Daníel Ágúst: The Drift

Blues doesn’t get the appreciation it deserves. But if Daníel Águst has got anything to do with it, that’s gonna change, cowboy. And though the form itself is based round familiar chords and licks, in the hands of someone with something to say and the skills with which to say it that self-same anchor allows a great amount of contemporary context. Check the title track—country blues with an irresistibly insistent synth line blubbing around a live-and-lifeforce age-old-tale. Elsewhere, Falling In Lust has more than a hint of Nick Cave about matters, and the epic Snowlake is The Who as produced by the mighty Alabama 3. Give us a collaboration with em please Mr. Á? An idea of the continued motivation to create comes across very strongly in Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, which despite some worryingly-Mobyish moments is a cracking celebration of music and possibilities. Okay, meanwhile there is an end-of-night hazy squashy out-of-mind piece with all the claustrophobia of self-searching and the release of the same through love. Such subjects are of course timeless; it’s how they’re delivered that’s what makes them continue to be compelling to generation after generation.