When I tell you that the very first word on Philadelphian up-and-comers Mt Joy’s debut album is “Mary-Anne”, you may fear we have already veered off the Springsteen interstate down the wrong turning marked “landfill Americana”. Yet despite the long drives, levees, women with old-fashioned names and Followill-esque throaty yowling on display here, the most frustrating thing about this young band is the sense of untested potential. The mildly distorted drivetime riffage of I’m Your Wreck and the well-intentioned Creedencey anti-racist anthem Sheep are painfully generic, but Julia displays a tendency to My Morning Jacket-esque sun-kissed soulfulness that suits them (and in particular Matt Quinn’s voice, revealed as pure and lovely in falsetto) far better. Bigfoot, too, could have been something interesting if they’d pushed further with the spooky reverb effects and dialled down the yeticentric yearning and the always-lurking dashboard-thumping tendencies. Yet it’s hard to get past the likes of breakthrough hit Astrovan, with its inane indie rootsiness and Joan Osborne-worthy musings about a “doobie-smoking Jesus”. It’s all good-hearted and amiable and undoubtedly well-crafted, but there’s a lingering taint of could-try-harder about these mountain men.
