Trent Miller and The Skeleton Jive – Welcome to Inferno Valley
Italian by birth but now resident in London Trent Miller has honed his skills playing local gigs in London and touring in his homeland, Welcome to the Inferno is his second album and is set for release on the Bucketfull of Brains label early next month, the album follows his solo debut release Cerberus that came out in 2008 on Miller’s own label Hangman Records.
For this album Miller has surrounded himself with a talented bunch of folks, Jim Taylor (bass), Anders Dal (drums, backing vocals, electric guitars), Shou Jie Eng (violin) and Jason Collins (mandolin, backing vocals) are collectively The Skeleton Jive , for the album additional contributions come from Duncan Drury (trumpet), Ruth Jacob (banjo), Emily C. Smith (backing vocals), Richard Johnson (electric guitars, glockenspiel) and Benjamin Folke Thomas (12 string guitar), together they’ve manufactured real gem of an Americana album that plays-out in the shadows of the country-folk genre, if it were a film imagine it as a cult b-movie spaghetti western, Miller’s weathered expressive vocal is married perfectly to the music, and when countered by Emily C Smith’s harmonizing it works wonderfully well as on one of my album highlights Ballad of Gospel Oak, another stand-out for me is Nowhere Road which is right up there with the best tracks I’ve had the pleasure of hearing in 2011.
Trent Miller & The Skeleton Jive – Nowhere Road
Don’t miss out, check this one out, it’s an album in the ‘proper’ sense of the word and one of my favourites of 2001, essential listening.