Kurt Wagner & Cortney Tidwell Present Kort – Invariable Heartache

As musical partnerships go, Kurts and Cortneys go together less like a horse and carriage than a horse and a grunge Yoko prone to worrying Twitter-spasms. Well no more: Kort represents a happier alternative: a honey-coated tribute to ye olde country and western, courtesy of Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner, solo chanteuse Cortney Tidwell and lashings of slide guitar and whiskey-pickled heartbreak. Tidwell employs her fine pipes in an appropriately conventional Americana style, but it’s Wagner’s idiosyncratic croon that steals the show.

The album opens with his unadorned voice, echoing his day-job’s finest hour (2000’s Nixon, ushered in with similarly intimate fashion), while his precise enunciation of the lyric “little bitty tear” – all crisp consonants and debonair delivery – sounds slightly silly yet utterly charming. For every track straying too close to caricature there are a dozen moments of pleasure, making Invariable Heartache both a note-perfect tribute and self-contained delight. [Chris Buckle]