Blueflint - Maudy Tree

(Jorock)

If ever there was a band best suited to be heard in the ale-imbued confines of a wee folk club rather than in the car or at home, it’s Scottish quartet Blueflint. For every song on Maudy Tree that seems to begin promisingly with a subtle theme-tune allusion to either Deadwood or Out of Town, it all winds up down the same cul de sac, with a twee lyric here or a forgettably bland banjo break there.

Acolytes have dubbed the Blueflint bluegrass sound as haunting, but on hearing these déjà vu melodies and clichéd narratives about rolling seas, log fires, drowning sorrows in booze and tilling the soil, the spirit just deadens.