 | | Bone-Box - Death Of A Prize Fighter |
Any album that starts with a mariachi trumpet fanfare and throws into a dirty, dark narrative that wanders through every nook and nasty corner of life has to be worth a proper listen, hasn’t it? Add to that the presence of Jay Taylor’s gruff Waits-ian voice that sounds as if it were born and bred on the floor of a bar in the small hours (and to an extent, it was), and you’ve got something truly intriguing. Less of a band and more of a conglomerate of rambling musicians, Bone-Box are capable of being engrossingly introspective and surgingly primal at the drop of any hat. Indeed, Death Of A Prizefighter sweeps across emotions and heartaches with such a wandering hand, it’s difficult to know whether to cry or cheer each turn. Maybe just doing both is the best course of action. In true bar-fly style, the album ends with the most positive moment, the wonderful throw-about hoe-down duet Toasting The God Of Graceless Living, that will have you throwing yourself around in a drunken jig, no matter when you hear it. In a time of boys in cardigans and skinny jeans and girls in stripey dresses, Death Of A Prizefighter is exactly what Manchester needs; a worn-out, grown-up, world-weary, wonderfully sprawling yet supremely tight record, dressed up in its Sunday best and dragged through the proverbial hedge backwards. | 
