Kitsch cat talkin’ from over yonder in Norway the Ramblers lay down ice-cool boogies that shuffle it all and more. As irresistible as one more round to either a drunkard or gambler, they have their own sprightly steps to show the rockin’ rabble, adding some squelchy belches of sax like Morphine on an exploratory mission to excavate the voodoo jungle, and a sense of widescreen melodies that’ll get the whole goddamned Blue Mountain folks scratching their collective tooth in wonder and awe.

Jitterbugging jivin’ wailers such as ’60 Women’ and ‘Marshall Hopkins’ are fleeting skirt-raising eye-popping rug-cutters that rumble like a logging disaster on the other side of the valley; the outstanding ‘Crazy Little Lightning Bolt’ and ‘Deep In The Mountain’ interject a little bluegrass, spongy as Swiss cheese and sure to raise spirits, glasses, and smiles wherever the hell you may be sweating out life in the psychological saunas between Saturday night and Sunday morning. The N’Orleans swamp steam of ‘She’s Gonna be my Woman for Life’ sure soothes, as does the exquisite country chain-gang blues of ‘I Thought I’d Told You So’.

A rarified and unassuming, yet quite utterly gobsmackingly beguiling (almost in the manner of Hugh Laurie’s Prince George character in ‘Blackadder the Third’) batch of woodcutters hymns and anthems for finely costumed benign brutes, by digging back into the weird old church of country music the Ramblers sidestep immaculately the homogenized Rockabilly in surplus at the minute, and unleash a subtle little sideswipe at trend-trailers. Their laid-back, good time, chilled out cornucopia of brilliantined bowling-alley boogie may strike some as dated and too redolent of a nowheresville like out of ‘Northern Exposure’ but this is simply engagingly endearing, effervescent and an exquisite earful of kooky jive. And, as something I can imagine Kate Piersson both dancing and knitting to I’m even happier!

Smalltown, yuss, but definitely not small-minded.

Leave them to be over-caffeinated. Grab a drink and a good gal and get on down any which way but NOW!
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- Stu Gibson