Lloyd / Bean - Black Cat, Dark Horse (2023)

Robert Lloyd (of The Nightingales) and Janet Beveridge-Bean from alt-country duo Freakwater are Lloyd/Bean a collaboration and a match made in heaven. This is probably the most beautiful album of crooner / alt-country lushness you will hear this year, says Ged Babey.

The one song that will convince you, is not the slightly throwaway title track, which is the only one which merits the perhaps too obvious Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood comparison, but track two – the exquisite and beautiful Heavy Reckonings.

Since we’ve known him, Robert Lloyd has made quite clear his enormous affection for the songs and sounds of Freakwater, the duo of Janet Beveridge-Bean and Catherine Irwin who’ve been wrongly denied their place as rightful and willful progenitors of alt-country’s ‘movement’, which (frankly) is to their credit. Their genius in offering absolute authenticity to the sound old-time Appalachian folk music with a modern façade that in no way negates tradition (one of their albums is titled Feels Like The Third Time) is unparalleled within the genre, and Freakwater remain under-appreciated.

The Nightingales always had a bit of a country influence. Their third album, released in 1986 was even called In The Good Old Country Way and featured violins and mouth-organ before Alt-Country was even ‘a thing’.

The Lloyd/Bean band on the album include Robert’s long-time ally from those days, Pete Byrchmore, as well as Mark Bedford, the bassist for Madness and Pablo Roda, Spanish mystery drummer (The one-off live performance will feature Lindy Morrison -formerly of The Go-Betweens.)

A Nightingales song readymade and re-used for the project is the already faultless Black Country, originally on 2006’s Out Of True (Vinyl Out Now for RSD) when Robert duetted with Gina Birch of the Raincoats. The empathetic liars down the boozer

 they love a loser… being my absolute favourite line.

Sweet Georgia Black from Lloyds solo Virgin years appears also and an unreleased Lloyd song Eggs And Bacon which features the fabulous couplet “I’ll clean the scum from around your bath Go arse over elbow just to make you laugh”.

I am ashamed to say I had never heard of Freakwater, Eleventh Day Dream or Janet Beveridge-Bean before Lloyd/Bean. (My knowledge of US female country singers extends from Dolly Parton to Lurleen Lumpkin, so I’ll let you-all search out her back-catalogue online.) She has a great ‘country’ voice and it sounds like she totally gets Lloyds wit and loves the songs they chose to perform.

Janet brings to the table One Shot and the unheard Freakwater song Arc Of A Smile. A Jon Langford song, Tears Like Stars nestles in comfortably and the whole album has a lush feel and gentle flow to it. It’s Sunday afternoon listening maybe and all about the songcraft as the press release says.

I have a feeling that Robert has always wanted to make an album like this: Easy on the ear with melody and humour, relaxed performances and a grown-up mix of schmaltz, wit and romantic sounding tunes, in the good old country way. With a great collaborator and some top musician friends, the result is a surprise album of the year, in a category and a class of it’s own. Black Country Croon with an authentic American First Lady of Alt-Country.