Hot Club Of Cowtown

Western Swing, for the uninitiated, might be something of an oddly shaped pill to swallow: part country, part swing, part European Gypsy jazz with a few other bits thrown in here and there. To be fair, it’s a pretty weird concoction, but one not without its assets. To begin with, from those brave enough to tackle the chops, it demands a particular level of technical brilliance that can’t be sniffed at, and then there are the songs... Arguably more so than any other genre of music, Western Swing carries a momentous heritage (the American songbook of the Twentieth Century), bastardises a load of other (older) stuff along the way, and churns it up into something implausibly brilliant! What’s not to like? It’s basically punk with a heart and a fiddle.

Hot Club Of Cowtown (the name is a reference to both the French 'hot club’ style or jazz Manouche of the 1930s and '40s and the bands home state of Texas) are perhaps the premier exponents of contemporary Western Swing and, augmenting the original line up of violin, double bass and guitar with a drummer, Wishful Thinking is the trio’s richest offering to date. Therein you will find 14 tracks that offer everything from a sublime take of Gershwin’s 'Someone To Watch Over Me’, a dry and gritty version of Hoagy Carmichael’s 'Georgia’, a Tom Waits song that I’m sure has never sounded less like a Tom Waits song, and a fist-full of original material that, with the exception of the incongruous 'Reunion’ and jarring modernity of 'One Step Closer’, sound so perfectly worn in you can’t help but think you’ve heard almost every song on the album before (in a good way – nice, warm, reassuring...).

Aside from the exceptions to the rule, both of which are frankly excusable, so sweet and soft is the sound of the Hot Club Of Cowtown, it practically glides from the speakers into your subconscious, bypassing your ears altogether. Granted, there’s a bit of a tendency towards nostalgia, and sometimes it’s a touch sentimental, but so what? When has nostalgia or sentimentality ever hurt anyone? In fact a bit more of both of those things wouldn’t hurt. Regardless, the fact is this: when set against the elegance and charm of this enchanting album, everything else pales into insignificance – truly inspired.


Hotclub Of Cowtown are currently touring extensively in Europe, and the US and the new album is released in the US on 18 August 2009