W&H were mightily impressed with BRAY VISTA'S last album, 2009's 'Let It Ride'. A hugely accomplished roots-rock outing sprinkled with just the right amount of Nashville stardust, it was a reminder that the home-grown roots scene is still hugely undervalued this side of the Atlantic.
'Home-grown' in Bray Vista's case means the rolling hills and leafy glens of County Wicklow. It's not a million miles from Dublin, but in many ways it's another world altogether. In that sense, they're natural outsiders and they're potentially up against it this evening as their slot clashes with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's in the Blue Tent big top stage. Yet this nine-strong team (and they are a team) are anything but fazed. They dig into their set with style and confidence, bring in a decent sized crowd and keep them there.
While singer-songwriter Neil Tobin and his vocal foil Alison Byrne are the obvious focal points, there are no weak links in this outfit. Rhythm section Mick Teehan (bass) and drummer Scott Hannon (“he's just married,” Neil tells us) keep it tight but fluid, Gavin Wheatley plays a mean Honky-Tonk piano and harmonica player Craig Starkie turns in an impressive vocal turn on the gamblin' man's Country blues of 'Slim Pickings'. Additional crucial flourishes are provided by Brian O'Dwyer's accordion, Simon Connolly's mandolin and Johnny Evans' tasteful lead guitar, which has depth and invention and can't help but bring Albert Lee favourably to mind.
Festival restrictions keep it to a compact ten song set, but there are still riches galore to savour. 'Good Hearted Woman' provides a rousing start and rubs shoulders with a nicely sassy cover of Gram Parsons' 'Ooh Las Vegas' with the band hitting the harmonies and turnarounds dead on. 'Slim Pickings', meanwhile, marries a bouncy Honky-Tonk groove with a cautionary tale of losing everything at the card table (“I never made a bet I didn't lose”) and finds Wheatley's piano sparring supernaturally with Evans' guitar.
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Love's slings and arrows are never far away, of course. 'Love' (“L-o-v-e, love it is/ I'm just about D-e-a-d from it”) is witty, feisty and great fun, while the accordion-assisted 'Love Untold' is a hard-bitten anthem to loving, breaking hearts and having your broken as a result. Perhaps my favourite of the evening, though, is 'This Time Is the First Time' with its' melancholic swing embroidered by some beautifully swampy guitar and impassioned vocal performances from both Tobin and Byrne.
Bray Vista is an enormously talented unit. They understand their Roots-Rock history, gel magnificently as a unit and have an armoury of resonant Country-flavoured songs which will sound good (and relevant) years from now. Let's hope they make further forays down to the Wild (South) West in the near future.
Bray Vista on Myspace
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