ROCK SALT AND NAILS - More And More (Iona IRCD 030)
Rock Salt and Nails are a young Shetland band who play something loosely described as 'Shetland Sheboogie'.
Songs with cutting contemporary lyrics are set against a back-drop of driving guitar and twin fiddles.
Guitarist Paul Johnstone is a fine vocalist and an intelligent lyricist.
His song 'Someday' deals with psychiatric patients. Songs of this nature often tend to be either over-sentimental or very dark, but this is positively uplifting.
The song cuts along with a bright optimistic tune, which somehow makes the lyrics more hard hitting.
The tune set 'Jack Broke Down The Prison Door' is fast and infectious while remaining intricate and superfluously melodic.
Johnstone's song 'Life' is a classic, charting one man's retreat into emotional solitude from his childhood years to adult life.
The slow fiddle in 'Lucy Bain' is beautiful.
The band will probably hate me for saying this - they remind me in places of Fairport Convention, but as Paul Johnstone points out: 'Basically Rock Salt and Nails are just Rock Salt and Nails, we don't follow the rules.'
Everything is right about this album - the pace, the material. It's only 44 minutes long (short by today's CD standards) but you won't feel cheated.
Rock Salt and Nails have taken Folk Rock by the scruff of its neck and dragged it shouting and screaming into the nineties - a wonderful band who deserve giant success.
(Andy Hemsley)