Miyagi - Lucky Face

They may hail from Scotland’s east coast, but Miyagi’s musical home lies way west of there. Their funk-footed, rhythm and blues-rooted, country-glancing sound is a migratory mix-up of the rich vein of North America’s musical heritage. But with so many styles vying to head up the pack, it all gets a bit messy. Whilst they do the low-slung, shuffling blues thing with fair aplomb, as quite nicely cued on opener Dirty Little Monkey, and hit a heavy-mellowing deep-South country vibe on All the Way Home’s dusky hush, their predilection for free-range funk leaves numbers such as Grow So Tall exposed to that worst of all tags: whacky. There’s no denying that Lucky Face is punctuated with some nicely blended moments, but more often than not their care-free tendency to just throw it all in there renders the end product just a little unpalatable.