Production on both releases was by Marcus Mackay, who also produced Frightened Rabbit’s debut album, Sing The Greys; and taken in total, the 13 songs make a convincing case for the band’s inclusion in those Next Big Thing articles we’ll be reading over Hogmanay. A debut album proper is in the offing, due for release some time next year.
A trio consisting of Belfast-born, Chicago-raised singer Jill O’Sullivan, Londoner Nick Packer and Scot Gregor Donaldson, the band came together in the shadow of Glasgow School of Art, as so many have before. Their sound, though, is a fair distance from the art rock stomp of Franz Ferdinand, to date the most successful of the school’s musical alumni. Instead, the template is the introspective Americana of musicians like Bonnie Prince Billy or Gillian Welch, fused with elements of Scotland’s own indie-folk movement and, here and there, rockabilly freak-outs inspired by the earliest chapters in the Johnny Cash songbook.
In the vocal interplay between O’Sullivan and her bandmates, however, there are as many echoes of Nancy Sinatra’s world-weary duets with the irascible and eccentric Lee Hazlewood as there are Cash’s later collaborations with wife, June Carter. Though she often shares the vocals with her bandmates, it’s O’Sullivan’s voice that holds the ear, particularly on the title track and Jealous Of Your Heart. Powerful in the lower register, crystalline in the upper – and given an authentic American twang in both by her Stateside childhood – its ability to switch between purity and bluesy inflection makes it the most potent force in the musical mix. Looking like a cross between Nico and Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval helps her hold the eye in the live shows too.
Nothing on Into The Wild quite matches the spectral weirdness of Devil Song, opening track on the first EP, but You’ve Got It All and A Horse’s Grin come pretty close. That said, there isn’t a dud here: this workshop is producing quality goods.
Sparrow And The Workshop
Into The Wild
(Distiller Records)
