On his sixth album in two years, Herefordshire’s workaholic bandito Troy Redfern still has his calling cards: Navajo is a Wild West bone shaker and the most prominent use of Redfern’s trademark 1935 Dobro resonator.
But if Redfern is prolific then he’s not repetitive, tempering the cowboy stylings with other stories, other shades, even other time signatures. A splice of chain gang, sea shanty and funeral parlour organ, Dark Religion finds a female runaway bound for promised lands but finding only darkness and despair.
Profane feels like America at night, on the wrong side of the tracks, its psychobilly scuttle evoking hot rod headlights slicing through the gloom of Gotham City.
Sweet Carolina, thankfully, is more Bolan-Stones stomp than Neil Diamond syrup, while Come On is the best here, sharing a little bit of DNA with ZZ Top’s La Grange and stealing Muddy Waters’ pay-off (‘Got my mojo workin’…’). At this creative pace, you couldn’t catch him in a runaway stagecoach.
Physical copies of the Wings Of Salvation album are available rom the Troy Redfern shop (opens in new tab).
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