It won’t surprise you to learn that Duke Garwood is a collaborator of Mark Lanegan, such is his gravel-raked voice and penchant for syrupy, swampy folk (perhaps Lanegan only works with people who sing as if they’ve likewise been licking cacti). The Londoner’s sixth solo album gives the impression that he has been stocking up on Nick Cave films and hanging out in Joshua Tree: it has an otherworldly, heady quality suggesting sun-baked desert days, croc-skin boots and a Chevrolet gently rolling along empty highways. Tracks such as the gospel-tinged Blue, doomy foreplay track Hard Dreams and the Cohen-ish acoustic lament Sleep suggest love songs for the end of the world. What is most striking about the album, however, is not its romantic gloom, but its pace: sleaze slowed down to a slumbersome drawl. While everything sounds lovely and moody – understated desert blues for a night in without the smartphone – beware the risk that it might send you to literal sleep, too.
