Album Review: Trent Miller and Skeleton Jive - Cerberus (Hangman Records)

The guise of Trent Miller and the Skeleton Jive suggests that the London-based singer-guitarist has cobbled together a band for his debut record CERBERUS, but it appears that Miller is on his tod on this one. Armed with just guitar and harmonica rack, together with a world weary booze-drenched vocal, the blues tinged acoustic rock sounds for all intents and purposes like it's been dredged out of the Louisiana swamps and onto the back porch. With more than a couple of references to Robert Johnson, the Italian-born songwriter presents his own particular brew of gothic avant-country and bluesy folk tales.

With its brooding and bleak sleeve design, courtesy of Gustave Dore's illustration of the legendary multi-headed hound, CERBERUS demonstrates Miller's multi-headed approach to his own songs, often simplistic on initial hearing but with a hidden depth that transpires upon each subsequent listen. Calvary Mountains has the bleakness of a Townes Van Zandt blues, complete with vodka bottle in one hand and coke bottle in the other. The mood of the album can almost be identified in the song titles alone; Six Feet Under, Tombstone Eyes and Hellhound Train, not to mention Scream Your Last Scream.

If the subject matter lingers in an underworld of doom and gloom, there are some lighter moments in the arrangements such as the swirling carousel feel on Secret Fires and the cowboy campfire jauntiness of Coyote, both of which stay with you long after you've popped the album back on the shelf along with the Gram Parsons and the Gene Clark's. There's no escaping the fact that this is the darker side of Americana and although you feel Miller hasn't quite sold his soul at the crossroads, he may have temporarily loaned it.

Allan Wilkinson

Northern Sky