Whether it’s listening to the records tirelessly, or watching the band play live in darkened bandrooms or in muddy paddocks at music festivals, you can close your eyes and be anywhere else, such is the open and evocative nature of the music.This is a band that always makes me feel like I’m on holiday.

Their previous albums ‘Wagonwheel Blues’ and ‘Slave Ambient’ have been the soundtrack for many past driving holidays, so once I realised their new album ‘Lost In The Dream’ was going to be released whilst I was holidaying in the States, there was no doubt this was the only companion needed for a solo drive through the California Desert.

On the new album there’s a lyric that goes ‘You’re like an ocean in between the waves..’ – it’s a perfect way to summarise both the music, as well as the sparse, yet overwhelmingly grand Californian landscape.

These two were made for one another – the stirring, rollicking tracks mirrored by the rolling snow-capped mountains, to the sparse cactus trees and sandstorms that wind and whiz past you on the side of the road.

Here are some of those amazing songs and the places I heard them…

 

-Lucy B