Sparrow and the Workshop – Sleight of Hand EP

The current Scottish music scene is healthily diverse, and now Sparrow and the Workshop bring another genre to the mix: country and western. Having only formed last year, the Scottish-Welsh-American trio’s debut EP opens with a brooding vocal harmony between singer Jill O’Sullivan (formerly known as Dead Sparrow) and drummer Gregor Donaldson, before Devil Song kicks into life with a Rawhide scuffle. That dustbowl-Americana sound is pervasive: O’Sullivan twists her vocals with a Tennessee twang, and tracks like The Gun and I Will Break You revel in olde world, hard-livin’ romanticism. But don’t dismiss this band as a dug-up musical time capsule; with this first release they have woven their unique strand into the fabric of the sound of Scotland in 2009.