Delta Saints: Bones

Nashville’s Saints march to career peak.

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For the last eight years, Nashville’s Delta Saints have been steadily building a following for their atmospheric blues rock and deep-fried southern hoodoo by playing 200 gigs a year, stoked by two EPs, 2012’s Death Letter Jubilee album and last year’s Live At Exit/In.

All this graft earned them a deal with Tom Lipsky’s Loud & Proud, which has recently entertained names such as Skynyrd and Steve Miller.

Working at Nashville’s Sputnik Sound with producer Ed Spear (Jack White, Neil Young), the band decided to write songs spontaneously in the studio, resulting in an often-bewitching clutch of spectral psychedelic cascades and bottleneck field-holler confessionals.

These veer between the Led Zep-Jack White bombast of Sometimes I Worry to the haunted lament of Butte la Rose. Tumultuous riffs, intimate passions and ornate but widescreen backdrops proliferate on something of a modern southern masterpiece.

Kris Needs

Kris Needs is a British journalist and author, known for writings on music from the 1970s onwards. Previously secretary of the Mott The Hoople fan club, he became editor of ZigZag in 1977 and has written biographies of stars including Primal Scream, Joe Strummer and Keith Richards. He's also written for MOJO, Record Collector, Classic Rock, Prog, Electronic Sound, Vive Le Rock and Shindig!