.com

In these thirteen songs of bad luck and good faith, a geography of the American South - Lake Cumberland, horse tracks, rehab centres, dive bars - is swept through by a quickshift southern rock with a country heart and jazz moves, one minute lyrical and spare, the next full on; by the high-plains whistle of lap steel and a voice choked and cracked and lonesome, filled with bitter-sweet nostalgia and hopeful resignation.

For further information check out Lone Official at: www.blacklabelempire.com/loneofficial and on: www.myspace.com/loneofficial

Tuckassee Take is out now on the Honest Jons label.

Lone Official images: Nashville Tennessee 2005 Photographer Alan Messer 2006. PSP Ltd is not responsible for the content of external websites.

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