2

One fine day about a decade ago, your reporter was idly hitching a lift to Wexford town when he chanced to glance up and realise that, to his horror, he was thumbing a hearse, the incriminating digit standing obscenely erect in full sight of the driver, the mourners and their grim cavalcade.

I'd successfully repressed that memory until I clapped ears on the 11 obsequies that make up The Black Heart Procession's second long player (their first for Touch And Go). Sure, the trio hail from San Diego, but their sound is as ominous as black lightning on a summer's morning, a sinister suggestion of what happens in the cellars rather than the sun-traps of the West Coast. In short, California screaming. Very softly.

In more concrete terms, The BHP evoke a less four-square 16 Horsepower, or some alternative musical universe where time's stylus skips and Will Oldham ends up fronting The Bad Seeds circa Your Funeral . . . My Trial. Their scuffed sound is derived from the finest American fibres, employing The Rev's penchant for saws and rinky-dink western pianos ('Outside The Glass', 'The Waiter No.3'), twangy David Lynch guitars, pump organs, moogs, sheetmetal, wurlitzers, clavinets, waterphones and even the odd shot of flanged ambience ('Beneath The Ground').

The songs though, are choice, particularly the spectral sway of the opening 'The Waiter No.2', 'Blue Tears' and the pricelessly titled 'It's A Crime I Never Told You About The Diamonds In Your Eyes' - the latter tune representing the one halfway rousing moment on the album, echoing Neil Young at his most rustic and ramshackle.

2 is required listening for recent divorcees, and vocalist Pall Jenkins emits the saddest noises heard since Bambi got plugged by the hunters, not to mention penning almost comedically bleak couplets such as "Something scared you and when you moved/Your stitches pulled not yet removed" ('When We Reach The Hill'). This ain't everybody's sackful of kittens, but if you favour your sounds unapologetically threadbare, mournful and hangdog, enroll here. In another incarnation, The Black Heart Procession could've been the house band on the Marie Celeste; dignified, formally dressed, and haunted as hell.