Mainstream American country music of the Garth Brooks/Alan Jackson/Brooks & Dunne variety (with a strong emphasis on Nashville-style lyricism) is the territory mined by Wexford-based outfit Graham Murray & The Rusty Stringz.
While somewhat formulaic High & Low nonetheless sounds impressively authentic. It helps that Murray has a great, big, booming, voice that sounds like it was honed in the honky-tonks, bars and county fairs of the American south-west, rather than in the lounge bars of the sunny south-east of Ireland.
The title-track and the memorable ballad, ‘Better Man’ are pretty decent stabs at the genre, while ‘Forecourt Flowers’ and ‘Searching’ boast strong melodies of the kind that wouldn’t sound out of place on the Grand Ole Opry stage.