Duke Garwood is a bluesman’s bluesman. Mark Lanegan, with whom Garwood collaborated on 2013’s Black Pudding, calls him a “musical genius”; Josh T Pearson says his songs are “as close to heaven as you can get with a guitar”. As this alt-leaning fanclub suggests, the London-based musician’s approach to the genre is not the kind of dedicated study that forbids exploration: the title track, for instance, benefits from the ghostly backing vocals of Savages’ Jehnny Beth, and some guitar work reminiscent of Tuareg band Tinariwen. Burning Seas, in particular, is a fascinating composition, a tangle of interweaving guitar licks that hover beneath a melody of pure 80s stadium pop – Garwood manages to make sounding like Bono seem impressively soulful. The second half of the record (this is Garwood’s fifth solo album) sees him abandon the more accessible melodies for a sprawling, stripped-back sound that can be just as foreboding as track titles such as Hawaiian Death Song suggest.
