Latest releases reviewed

DALE WATSON AND HIS LONE STARS
Heeah
Continental Song City
****
"Found in the honkiest tonkiest beerjoints in town", boasts the home site of Dale Watson and his Lone Stars. It's no idle boast either - the adopted Texan and his band have toured forever, because that's what real retro country stars do. No longer. Watson is taking leave for a few months but, before hanging up his Telecaster and parking his Harley, he delivers this model of unreconstructed country, full of blood, beer and tears. Songs like Tequila and Teardrops, Sit and Drink and Cry, I Haven't Been Right Since I've Been Left and It Hurts So Good are steeped in the honky-tonk tradition and played with a bar band looseness that makes this album a joy. www.dalewatson.com  - Joe Breen

KATE RUSBY
The Girl Who Couldn't Fly
Pure Records
****
The trouble with setting the bar as high as Kate Rusby has done with her previous album, Underneath the Stars, is that all that follows daren't soar any lower. Rusby has written seven tracks on this latest recording, each one melding effortlessly with the mood of the traditional songs, and most of them preoccupied with colourful tales of courtship, love lost and squandered, relayed in that medieval, playful tongue that she has patented. Mary Blaize and A Ballad paint word pictures of fairytale finery, embroidered by John McCusker's pristine production. Generous brass lines add body to the mix, and Andy Cutting's accordion and Ian Carr's guitar underscore it all sublimely. Another nugget from the Rusby/McCusker mine.
www.katerusby.com  - Siobhán Long