The Burner Band - Signs and Wonders (2021)

The Burner Band are a Leeds-based bluegrass and rockabilly duo comprising guitarist Lewis Burner and Ian Blackburn on double bass. Their first collaboration, Signs and Wonders, opens with the urgent early Everlys rock ‘n’ roll of Blues Came In, switching to old-timey banjo backed bluegrass on Block Out The Sun. The song celebrates how Liverpool has mostly banned the tabloid newspaper The Sun since its coverage of the Hillsborough football stadium disaster in 1989 and how the city ran fascist leader Oswald Moseley out of town when he attempted to address a rally in 1937.

Steven Hickey Jr joins them on pedal steel for two tracks, the first being the train wheels rhythm of Company Man with its mixed back vocals and the more countrified road song title-track closer with its echoes of Gram Parsons and some bonus harmonica. This time courtesy of Tim Howard, the pedal steel also features on the slap-bass powered You, The Devil & Me, a wry seemingly necrophilia-veined relationship number involving sharing your drowned lover with the man below, again featuring harmonica and some fine picking by Lewis Burner.

They like to mix things up, so one moment you have the banjo-backed It Takes Two, which has a driving Blues Brothers Everybody Needs Somebody To Love shuffle and yet more harmonica blowing then along comes the Cajun flavoured Voodoo Queen, with lyrics from David Holmes and harmonica substituting for the more customary accordion.

Elsewhere, there’s more rockabilly chug, bluegrass banjo and harmonies on the Goodtime guitar twanging Search Deep, Find Out, a song about taking a good look at yourself, while, again riding scampering drums and double bass rhythm, Don’t Have To Listen pretty much sums up the relief of all teenagers when they finally cast of parental chains.

They round things out with the blazing banjo playing of the Western-canvas sound of Pray For The Light and the tumbling drums and guitars for mental health-themed number Too Much Blues, which shakes up a potent cocktail of influences.

Signs and Wonders is a bristlingly confident, musically infectious and assured debut. While they only once break the three-minute mark, they deliver by simply going in, doing the job, and getting out again with a less is more attitude. It makes you want to kick the furniture out of the way and bop around the room.