Like Jazz, Country and Western is a broad church with many different voices and styles of angels.  Phillippe Bronchtein hails from Montreal, but now lives in Portland. Compared to Kerouac (wash your mouth out with soap), this is an infuriating album.

The good stuff first: he can actually write. There is a lightness of touch to the lyric and the meter (“The countertop is cold, like the tree from which it rose”). He can actually sing – his voice has a good, open range.

Unfortunately, this is anchored to music that is flat pack country: the type of chugging, country rhythm that Johnny Cash could churn out in his sleep, and probably would if he was still alive. ‘Ladies Night’ is a neat piece of writing: dancing as a metaphor for falling in love. Or possibly shagging. Unfortunately, this neat imagery is (like most of the album) is smothered in the cheap sentiment you find in supermarket greetings cards.

See also ‘Father Redemption’, where the metaphor of living of a good life is compared to tending a garden. Throw in some god-bothering of the kind that makes me want to join the nearest coven; said metaphor snaps like a Poundland rubber band.

What the audience for this is, God only knows. Country aficionados like my Dad would find it too dense, turning off at the odd rude word. Americana bores would find the constant scrape of gravel down a dirt road a tad tiresome.

So, the Kerouac comparison is mystifying bollocks. See also the one to Abraham Lincoln; who famously said: “Whatever you are, be a good one”.  Hip Hatchet evokes wide-open American spaces, but unfortunately they are the ones you find in the middle of the road.

Hold You Like A Harness is released on 4th September.

Kev McCready