Rock'n'Reel Review/UK/4 stars
4 stars
2008’s Highway Prayer – a particular favourite of that vintage year in this parish – Twilight Hotel’s Brandy Zdan and Dave Quanbury have relocated from their native Winnipeg, Canada, to Austin, the hippest city in Texas. Location, does it really matter? Who can tell? But there’s certainly a bold invention about the duo’s third album that wasn’t audible on its immediate predecessor.You can still hear the folk rock leanings of Highway Prayer, not least on the Neil Young doppelganger ‘Mahogany Veneer’, and ‘Dream Of Letting Go’. Yet in a way these are the less-interesting songs on a collection that pulses with the spirit of Tom Waits (when he ditched the Beatnik-at-the-piano persona for more musically explorative albums like Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs). I’m thinking of ‘Ham Radio Blues’, ‘What Do I Know About Love?’ and ‘The Master’ in particular. Of course, it’s no coincidence that Waits’s former drummer, Stephen Hodges, is behind the kit here.
The very best moments are when Zdan takes the lead vocal. She is astonishing on ‘The Darkness’.
David Burke
