Road To Destruction album review

At first I didn’t know what to make of Northland’s Elliot Brown.  His claims of alt-country put me off, not being a genre I usually get into too much.  But I came away from listening to the album impressed; by his songwriting and arranging, by the depth of his music, and by the experimentation and choices of instrumentation that aren’t usually associated with country music, alt or otherwise.

Right from the choice of opening track, the traditional Cruel Mother, appearing here as a duet with Hariet Ellis and accompanied only by a knitting needle (yes, you read that right, a knitting needle), it was clear that this was going to be something different.

Brown wrote about half the songs on the album, his second as a solo artist, with the rest being traditional tunes arranged by him or written by other country artists.  It’s perhaps a credit to his talents as a musician that it’s often difficult to tell the difference between his own compositions and those he has arranged.

His own songs tend towards themes of being down and out, or “general wretchedness”  in his own words, and have a blues philosophy behind many of them.

It’s a shame that Road to Destruction has been given such a low key release as it deserves more.  It’d be nice to see it repackaged professionally and marketed more widely, but Brown has a strong desire to give his music away, or have people pay what they want for it, meaning that without label backing it will always be a struggle to give his music the treatment it deserves.