Dan Sartain - 'Join Dan Sartain' (One Little Indian) Released 02/10/06

Dan Sartain is like some twisted Sun Records crooner gone bad, with a cheap guitar with a fixation on cheaper sex and even cheaper murder. A young man in his twenties, Dan Sartain has recently began building success on these shores over the last year or so, thanks to popular dates in London and the strength of his debut record ‘Dan Sartain vs. The Serpentines‘. It is a long way from Alabama, but there must be something in the British water that we take to U.S. weirdies to our collective bosom more than their homeland does, just take the Scissor Sisters.

Musically brittle, ‘Join Dan Sartain’ channels the energy of the MC5 through a hotbed of Johnny Cash, creating demented rockabilly such as ‘Drama Queen’, that yelp to a close just as soon as they have started. More so than his even more primitive debut, ‘Join Dan Sartain’ at times recalls the lo-fi appeal of a White Stripes record, knowingly reaching for no decade in particular, just sounding vintage. The record is a mix of dustbowl blues, swampy punk and more sun flecked styles styles such as spaghetti western riffs and even the off calypso moment as on ‘Flight Of The Finch’.

Speaking of spaghettis westerns, ‘Totem Pole’ sounds like a number recorded for one of the many Leone rip offs made in the sixties, its horse gallop pace, complete with message of love and death, topped with crashing drums, it is an aural delight, leaving you picturing day-glo film credits in your head filled with Mexican bandits and dusty gringos.

Cinematic is indeed a flair of Dan Sartain, most of this record tells a story, from a tale of birds on ‘Flight Of The Finch’ or stories of the more mundane working world at large as told as ’The World Is Gonna Break Your Little Heart’. If some of the tracks were longer, this album might over stay its welcome but as it is, ’Join Dan Sartain’ is a delightful romp from beginning to end, its star justifiably with his name in big letters across the front cover.