Wayne Graham - Mexico (2016)

Wayne Graham (USA)
Hayden and Kenny Miles were only eight and thirteen when they played in a band together for the first time. Their father had just founded a church in southeast Kentucky and the two were backing him in the services on drums and bass. The Whitesburg area, and that’s a scientific fact, has one of the lowest qualities of life in all of the US. Since the mid 1970s the mining area is in a state of constant recession. Lowest per capita income, shortest life expectation, firm republican domination. The answer to how the two brothers and their delicate and ornery Alternative Country fit into that picture is rather simple: they don’t. Their album“Mexico”, already their fourth one and the first one to be released in Europe, oozes a seemingly supernatural maturity, even though the two brothers are only 26 and 21. Mexico is concise and clever. Extremely catchy but never mundane. Artistic but not overly intellectual. The songs are often rather short and the remarkable, airy production, which takes place in the basement of their parents’ house, feels like an excercise in reduction. Beautiful chords and melodies, an incredibly melodic style of drumming and always at the right moment, wayward little details, breaks and lyrics, written for eternity: “Like the wolf outside we are led by desire, we are ruled by the time we have lost.” (Fellow Man)