I’m a Stranger Here

If Nirvana had been a rockabilly band from rural Vermont, they would have sounded something like The Devil Makes Three. Guitarist and singer Pete Bernhard, bassist Lucia Turino and guitarist Cooper McBean have carved out a ragged niche in the Americana category, attracting concert crowds throughout the US and Europe. I’m a Stranger Here, the band's fourth album and New West Records debut, was produced by Buddy Miller and recorded at Black Keys singer Dan Auerbach's Easy Eye Sound in Nashville. A skiffle-beat rhythm, augmented by Bernhard's heavy-on-the-reverb vocals, kicks off the proceedings with ‘Stranger’. A snappy, swinging thrash at the dark melodic heart of ‘Dead Body Moving’ delivers on the group's proclaimed affinity for punk while also serving as a good old-fashioned toe-tapping hoedown tune. A quick shift of gears infuses ‘Forty Days’, a lamentation on the disruptive power of stormy weather, with a syncopated New Orleans groove, expertly abetted by members of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Whatever you want to call it – grungy rockabilly, rootsy punk, hardcore Americana – this multi-hued music makes the notion that a square dance is just a better organised mosh-pit seem like not such a far-fetched idea.