Stiffer than Scotch: Sparrow & the Workshop, Crystals Fall.

Where once we levelled bombast at the innumerable scruffily-coiffured boys playing scuzzy post-Strokes Fenders in the wake of Pete Doherty’s drug-fuelled derailment into the neighbouring wilderness of irrelevance, there’s an inescapable sense of foreboding that the hordes of female voices currently clogging up the airwaves and wireless internet particles that we respire are doomed to a comparable fate. Aesthetically, Sparrow & the Workshop are yet another collective blurring backgrounds and genders, as well as forcing malleable acoustic instruments into the tones of a visceral raucousness and a further female-fronted forest-dwelling outfit may initially seem rather superfluous.

You may have stumbled across the forlorn strings of Chicagoan Jill O’Sullivan previously, under the guise of Dead Sparrow and although the dejected string sections of her past work have largely been trimmed, O’Sullivan’s gravelled PJ Harvey howls remain quite ethereal enough to send listening ships into sabre-toothed jagged rocks. As her siren-like warbles swoop over the Morricone instrumental rumbles beneath (provided by guitarist Nick Parker and drummer Gregory Donaldson), all frivolous comparisons with the likes of Florence & co. float candidly out the window and Crystals Fall can be acknowledged as the dusty masterpiece of subdued folk persuasion swigging from a bottle of Bourbon in the corner, were it in the slightest bit affected. The ramshackle guitar lilts of opener Into The Wild recall the troubadour sea shanties of The Duke Spirit’s Neptune, with seducing vocals strung of pure silk reminiscent of Howling Bells’ Juanita Stein, whilst Blame It On Me, were they truly born of Glaswegian beginnings, would be little more than a lightweight rendition of any one of Neko Case’s Furnace Room Lullabies. Instead, wrenching your heart out with a cowboy boot spur, sprawling instrumentation erupts into quivering blasts of tremolo with an almost barbaric conviction, a ruthless stomp that later romps through Crystals and the razor-blade chords contained within I Will Break You. Broken Heart, Broken Home recalls O’Sullivan’s scraping violin orchestration amidst a torrid tsunami of swathing emotion borrowed from the downbeat summits of Cold Mountain, Swam Like Sharks rolls like tumbleweed tangled up with Esben & the Witch across The Great Plains and Last Chance reeks of the discerning resignation to solitude acquainted by many a bar brawler. Stumbling in through swinging saloon doors with their wits about them, blustering guitars in tow Sparrow & the Workshop may well be knocking up an exuberant sorrow for the loneliest of souls for some time yet...