RAVE MAGAZINE – review

CHRISTIAN POWER & LONESOME TRAIN – Cool Hand 

TUESDAY, 22 JUNE 2010
(Independent)

New album from Tamworth favourites 

Any suspicions of this being a heavy metal tribute to God are dismissed on seeing the flannelettewearing folk kicking it live on the back cover. The illusion is further dispelled on listening as singer/guitarist Power and friends deliver an album of friendly rockabilly that leans on the ’billy side of the fence – it even starts with an engine kicking over. The music touches base with various country/blues pillars like honky-tonk keys in Cribb & Munday, sunny pedal steel in Love By Fractions and belly-deep supporting vocals in Domestic Bliss. This is no reinvention of the wheel, but that hardly seems to be the band’s aim and it’s difficult to be overly cynical about a man who openly admits that he’s “a little bit city, a little bit country, a whole lotta rock & roll.” The guitar work of Fender-backed Power is sometimes a little inconspicuous on the record, only really letting loose on tracks like White On Rice, Dougie Style, El Dia De Los Muertos and the Devil Went Down To Georgia-inspired title track, which pits the speedy finger-picking of Cool Hand against the fiery fiddling of the Illawarra Flame.

TREVOR WINTERS