Bones of Contention

From the streets of Glasgow, this trio – guitarist and singer John Langan, Alastair Caplin on fiddle, and double bassist Dave Tunstall – deliver a mad rush of pan-European styles: from Spanish to Balkan, Irish to Scottish, taking in Gypsy jazz en route, all with a keen ear for the anthemic chorus. The opening ‘Aquaplane’ is a full-on, Balkan-influenced dance tune, with Caplin relishing distinctive new ways of torturing his strings, while Langan's words tell of a wild, apocalyptic ride out of Glasgow in a storm. It's followed by ‘Winter Song’, the album's lead ballad, a love-in-a-cold-climate paean to the warmth of summer in the depths of winter, featuring some highly inventive instrumental passages.

Though the world is not short of groups combining Balkan tunes, the John Langan Band possess an originality and a dramatic edge that pushes into new and highly energetic territory. It's all acoustic, but they push that too, with accordion and fiddle rubbing thickly and dissonantly together on the sinister, Werner Herzog-inspired insanity of ‘Midgets on Acid’. This is one of three instrumental sets, the last of which, ‘D-Mented Set’, ends with an early-Velvet-Undergound-meets-demon-fiddling freakout from Caplin that is sure to exorcise any bad spirits from your house.