A Swedish guy (Petter Ericson Stakee) who toured around Europe with his musician dad for most of his early life and an English guy (Terry Wolfers) who was born in the east end of London are the two principle members of Alberta Cross. The Swedish guy’s brother is the organ player and the drummer doesn’t even get a look in, biography-wise. Connecting over a shared love for Van Morrison, The Band and Neil Young, the two main men eventually started a band that took it’s influences from those artists. The Thief & The Heartbreaker is their debut, a mini-album of swirling American roots music with a European after-taste.

The problem would always be the potential clumsiness of Europeans playing American music. It’s good news though, as the band have managed to incorporate both aspects into their sound. Alberta Cross scroll through a range of genres, like blues (“Old Man Chicago”), americana (“Lucy Rider”), country (“The Devil’s All You Ever Had”) and various bits of western films, Bob Dylan and gospel littered here and there. The European aspects are woven more subtley throughout, things like the guitar sound and style (“The Thief & The Heartbreaker”) or the twisted accent of the vocal delivery (“I’ve Know For Long”) the latter song being the best example of American/European synthesis with aforementioned vocal style and typical, (of country), mournful lyrics “And I don’t know why/I don’t know why/Trouble comes my waaaay”.

Alberta Cross are at their best here when they focus on lonesome and mournful songs. “I’ve Known For Long” is the best on the album, using wide-screen guitars, the constant presence of an organ playing drawn out drones in the background, a brilliant economical use of piano and the exquisite aching of the vocals from Stakee. “The Devil’s All You Ever Had” is also excellent, a cinematic wonder wanders throughout it’s deserved length of 6mins 37secs. Using the mournful country style of the previous tracks on the mini album, it also introduces slightly Neil Young reminiscent rocking parts, where the bass chugs along, acoustic guitars are churned, group backing vocals are shouted and splashing cymbals come in on wave after wave. The rocking-out element seems to be a direction they are now following up on, check out this video of a new song posted to TLOBF a couple months ago.

The only problems this release has is the sequencing and the length. The CD doesn’t seem to get going until “Low Man”, which is the 4th track of 7, the first 3 songs are not bad, they just lack some punch. Track 3 “Hard Breaks” is like a Shins song and perhaps doesn’t really match up with the emotion of the second half of the album. And emotional is where Alberta Cross excel on this release. I suppose I can understand the idea behind releasing a mini-album, maybe if you have some buzz from gigging and you need to capitalize upon that, but you don’t have an album’s worth of songs, or something similar. To be fair, all the songs on this album are of a good quality, so I can see how the band would’ve been reluctant to leave any off. But it is frustrating to get only 28 minutes and 7 tracks, especially when they sound so excellent.
77%

Links
Alberta Cross [myspace] [buy it]