Holly GolightlyYou Can't Buy A Gun When You're CryingReview

Picture a clearing in Wyoming, just gone midnight. The campfire slowly burns and hipflasks of bourbon are passed between calloused cowboy hands. A tied horse snorts and paws the ground, while a pretty cowgirl plucks at her guitar and sings throatily of men who’ve done her wrong. Hear that music? Well, that’s exactly what You Can’t Buy A Gun When You’re Crying sounds like.

Which is fairly extraordinary, considering Holly Golightly is from East Sussex, not the Wild West. Over eleven albums in as many years, Golightly achieved cult fame with her idiosyncratic take on Western country, rockabilly and bluegrass, before a collaboration with the White Stripes introduced her to a far greater audience. But fans worried that fame would go to Golightly’s head can rest easy: this new collaboration with 'Lawyer' Dave is as determinedly low key and lo-fi as ever. There is no Nelly Furtado style reinvention here. Indeed, collaborating with a genuine Texan seems to have ignited an even more stubborn passion for pre-electric country in her belly.

From the shuffling percussion, keening slide guitar and echo-laden vocals of “Devil Do”, the album sounds uncannily authentic and atmospheric, and could easily be imagined soundtracking a Tarantino film. Indeed, the album often sounds cinematic, with the waltz-time torch song of “Just Around The Bend” summoning up a sultry Almodovar ambience while the sugary surface and seedy underbelly of “I Let My Daddy Do That” is very David Lynch.

Sadly, Golightly sticks so closely to her formula – her country code – that the album begins to stale half way through, not helped when songs like the title track and “Everything You Touch” veer out of homage and into lazy pastiche. Finally, this is an interesting curio rather than any kind of mainstream hit: something you suspect suits Golightly just fine.