Tommy Hale & the Magnificent Bastards

It would be easy to lazily bracket Hale’s oeuvre as ‘Americana’, but there’s quite a bit more going on here, with forays into power-pop, alt-rock and classic left-of-centre songwriting in the manner of, say, Randy Newman, Warren Zevon and Kevin Ayres, although Tommy would never be so big-headed as to compare himself to any of those masters. What is certain, though, is that the clash of Texan and English cultures give the single an unique and vital energy.